Anxiety and coming off paroxetine

[aronj]

Hi Everyone, I’ve never written anything before but when I was trying to find help with regards to getting off of paroxetine all I found were horror stories and obviously as someone who suffers from anxiety this scared the life out of me. My mental health centre didn’t return ANY of my calls or send me an appointment after 6 requests spanning a 6 month period. All they did was try and dissuade me from getting clean. I was on 30mg a day for 3 years and decided that I was going to have to do it on my own. They wouldn’t decrease my dose without an appointment and it was impossible for me to get an appointment. So I bought a pill cutter! I went straight from 30 to 15mg

and stayed there for a month, suprisingly no problems. Then I went to 7.5mg for a month, still no problems. I then went to 3.75mg for 4 days and then........I went away for a week and accidentally forgot my pills. It was reading all the stories that started to makes panic but I stayed calm and said to myself that I could do it. I did have a weeks worth of Xanax of which I took half a tablet before bed, this enabled me to sleep and although I didn’t actually feel any different during the day I think they helped my to stay relaxed.

After a week I weaned myself of the Xanax too and now I AM FREE!!!!

Two months later I feel happier, I am emotional, but in a good way, my libido is improving!

It’s been quite a journey over the last year of self improvement, I’ve learnt a lot.

Anxiety for me is about getting unwanted thoughts and feeling mixed up. Sometimes I’d get the feeling in my stomach and then it would bring very negative upsetting thoughts and sometimes it’s the reverse. I now realise that it’s very common for this to happen, but it’s just about how much power you give these thoughts or feelings. It’s easy to get into a vicious circle which ends up in panic and the feeling of going mad. But now when I get anything like that I take some deep breathes and sometimes laugh. They are just thoughts!!!!!

Good luck to everyone, you can do it and you will be fine xx