Tips on how to wean off of Paxil (paroxetine): Bad withdrawal.

I’m guessing it may depend on how long someone has been on it. For me it was about 30 years. It was and still is rough.

I’m glad you did well !

You must do this with a psychiatrist of doctor with considerable experience in dealing with your discontinuation process. I am 71 years old and was on Paxil for 34 years. My doctor, in what turned out to be an act of malpractice put me on a 30 day discontinuation schedule and transitioned me to Wellbutrin as I weaned off. It has been a nightmare. 4 months later, after the shock from too-rapid Paxil discontinuation I have been on and off Wellbutrin, hydroxyzine, and am now on my 3rd week of Buspar, 15mg per day and at the end of this week will have been on Zoloft, 25mg. In addition, I am taking lorazepam to deal with the worst effects of the anxiety on an episodic basis while letting the Buspar deal with anxiety on the more long term basis. What you are doing is survivable, and probably a good idea. Paxil has the worst record for discontinuation for any of the SSRI's. But you must do it under the careful management of competent medical professionals. Best of luck to you-I would not with what has happened to me on anyone.

@usernamej
Hey, long time user here as well tapering now and stuck on 2.23 mg.
If by any chance you see this it would be great hearing how are you doing today.

@bambi3339
Hello
I too am at the dose you are.
I am doing great and will be reducing to 0 next time, I believe.
Congrats for getting down to the low dose.

You said you were stuck at that dose for now.

I would recommend you stay where you are until you feel comfortable at this low dose. Could take time.

Then reduce my another tiny amount.

Going this slow has worked for me. Liquid Paxil is def the way to go

And finding an alternative to Paxil that your body accepts was amazing because it helped in reducing

I credit my success to a fabulous nurse practitioner who deals with prescribing and takes an hour or more to discuss and advise her patients.

There is no one like her !

Glad you reached out and best of luck with your journey re Paxil withdrawal

@bambi3339
Hello
I too am at the dose you are.
I am doing great and will be reducing to 0 next time, I believe.
Congrats for getting down to the low dose.

You said you were stuck at that dose for now.

I would recommend you stay where you are until you feel comfortable at this low dose. Could take time.

Then reduce my another tiny amount.

Going this slow has worked for me. Liquid Paxil is def the way to go

And finding an alternative to Paxil that your body accepts was amazing because it helped in reducing

I credit my success to a fabulous nurse practitioner who deals with prescribing and takes an hour or more to discuss and advise her patients.

There is no one like her !

Glad you reached out and best of luck with your journey re Paxil withdrawal

@usernamej, You are truly one of the more fortunate people to have found a very good medical professional who is able to help you with your medication, as I previously mentioned there are some successful stories and very lucky people, sadly though they are far and few but at least you’re providing some hope for the rest of us who are still struggling.

@usernamej
Thank you so much for your reply and great to hear you're stable.
Could I ask what dose you started from and how you tapered down? Also, did you experience withdrawal symptoms, and if so, which ones?
I'm halfway through the process and even though I have a lot of awareness about the process, proper tapering methods, etc. I recently dropped by 24% thinking I was strong enough and two months later I'm in the worst shape I've been in yet, I also tried bridging with Lustral and Prozac which made things even worse. Regardless liquid Paxil, unfortunately we don't have it here so my daily dose is weighed on a lab scale.
Anyway, my goal is to be completely clean and not switch to another medication, honestly, I’ve lost faith in meds after none of them were truly effective alongside a host of side effects that continue to plague me on top of the withdrawal symptoms.

@bambi3339
I began the reduction 2.5 years ago starting at 40 mg.
Reduced to 30, had horrific side effects.
Was put on Remeron to get thru the withdrawal. Wasn’t very helpful
This same pattern continued of reducing by increments of 5 milligrams until I reached 7.5. Had to go back to 10, stabilize and returned to 7.5. Stayed on that for almost a year. This is the time I found a great NP
By then after all the side effects you read about and the disability that causes this NP worked closely with me .

By this time it was 2 years of trying to reduce Paxil. …
Then 5 and now at 2.5

I too did not want to try any more meds however the withdrawal was horrendous.
I found my self on the floor, shaking, feeling like I would die and the agitation and anxiety was awful.
The entire process was so bad that I gave in and tried other meds.
Nothing was right though.i tried Prozac, Remeron, Elavil, Pristiq… sometimes i could tolerate 20 milligrams of sthing but increasing by 5 mg or more causes negative symptoms. All trial and error

Finally I found this person that helped me and we found the perfect combination and in low dose
With her diligence I was able to get to 2.5.
We tried some of the meds above….

Changing dosages too quickly is a negative. I learned to wait and let each dose change stabilize until I ever reduced again. And sometimes people have to go back up, stabilize for longer then try again

And I also came to the realization that if it takes 3 … 4 yrs to get off Paxil then it’s ok

Slow and steady was so helpful. However we finally found a med that once regulated me and finding the right dosage was the most helpful.

It’s a long process of eliminating and trying again.
But she prescribed a medication that can be used for those that can’t tolerate SSRIs etc
And she did not try it until she saw I could not tolerate any on them well.

Some caused high pulse like Elavil.or high blood pressure etc etc. it also depended on the dosages. If I reduced to the lower dose them the BP got to be normal.

So much is trial and error. She was the answer though.

I must add that the withdrawal of Paxil included intense irritation, huge anxiety, hot flashes, shaking, so agitated. These symptoms were so pronounced!!!

Luckily I did have Xanax to help me through the process. When changes were intense I used it. It’s not a cure for sure but it helped most of the time.

I knew that if I woke up without thinking of taking a Xanax then I was stabilizing. But I also stayed in a stabilized stage for awhile before changing anything.

I find many doctors decrease too quickly or by too much at any one time.
They don’t get it!
Everyone has different systems so we need different approaches

Wish you luck! The liquid Paxil which you don’t have and the right medical person was the beginning of a better withdrawal but it can be a hell of a journey.

And through
all this I did not want to try any other med but I did and I had to get over my desire to stay off another med.

Paxil is known to be one of the worst re withdrawals.
After 30 years on it the withdrawal was one the scariest events in my life.

Wishing you success