Issues with Metabolizing Antidepressants

Posted by Postcovidblues @bmspector, Mar 11 12:20pm

Has anyone found that they now metabolize antidepressants differently? If so, have you found a way to explain this to a psychiatrist or other doctor?

Specifically, my psychiatrist decided I was on too many meds and has been tapering me off several that I was on before I got COVID and subsequently Long COVID, which from a depression standpoint has been so-so, but I found that I started having severe reactions to antidepressant withdrawal that I previously never had. For example, I went off Seroquel and I wound up not being able to walk straight, and then got a six-day long migraine. However, I started feeling noticeably better after that got out of my system, so I stayed off it. I’ve had similar reactions to stopping two others she wanted to stop, including SSRIs (which aren’t supposed to be as severe as SNRIs). I haven’t regained my appetite fully, but my energy and strength have gotten better. Prior to COVID, whenever I stopped a med or changed from one to another, I only felt off and had those weird brain zaps, but never the nausea, migraines, etc. I read a publication about a patient at UCLA that developed serotonin syndrome following a COVID infection although the patients meds didn’t change, but that patient was so sick that he had to go to the ER and I never got there.

Thoughts or similar experience?

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Post-COVID Recovery & COVID-19 Support Group.

@bmspector

Thanks for this! I actually had this done at Mayo, but my prior psychiatrist wouldn’t read it after (and assumingly resented being told what to think), unfortunately. Mayo also found that my meds were “appropriate” but were wrong about that (as well as some other things). I was frankly disappointed that after 21 years of psychiatric care, that I’d actually be able to meet with a psychiatrist at Mayo because I’m well aware of how the meds typically worked in me, but, alas, all they would give me is a LP, DO. I’m hoping my new psychiatrist is more knowledgeable 🤞🏻, although she is also not an MD.

Jump to this post

This is getting off topic, but you may be better off with someone who isn’t an MD. At least some MDs seem to think they know everything and so they basically deny the existence of long covid, because they don’t know anything about it. I’ll take a nurse practitioner over an MD any day.

REPLY
Please sign in or register to post a reply.