Anyone on Zoloft? I have been for 2 weeks and feel like it's making me worse. Do I need more time?

[CHARLI]

Hey
I started on zoloft first but i found it made me so much worse
i was vommiting and fluey
I ended up coming off it after 1 week
i am now on lexapro
its awesome

Hi! I have been on zoloft for about 6-7 years and I am now slowly coming off of it. I find that it is making me feel like I'm completey nuts. I feel like I'm on a bad trip. I maen I know it's all in my h ead... but it is really really buggin me out.. I just feel like I want to scream!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ZOLOFT SUCKS!!!!!!

Any medication for anxiety is sympthomatic masking. The problem is not gone when you take it or come off it. Anxiety is a habit, a way of worryful thinking leading to fears and stresses. These medications can suppress certain chemical reactions in the brain by numbing neural receptors and deafening them, in fact polluting them. This makes you be a different you, and it's normal, you are intervening in the natural processes of your brain. Some medication also stimulates some hormone or brain chemical, like serotinine or dopamine or whatever stuff. This makes you feel more up to things usually, but it's not a cure.

Yep i use zoloft i have been for about 3 years for post-traumatic depression but now i feel like i am getting more anxiety attacks and just yesterday i couldnt get out of the house because i was scared..the hing is im only 16 and its embaressing at like sleep overs wen i have to take the medcation i want to get off it now!!!!

[allyson]

I have stopped and restarted Zoloft for a good while now.
After about 2-3 months on a higher dose (150 mg) I felt as if it stopped working.
I have taken many medications-I think lexapro may have been my favorite but I am not so sure-Zoloft seems to be OK.
I cannot expect a drug to miraculously heal me but it just helps.

I restarted on 25 mg, after a week Ill up it to 50 and see how I do.

i took zoloft for over a year it took over 3 months to start working then i believe it just quite. it has been 5 months off it and my anxiety/panic attacks are worse than ever it has been 5 days of constant worrying. zoloft sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Zofloft users...

I used Zoloft for 5 days. Age 51.

I had a pounding heart last summer but didn't think anything of it. Then my mamagram showed some problems, then my husband went to emergency room with chest pains and dizziness. I ferryred my kids 9 and 4 everywhere ,..have no reliable baby sitter although tried a couple. Drs. didn't find any problems with him. OK enuff of that.

For a few weeks everything setttled down and I thought, great, kids back at school and nursery and I was getting my yearly physical at Dr. For about 2-3 weeks before DR. appmt. the pounding heart got worse. It woke me at night with incredible heart rate ... I dont know, about 100/120. Being an ex engineer I thought "oh this must be stress or heart attack" didn't have dizzyness or arm pain so figured it wasn't emergency... seemed OK otherwise. Then I thought I'd tell Dr. in a week or so. I put up with sleepness nights, lay on my back breathed and all that jazz which helped, but these bouts seemed random.
OK went to Dr, he listened and was horrified. Gave me monitor and .25mg Zoloft and said "this isn't Valium it will help" OK took it got really bad. Phoned a Nurse Direct Number they said Go straight to emergency room. OK did this ..they did the tests but found nothing. Emergency room Dr. was a bit crusty with me and explained that I should take heart monitor to regular DR. Get it read and keep taking the tablets. Also explained that it would take 2 weeks to get heart monitor read.

OK, next day even worse. It was Fri. Saw nurse practicioner who doubled my Zoloft to .50 mg and was also not very sympathetic. "Breath deeply when the fast heart rate comes on" I tried to explain it wasn't like anything I'd had before. I had given presentations at work etc. and knew what that panicky feeling was like ... I had that feeling plus more.. yes like I was going to die intense panic. I had never ever felt like this before. She just did a rolling eyes heavenwards and said take the tablets and the effects would kick in in 2 weeks. I said I had 2 kids to look after and my husband was going out of town Mon would I be OK to drive... because I was so bad I couldn't concentrate on my driving. Yes of course she said no problem.

Week-end was hell. I took Zoloft and had to lay on couch all week-end. Sunday I walked to basement bathroom (10 steps there 10 steps back) Got back and nearly passed out. Luckily as I'd been to emergency room and brought Monitor back to Dr. he had given me and appmt for Mon. I actually clasped my husband's leg and begged him not to go out of town.. that I was totally incapable of driving and looking after kids! He capitulated.

