by Leslie Keck

Created on: January 14, 2009

It was 16 years ago when the doctor diagnosed me with anxiety and panic attacks. At first he put me on an anti-anxiety drug called Alprazolam, which worked until it left your system, probably about 8 hours or so. About 15 to 20 minutes after taking it, your body would totally relax, sometimes to the point of not being able to do much of anything.

I then seen a psychiatrist and as we talked about everything from my childhood on, I could not control my tears from flowing as I talked about my life. She came to the conclusion that my anxiety and panic was stemming from depression, therefore I needed to be on an anti-depressant. She started me on Paxil.

It had seemed to work for awhile, but as the stress in my life continued, so did the anxiety and panic. I returned back to my family doctor, and his only reply was I should up the medication from 20 Mg's to 40 Mg's. I had already hated living my life through a bottle, which is how I looked at it. I went home and decided that instead of taking 40 Mg's, I would only take 30, just to get me over the hump and then I would go back to taking only 20Mg's

I had been on Paxil for about 10 years when I decided enough was enough and I just stopped taking them all together. I don't suggest anyone doing this. The first day after stopping them I didn't feel too bad, the second day I actually felt like my old self again, it was a wonderful feeling. I thought to myself, this is great, I'm actually going to get off these pills. The day to follow, I couldn't believe the difference from the day before. I totally crashed and I crashed hard, I was shaking, I couldn't stop crying, I was very irritable and I just didn't know what to do with myself.

Needless to say I went back to taking my medication that evening and I was back to normal, well as normal as I could be, a couple of days later. I had tried again a couple of years later and the same thing happened, so I went back on them. I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do..living my life through a bottle.

I went back to my family doctor again because I felt the Paxil wasn't working for me anymore and I didn't want to up the mg's. So I talked to my doctor about switching to Prozac, and he said I could but I need to ween myself off the Paxil. So he told me how to go about doing that and wrote me a prescription for Prozac.

I started to follow the doctors instructions for going off the Paxil, for the first week cut down to 1/2 a pill every night and then for the second week 1/2 a pill every second day and 1 Prozac everyday and then the third week drop the Paxil all together and just keep taking the Prozac.

I got through the first week fine and decided it was going OK. I decided to not start the Prozac yet and see what happened, so I just continued taking the 1/2 Paxil every night for 2 months. Then I dropped it down to 1/2 a pill of the Paxil every second day, and thats where I'm at now.

Be prepared for the withdrawal symptoms of Paxil. You can get nauseous, dizziness, tired and probably the scariest of all is the zapping in the brain, thats my best way to describe it. You may actually think that your symptoms of anxiety and panic are returning, but they aren't, it is just your brain trying to find a way to function without the medication.

If you are deciding to stop the medication, my advice is take your doctors advice to a point, but if you feel you need to go off of them slower, then take it slower. Going off the medication is a shock to your system, so take as much time as you need. The withdrawal symptoms do start to subside, for me it was about 3 months.

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