@grammato3. It’s a long story. I had been on Zoloft for over 25 years. When we retired and moved to Florida both my husband and I agreed there was no reason to keep taking it. It’s not good to be on an Ssri for that long. I was also
still using Clonazepam at the time. My psychiatrist said “good luck” and that was it.

With the help of my general doc, I tapered off quite easily of the Zoloft. After about 8 months symptoms starting returning on the OCD slightly including insomnia. The new doc (not psychiatrist yet) figured it was just from the time I had been on Zoloft so he put me back on the same dose of 25mg right away. After one week, I was in the er with severe anxiety that I had never had in my life. They cut the dose in half in one week, then in half again. My old psychiatrist from Texas said get off of it now.

In the meantime my new psychiatrist added hydroxyzine, buspirone and lorazepam. The lorazepam was to replace the Clonazepam that was no longer working but with no taper. All three were supposed to help with anxiety.

I went thru 4 months of withdrawal of Zoloft and she finally reduced that to 1/2 lorazepam and 1/2 diazepam to start following the Ashton taper method while still taking hydroxyzine and buspirone, has been going on since last October. While all that was happening I also did TMS which is supposed to help with depression which I also never had and anxiety. They felt it would ease the withdrawal symptoms.

It helped. It wasn’t until I was off Zoloft and lorazepam and diazepam combo withdrawal and fully on diazepam that we discover I am paradoxical to both buspirone and hydroxyzine. Both make me highly anxious. We are now tapering off the mid day dose of the hydroxyzine to remove that dose of 2.5 and a very small taper on the diazepam of .75 spread across all three doses every day. I was told this was the best way to handle this.

I tried to do all three but was told that really wasn’t a good idea. Once the hydroxyzine mid day dose is gone, the remaining two doses will be divided evenly between am and pm by 12 hours to help relieve some of the every week 4 day withdrawal.

Now my OCD is worse as well.

It’s been a long journey and a lot of research by us since no one would have guessed that I would be one in 100k+ people that both of these drugs reacted backwards and to find out now when it’s necessary not only taper Diaz but hydroxyzine and buspirone.

If anyone else has any better ideas I would love to hear them.

Thank you Susan for caring enough to reach out. It’s been a long road so far and will continue for several more months. 🙏😔

I currently take propranolol as needed to help with the hydroxyzine and buspirone until I can safely taper off of those.

I caution anyone given Hydroxyzine or buspirone to make sure that if they do take it, taper! These are both nasty drugs.