Introduction (2001)
February 28th, 2001.
I began taking Paxil, paroxetine hydrochloride, for depression and post-traumatic stress shortly after a traumatic event in November of 1999. By July 2000, ten months later, my doctor and I agreed that I was doing well enough to stop taking the medication. So I followed his medical advice and discontinued the Paxil. Within 24 hours, I experienced such severe paroxetine withdrawal that I eventually became suicidal — and it scared the hell of me. The neurological trauma of paroxetine withdrawal was more physically and mentally debilitating than any kind of depression I had ever experienced.
Most of the records I kept during my withdrawal experience were in the form of messages I posted to Paxil withdrawal support groups similar to paxilprogress.org. Saved on this blog are the most informative of those messages. The postings appear in the order in which they were written, along with all the relevant responses I may have received.
It is a record of my withdrawal experience, not because I’m vain and I like listening to myself talk, but because it’s the only record I kept, and having reviewed all of it recently, I can see that it presents the reality of the experience more accurately than anything else I’d have the energy to put together right now. Along with a support group such as paxilprogress.org, I can’t think of anything more valuable for someone living through paroxetine withdrawal than to read exactly how someone else survived it.
While it’s true that there isn’t a whole lot of fun to be had for someone living through the effects of Paxil withdrawal, the important thing to remember is that you can survive it. That may not sound like much right now, but I have done it and so have many others who had it worse than me. If there’s one thing to learn from the record and testimony on this site, perhaps it’s how to smooth out some of the bumps in the road ahead so that when the worst of it comes at you, it doesn’t knock you so far down that you can never get up again. It can be overcome. As unbearable as it may seem at times, it will eventually go away, and you’ll be all right.
Okay, maybe not all right, but I’m pretty sure you’ll feel at least a thousand times better.