10mg to 20mg citalopram: So i started... - Anxiety Support

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10mg to 20mg citalopram

hollieedridge profile image
6 Replies

So i started citalopram 4 weeks ago, i took my first 20mg tablet and had the worst side effects !! Extremely dozzy, spaced out, really sick and bad panic attacks, after that i took 10mg with less side effects, as i am still getting panic attaks doc wants me to take 20mg so i took that tablet at 9 this morning! Now i am really oanicking because the first tablet i took gave me such bad side effects. I am so scared i dont want to feel like that again

Has anyone got experience on uping there dosage??

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hollieedridge
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TruthSi72 profile image
TruthSi72

Hi hollieedridge

I know this isn't a direct answer to your question but I wanted to give you a slightly different view on the idea of medication and my experience with it.

I remember when I was given Beta Blockers for my anxiety. I know that's not what you're on but the reasons are the same. It was not a good feeling.

I began to wonder...what happens if It becomes a habit to treat my anxiety disorder with medication? What is happening when I do this? I began to get anxious about taking pills to deal with my anxiety! AAaAaaarrrggghhh!!!

I needed to understand what might happen if I continued to take this medication.

Firstly, we take pills because we believe that Doctors know what's better for us. Now, this is only partly true, doctors, in general, are only trained to deal with conditions from the perspective of medicating that condition. They are not trained in Psychology or Neuroscience, they're not trained in nutrition or diet...so they are not these all-knowing professionals that they're promoted to be. Now I am not saying that Doctors are not knowledgeable or can't help you I am just saying that they don't have all the answers and that sometimes because they don't have all the answers they go for the lowest common denominator...give them a pill. This is not always a good thing. Great if you're suffering a broken arm and you want a painkiller not so great if you suffer from a general psychological disorder that would be better treated through understanding one's thinking process and working with that instead of pumping people full of pills...and there are numerous individuals on here that will tell you that.

Medication only treats the symptoms not the cause and can even sometimes make the symptoms worse...so that means that the cause may be veiled over but will eventually either come back or come out somewhere else? Why?

Anxiety is caused by experiencing an event or a series of events that instructs our brains to react in a certain way whenever we experience anything similar...our brains are always trying to protect us...even when things go weird like when we are having panic attacks...it's our brains thinking it's doing us a favour...but who can blame it...we taught it to react that way!

So when we take a pill, what we are actually doing is softening the symptoms of our anxiety, not the anxiety itself.

Anxiety is illogical, it doesn't make sense because it is an extreme condition related to something that may only actually require a tiny bit of nervousness but for some reason, we have turned it into this huge inappropriate thing that takes control of our lives and when we allow it to do that it becomes self-perpetuating...we panic because we're anxious about panicking, we begin to exist in a constant state of anxiety about having anxiety as well as numerous other things that we think cause the anxiety in the first place...then...we freeze.

Life goes on hold...because we have entered a closed state. A state where we become so trapped in a certain way of thinking that it feels like there is no escape...our anxiety becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy! We enter a closed circular state that every thought and process leads to avoiding or experiencing anxiety and that becomes our identity!

What's the truth?

The truth is unless you have a something wrong with your brain, pills are not going to help you, only numb the symptom for a while. Another danger is that you get addicted to medicating yourself.

The real truth is that you don't need pills for general anxiety you need to change the narrative that your brain is telling you. How do we do that? Our subconscious minds, which is where all the important stuff is stored, use metaphors to make sense of our realities which it then passes on to our conscious minds so that we can then make decisions based on that information. Our conscious minds are the decision makers. Unfortunately, if our minds are giving us the wrong or distorted information then we can sometimes react in an extreme way. But we can change those metaphors thereby changing the instructions that our subconscious minds give us.

Change the metaphor change the reaction.

Si.

noemikahle profile image
noemikahle

I had the same reaction when I switched from 20 to 30 of celexa. My symptoms settled within a week and the higher dosage really helped me. I would give it two weeks and if you are still having symptoms this dosage may be too high for you. I also tried 40 mg but this made me feel like a walking zombie so I went back to 30. Good luck!

amanda19608 profile image
amanda19608

How have you got on with the 20mg hollie? I’ve been on them 8 weeks now and still haven’t found the courage to go up to 20mg terrified of side effects

hollieedridge profile image
hollieedridge in reply to amanda19608

I have had no bad side effects and been on them about 5 days. A little dizzy the other day. Dry mouth and a little sick but other than that it has been fine. Im still anxious but not as bad x

Wyominganxiety profile image
Wyominganxiety

I've been on 40 mg for almost 2 months still having anxiety so I have to take valium too my doc is considering putting me on another pill along with what I'm already taking blah.

I've been dizzy and nausea for an hour here and there every day since I started 20 mg citalapram. Been about two weeks, hoping it passes.

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