Withdrawal from amitryptiline

[Katie18]

I’ve been on amitryptiline for about 8 years to help control nerve pain in my feet at night. I suffer from churg Strauss syndrome. I’d like to reduce my dose from 20mg to 10mg but have been reading about how difficult this is and the side effects. Has anyone managed to do this successfully without side effects? How did you do it? Was it slowly? Thanks

[Nadine99]

My husband takes 20mg at night but sometimes he tries to go down to 10mg. Doesn't have any side effects and it's such a low dose of this medication, he just notices if it doesn't keep his headaches under control and goes up again. I think you'll find that the side effects are with much higher doses but do ask your GP or consultant.

[Katie18 in reply to Nadine99]

thanks Nadine that’s reassuring to know. Best wishes to your husband

[2534]

Hi there. I have a friend who had been on 50 mg for years for her migraine, then decided to come off it all in one go without reference to her Gp. She was climbing the walls after doing that for a few weeks but after seeing the Gp went back on a smaller dose and then back to 50. She had bad head pain and felt the risk of returning to migraines wasn’t worth it.

I was on 40mg at night for neuropathic pain (erythromelalgia) and realised at 11 pm one night that I hadn’t taken the amitriptylene and was having to go to a breakfast meeting early in the morning, so I couldn’t take it so late. So I steeled myself to a lousy night but surprised I slept, albeit lighter than ‘usual’.

Amitriptylene was top preferred med for neuropathic pain in a massive international metadata analysis a year or so ago. I am now back on 35 mg for the neuropathic pain. However I came down 5mg and no problems. The GPs say come down in 5mg stages. I think we all react to these neuropathic drugs differently. The friend who climbed the wall has no lingering drowsiness in the morning which I do. I have learnt to take the A around 2 hrs before going to bed and in the last 1/2 hr of that am pretty drowsy/useless. Most neuropathic pain medication I tried left me feeling zombie-like whereas it seems some others do not have such effects.

These are small doses I believe compared with what is sometimes used for depression. Best of luck with it. Ajh

[Katie18 in reply to 2534]

Thank you Ajh that’s really useful. I am going to speak to my GP. I just want to try to reduce from 20mg to 10mg for now to see how I get on but I’ve read some alarming stuff in the internet about people trying to reduce. And some worrying stuff about side effected of amitryptiline

[Jackoh in reply to Katie18]

Hi I take Amitriptyline for peripheral neuropathy. I was taking 30 mg last year ( I had increased from 20 mg to 30 mg as I was as well getting shingle nerve pain in my back after a bout of shingles. )After about 6 months I attempted to taper down by 5 mg to 25 mg. This was successful and still controlled the pain. About 2/3 months ago I forgot to take it at all and didn’t get any sleep but no pain either. Because of this I thought I would try to decrease to 20 mg which I did. Again no reaction, sleep still good and no pain so I have stuck here. I might at a later stage try 15 mg but I’m quite content to be at this dose as I believe it is quite low relatively speaking. I take mine at 7 pm at night so I don’t get any effect in the morning.

[Katie18 in reply to Jackoh]

Thanks very much Jackoh that’s helpful - I hope you manage to reduce further