Half-life of anti-depressants?

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I had some problems with my psychiatrist and lost my supply to anti-depressants back in August. The last week I have been feeling really terrible and I have a weird urge to cry. Is this just withdrawal?

Is there any way you can find another psychiatrist?


I had something similar once when I was withdrawing from citalopram, just after a few days!


You've been off them since August? How have you felt all along??

We're looking for one, but I don't want to tell my parents it's urgent because they'll get worried.

I've felt great since August. I was sleeping better, I did some socializing (very little though), I worked on some projects, etc. I feel like I'm crashing hard though.

Don't be shy to tell them! You were on the anti-d's because you needed them... tell them that and tell them why you didn't need them for a while and why you didn't tell them sooner (and the right anti-d's will also make you less shy about things like this, like Celexa did for me.)

Most drugs (including antidepressants) that I know of have a half-life of, at most, 36 hours or so, but I do believe that there was one antidepressant (don't remember which) that had a half-life of a few weeks. Half-lives have a very wide range.

You noticed that you felt better after August. Maybe when you get another psychiatrist you should get a lower dose, or maybe even no antidepressants at all.

Oh, and when you're not on antidepressants, it's perfectly normal to feel sad for a few days. It only becomes a problem when you're sad for weeks at a time or longer.

The drugs were likely out of your system after about 3 weeks. IIRC, Prozac has the longest half-life, but after a month, it's gone, too.

If you quit in August, it's been long enough that your brain should be returning to baseline. The first month after discontinuation is usually the worst in terms of withdrawal symptoms, but you should be past that by now. It's not uncommon to experience "emotional lability" in the short term after coming off an antidepressant, so feeling like crying isn't unusual, but it shouldn't be the predominant emotion you feel.

How are you sleeping? I'd pay attention to your behavior, looking for obvious signs of depression. If you're withdrawn, can't concentrate, sleep poorly, lose your appetite, etc, you should probably see a doctor. Untreated depression has been suspected of "kindling" future depression, so it's best to nip it in the bud.

This is interesting. How come anti-d's (SSRIs, anyway) take like 6 weeks to get in and only like 3 days or 4 weeks to get out??

When I ran out of my Zoloft for a couple weeks the major symptom was feeling chilled all the time. I notice my hands getting cold first and then I got chills and felt tired and lethargic. It felt kind of like the day before a bad cold, only the cold never actually came. I also had some mild head rush sensations that were triggered by moving my eyes too fast (I later learned these are colloquially referred to as the "brain zaps").

That's my experience. I don’t recall having instant depression during withdrawal. I don't know what the most common withdrawal symptoms are and everyone is different.

It's the response that takes 6 weeks to manifest. From day one of taking an AD, the drug is in your system, and reaches "steady state" within a week or so. Whatever mechanism is responsible for alleviating depression, though, takes a few weeks. One theory is that ADs induce growth in the hippocampus, as depressed people often have an atrophied hippocampus, and studies in mice have shown that ADs induce neuron growth in that region. It's not the drug per se that makes you feel better, it's the physical changes it eventually induces in your brain. The brain takes time to grow, so therapeutic response lags behind.

I don't think that's true, though. If you Google "citalopram withdrawal", you'll find thousands of people reporting nightmare stories of weeks of awful symptoms. I stopped Citalopram 2 weeks ago and am suffering from dizziness, nausea, brain zaps, irritibility etc. If the doctor had told me that stopping the pills would require a month in a retreat, I'd have thought twice about taking them.

It's not as if they actually *cure* anything. After 18 months on Citalapram, I think it just masks the depression and when you stop, you're right back to square one. I'm really not convinced by the use of SSRI's, right now I'm thinking they're just make you compliant and make big profits for the big pharma corporates. But then paranoia is also a withdrawal symptom

As jfbereg says, August was 12 weeks ago, so I'd assume the drugs have withdrawn by now. If depression is starting again, doesn't that suggest that the drugs have done nothing and you may need to look elsewhere?