Last time I went digging, the typical option was a second antidepressant medication to use temporarily as the withdrawal period happened. The idea was that you wouldn’t be on the second one long enough to have those symptoms from it, and could just quit.
There were some studies being done that I never followed up on that tested various medications other than antidepressants, typically benzodiazepines or things like gabapentin. Again, I haven’t gone looking again, and that’s been something like six years since I looked.
The real problem is making sure your prescriber has paid attention to the literature on the matter, and will actually help. Some are just so far behind the curve that they’ll still insist that there aren’t any symptoms from stopping an antidepressant, though that has changed a ton over the last decade, so it isn’t like it used to be.
Now, the real problem comes in if you’re getting the zaps and aren’t quitting the medication. The treatment option for that, back when I was reading up years ago, was still the addition of another antidepressant, and/or coming off of the one you’re on and then switching.
SSRIs and tricyclics are worse about head zaps than MAOIs, but they can all do it (and likely will do it while quitting after more than a year on one of them) while still using the medication. There wasn’t a specific medication to counter the symptom at all, because nobody knows/knew why the hell it happens.
Now, if you step outside of prescription meds, there’s anecdotal reports of things that help, but zero research done on them that I’ve ever found, and all of them come with risks, so I’m not willing to go into them currently. I just can’t support experimenting with psychoactive herbs and chemicals that could interact badly with antidepressants. If you decide to go looking, be aware that it’s easier to find what kind of things people have tried than the reports of bad effects from interactions. That’s on you to go looking though, I’ll be damned if I’m going to risk being involved in something that could cause harm.
If you want, I’m okay relaying the bad effects I have read about or heard directly, but it’s kinda useless info for your question.
The tl;dr is that the only reliable opinions require a provider to make happen.
Yeah, I dealt with effexor withdrawal back in 2005. Absolute nightmare, in both figurative and literal terms. It took me years to stop having not just the zaps here and there, but the worst nightmares I’ve ever had, and I dealt with night terrors as a kid and PTSD nightmares all my life.
Last time I went digging, the typical option was a second antidepressant medication to use temporarily as the withdrawal period happened. The idea was that you wouldn’t be on the second one long enough to have those symptoms from it, and could just quit.
There were some studies being done that I never followed up on that tested various medications other than antidepressants, typically benzodiazepines or things like gabapentin. Again, I haven’t gone looking again, and that’s been something like six years since I looked.
The real problem is making sure your prescriber has paid attention to the literature on the matter, and will actually help. Some are just so far behind the curve that they’ll still insist that there aren’t any symptoms from stopping an antidepressant, though that has changed a ton over the last decade, so it isn’t like it used to be.
Now, the real problem comes in if you’re getting the zaps and aren’t quitting the medication. The treatment option for that, back when I was reading up years ago, was still the addition of another antidepressant, and/or coming off of the one you’re on and then switching.
SSRIs and tricyclics are worse about head zaps than MAOIs, but they can all do it (and likely will do it while quitting after more than a year on one of them) while still using the medication. There wasn’t a specific medication to counter the symptom at all, because nobody knows/knew why the hell it happens.
Now, if you step outside of prescription meds, there’s anecdotal reports of things that help, but zero research done on them that I’ve ever found, and all of them come with risks, so I’m not willing to go into them currently. I just can’t support experimenting with psychoactive herbs and chemicals that could interact badly with antidepressants. If you decide to go looking, be aware that it’s easier to find what kind of things people have tried than the reports of bad effects from interactions. That’s on you to go looking though, I’ll be damned if I’m going to risk being involved in something that could cause harm.
If you want, I’m okay relaying the bad effects I have read about or heard directly, but it’s kinda useless info for your question.
The tl;dr is that the only reliable opinions require a provider to make happen.
SNRIs like Effexor are also super bad about it. People say quitting heroin was easier than Effexor.
Yeah, I dealt with effexor withdrawal back in 2005. Absolute nightmare, in both figurative and literal terms. It took me years to stop having not just the zaps here and there, but the worst nightmares I’ve ever had, and I dealt with night terrors as a kid and PTSD nightmares all my life.