Reduced your SSRI dose? Have anxiety? Can't feel? This is why.

Official guidelines teaches clinicians when you discontinue your SSRI, serotonin levels in the brain goes down. They also teach increased serotonin aids synaptic communication alleviating depression. Both are wrong! I invite you to set aside everything you have read or been told about what antidepressants do and approach what I'm saying with an open mind. There is about 10x to 20x more serotonin receptors outside the synaptic cleft than inside it. They are being activated due to the effect from SSRIs. Pharmaceuticals, it seems forgot to mention that part. Also when you taper your SSRI your serotonin level is rising. Pharmaceuticals deliberately mislead your doctor about the latter. You may notice, or know people who develop anxiety at first when starting a SSRI? The main reason is because more serotonin is stimulating the 5-HT receptors. They are overstimulated and this is felt as that internal unease. Those of you who are tapering know what I'm talking about. Wait a second, I'm getting anxiety when I start and stop a SSRI? That's correct, because when you taper your level of serotonin is rising and stimulating those 5-HT receptors further. This happens because in the drugged state, the serotonin neuron is firing faster than normal. To compensate for this effect while taking the SSRI, your body lowers the amount of serotonin available for the neuron to fire with. When you stop the SSRI, the storage of serotonin in the neuron climbs rapidly but the neuron is still firing too fast, therefore the amount of stimulation of the 5-HT receptors goes up. When you start and stop SSRIs you get anxiety, nerve pain, or a burning sensation. This is also why tapering slow is key. The problem with SSRI drugs is they are to strong. Also you are not increasing communication in the brain. You are decreasing it. The decrease is why your emotions constrict. This makes serotonin an inhibitor. The end result is often an uneasy feeling mixed with anhedonia. There is many issues that makes stopping a psychiatric drug very difficult. The source problem with SSRIs is the 5-HT1A autoreceptor. What this receptor does is it senses how much serotonin is floating around in the brain, it sends a signal to the neuron and this controls how fast it fires. It's very straightforward. But if you increase the amount of serotonin high enough and for long enough you can trigger a change in the signal the receptor sends and this is the magic behind how SSRIs work. Prolong stimulation of receptors tells the brain there is something wrong so it starts shutting the affected receptors off to prevent injury. If you shut enough of them off you can create an aberrant effect in the signal the neuron receives. The receptors now can't properly sense the amount of serotonin in the brain. The signal has been weakened from the brain shutting receptors off, so the neuron thinks there isn't enough serotonin circulating when in fact there is to much. Once this happens if you decrease the amount of serotonin in the brain the neuron will try to fire faster, as the signal the autoreceptors send will weaken further. If you increase the amount of serotonin in the brain you risk shutting off more receptors and the neuron may once again try to fire faster. Then when you stop taking the SSRI, depleted serotonin levels in the neuron replenishes and the neuron releases more serotonin when it does fire. The systems in our brain are tied to feedback loops. That's what keeps them balanced. When you take drugs you can push these systems too far and the feedback mechanisms will begin to fail. This is where problems emerge and the brain will work to rewire itself and around the drug. The same problem exists for post finasteride syndrome and BIND from benzodiazepines. They are conditions where the checks and balances have been pushed too far. This is also why tapering too fast is disruptive and short half life drugs like effexor and paxil are harder to quit. Both push the balance of communication within the brain off track quickly. SSRIs with a longer half life like prozac is better to taper, as the change in serotonin level will be more gentle when you reduce your dose. Quitting these drugs can be done. How fast you do it is different for everybody. Listening to your body and finding the right balance for tapering is more important than a fixed schedule. Some people can get away with 15% reductions each time while others need a 5% reduction. Some can do a reduction every 2 weeks and others will need to wait 4 weeks in between. A generally accepted starting point is 10% and the 3-4 week range between deceases in dose. It's also a good idea to track if you develop difficulties when tapering on a calendar or in a journal. This way when you are feeling better and it's time to reduce your dose again you can gauge how well or poorly the previous taper was. If the taper goes poorly for a week. You will struggle to recall how bad, as anxiety has a way of impairing our memory. Your notes will correct for this anxiety to memory issue when you review them. You should also use a SERT occupancy graph for the drug you are tapering. Then you can see where you are on the hyperbolic curve. It will help you understand why going from 30mg of Lexapro to 25mg was easy. Then 10mg down to 5mg is extremely difficult. As you can see there is science behind what you are experiencing. It's destabilized brain chemistry that is felt as mental illness if you choose to believe the pharmaceutical narrative. It's the brain projecting into your subjective reality the current state it is in and that is being felt. The problem isn't you as a person with a mind and soul. You are reacting to the problem as you should. Asking why you have anxiety is the right question. Unfortunately the answer you got from your doctor wasn't the best. You know that. If you didn't know it. It's unlikely you would be reading this post. The brain projects what it sees and its state of operation is what you experience as an individual. When it projects anxiety it is unpleasant therefore you react to it and question why is it happening? You may even rightfully ask yourself. I wasn't like this growing up. Why now? You as a person you didn't change. The drug changed the view.