Atomoxetine discontinued

[prasanthk]

Hi

My Psych had prescribed Atomoxetine 10 mg. Initially, it worked well, will my energy levels & clarity of thought sustained throughout most of the day. Was also prescribed Nuhenz too along with it.

I had to discontinue the medication, given my lack of motivation to refill the prescription.

After I restarted the medication after many days, I felt my head spinning, with unbearable ache. Is this normal when you restart the medication?

It felt like having a smoke after a long time, but with very huge intensity.

I have inattentive type ADHD (The sluggish one)

[Gettingittogether]

No not "normal." Well it is not unusual for a med we are restarting to affect you differently than it did the first time we were on it. Our bodies change, our needs change.

In your case, just tell your doctor about your symptoms and they'll make an adjustment. They might need to cut your dose in half. You might need to restart at a lower dose.

[STEM_Dad]

Atomoxetine works very differently from any of the stimulant ADHD medications.

Stimulant meds are same-day effective, so it might be easier to stop and start taking them again.

Atomoxetine is an SNRI, selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. It can take a couple of weeks on up to a couple of months of taking it daily to reach full effectiveness.

Similarly, after going off of atomoxetine, a person might experience strange sensations, in addition to their ADHD symptoms returning to their normal unmedicated severity.

(SNRIs like atomoxetine take time to build up in the body and brain. Anyone who has taken an SSRI for anxiety or depression would have to go through the same process...take it for weeks to see it start to take effect.)

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The doctor who first put me on ADHD meds started with a stimulant first for two reasons:

First, most ADHD patients respond well to a stimulant medication.

Second, it's much easier to stop taking them, and the side effects experienced by stopping the medication are generally much less bothersome.

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In the last two months, I ran low on my atomoxetine, and then ran out. My ADHD symptoms returned to full severity, but I also experienced mild depression (due to life events, but possibly also due to withdrawal from the atomoxetine, which has a mild SSRI effect in combination with the primary SNRI effect).

I finally called the doctor and got hay l back on the meds. It's been two weeks, so I'm still not back to my best level yet, and my doctor has now added a low dose SSRI for me to take the next six weeks.

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TLDR - it's best to keep taking atomoxetine, with no gaps in treatment.

[Mkkell]

I had a similar experience after failing to refill my prescription for a couple of weeks. The cigarette analogy is perfect - every time I took it, it felt like the rush of nicotine you get when you smoke a cigarette for the first time in a long time - a kind of overall buzziness and headache. For me it took several days of taking it regularly to get back to my more normal response to it.