I Discontinued Antidepressants with 5-htp

First I want to say that I don’t wish to advise people to quit taking their antidepressants. Lord knows this group of people needs them more than most people do. Quitting your antidepressant cold turkey can cause a lot of stress, rebound depression, brain zaps, and suicidal thoughts. I am merely providing my own perspective based on my experience with the antidepressant med Zoloft also called sertraline. Talk to your doctor first if this post influences you or resonates with you.

I have been on this medication twice. The first time was before I had psychosis and I was on sertraline for over a year until I decided I wanted to live without it again. I tapered down from 150 mg and it was the worst experience of my life. Every time I lowered the dose I would have brain zaps, depression, and I would cry. I eventually got off of it and things were actually pretty good. That is until I got psychosis 10 months ago. I was placed on Zyprexa, then Abilify, then finally Invega. When I was taking the pill form of Invega it made me into a zombie and I had major depression. It was partially due to the evil voices but I did not realize it was because of the Invega. I now take the injection of Invega that does not give me these zombie depression side effects. But I was so miserable I went back on the Zoloft, something I swore not to do again because of how bad the withdrawal from it was. I was still having anxiety at school so we slowly raised the dose to 200 mg, the max dose.

Here’s why I decided to come off Zoloft again
-Anhedonia. Music didn’t sound that great, nothing got me excited. Nothing was pleasurable. Everything was just ok.
-Low motivation. Although this was mostly due to my negative symptoms of psychosis.
-No sex drive
-I felt flat with no emotions. I didn’t feel real. I wanted to experience emotion again.
-It was one more medication my entire life relied on for my security. It held too much power over me. I wanted to take less medications.
-I was irritable not very lively.
-Chlorine is in sertraline which is a harmful halogen. I recommend taking Iodine to combat this.
-I did not want to take antidepressants for the rest of my life and after many years it is even harder to come off of them.

But I knew tapering off would be a long and painful process. But then an opportunity presented itself. 5-htp. I found a post online about how someone had come off antidepressants using 5-htp. You need to wait 24 hours after your last dose of antidepressants to take it because taking both at the same time can cause serotonin syndrome. So that’s what I did. Cold turkey. I know I shouldn’t have done it this way but I don’t care. I took the 5-htp and to my surprise I had no symptoms of withdrawal. About 4 days in I started getting brain zaps but I did not feel depressed! I am currently about a week and a half into the detox and I’m finally noticing some low mood symptoms at this point but it is very minor. I will be free from Zoloft avoiding the greater part of the typical withdrawal symptoms. And I feel pretty good! Also from what I’ve read you can discontinue 5-htp without withdrawal symptoms. And it isn’t recommended to take 5-htp longer than 3 weeks.

I am fairly certain I will be fine especially because I had time to get used to the symptoms of voices and I’m equipped to deal with them now. If the worst happens I will just go back on Zoloft. No harm. I can’t advise any of you to do what I did. But this is my experience.

I’m also on invega and sertraline 200mg.

That’s a God start