Went to Drs. on Monday. Again Dr. horrified at base heart rate I told him walking anywhere was hell and as I usually ran up and down stairs with laundry all the time I figure I should be able to walk across the room without my heart rate going up to 140 and almost passing out. He got me to walk up and down the hallway. Listened to my heart and said OK you have a problem. He came back and prescribed .25mg Xanax and said keep up with the Zoloft. He also go me in with a Psychiatrist. I also had heart valve tests just in case it was my heart. BTW next day at heart valve test I passed out and and was taken down to the emergency room by the nurses. This time I had a CAT scan The emergency DR was also pretty unfriendly but said nothing as I explained my history. Panic attack was written on the discharge paper.

Went to psychiatrist next day and it was night and day. He was old and kindly and explained it was physiological and things in my life had brought it on plus it is hereditary (my Mom Aunt and 3 female cousins are a bit hyper but I didn't think I was ). He laughed at the .25mg Xanax and I was put on 2 mg Xanax also he stopped the Zoloft and made a few disparaging remarks about drug reps etc.

OK have bored everybody with long post. I'm in the middle of my treatment and it has been rocky. I have no idea if my psychiatrist will one day put me on Zoloft while I'm still on Xanax. He always asks about my mood when I see him ... I guess he's trying to find out if /how badly depressed I am.

All I can say is I hate Zoloft!!!

Sorry about the long ranting post but now I have it partially off my chest

I too took zoloft after a horrible anxiety attack. I went to the ER spent 14 hours there, was given a xanax and sent home, discharge anxiety. I went to my regular Dr. a few days later, he gave me a starter pack of zoloft. So I took it. I too couldn't get off the couch, I thought for sure I was going CRAZY!!! I told my mom if I didn't start feeling better soon I wanted to go to the county mental hospital, and I was serious. My mom called my Dr and said she thought the Zoloft was making me worst, so he took me off of it and put me on Paxil. I only take 10mg ( the lowest dose) and I am much happier then I have been in a long time. I still have mild anxiety, but it doesn't bother me much. I know how to deal with it.

Good luck to you all

It's interesting to hear others have had such bad experiences with Zoloft as well. I was prescribed it in 1995 for depression. For a couple of days, the only side effect was near-constant burping and stomach gas. "Lovely," I thought, "but let's try it a little while longer..."

Well, I think I may've begun feeling a wee bit less depressed. But then one evening, after I'd been on the drug for about a week or so, suddenly, as I sat on my boyfriend's couch watching TV, I began to feel a strange wave of coldness rising through my body. Then the racing heartbeat and dizziness hit me like a speeding train. I thought I was dying, literally. I felt as if I was about to black out, though I didn't. My boyfriend called for an ambulance and I went to the hospital, where they prescribed Valium for my racing heartbeat (I think about 170/180 bpm.)

Luckily, they gave me some extra Valium to take home, because the episodes continued for quite some time. I was unable to work for over a week, and I noticed during that time that I had no appetite. Still convinced I was dying (yes, the episodes were THAT terrifying...it's still hard to talk about them), I decided "what the hell" and consumed a whole box of candy. Then another. I still lost weight. I was not eating much otherwise and yet my weight plummeted--it was freakish. Ten pounds down in less than a week. My whole metabolism was revving like a sports car engine.

I should add that although I'd stopped taking Zoloft immediately after the first episode, the effects diminished very gradually indeed. There was a drop-off in intensity and duration after a couple of weeks, but still, I suffered for months. At some point I learned that, basically, the Zoloft had INDUCED panic attacks, something I had NEVER had before. I've never been quite entirely free of them since, although after a couple of months I no longer felt I needed the Valium (or Xanax, which I was also prescribed for the attacks.)

Some years later, I was told by a psychiatrist that Zoloft and drugs like it--SSRIs, I guess--can cause reactions like this not only in manic-depressives but even in people who just carry the gene for manic depression. I don't know if I'm bipolar or not--I do have very unstable moods. I do know wild horses couldn't persuade me to take Zoloft again. I've also heard recently that Zoloft is the worst SSRI for manic depression, so perhaps that shrink was right.

An amusing aside: the first psychiatrist, the one who prescribed Zoloft for me originally, was the sister of activist Ralph Nader. And, I have to say, she was a terrible doctor. The night I had my horrible first attack, the "emergency contact" number she gave me brought no results at all--NONE. She didn't call me back at ALL for three freaking days and then she was totally inert and uninterested: no help, no reassurance, no information, nothing. I had one more appointment and then I never went back to her, and I even filed complaints although I'm sure THAT did a lot of good . I could've been dead, for heaven's sake. And a simple callback from her that awful night would've helped greatly. What a jerk--for $350 an hour, too...*sigh*

Anyway, yeah...Zoloft can be very bad news.