Updates from the SSRI Tapering Process
it has been 6 months!
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Here we are. Six months of Zoloft tapering. I started at 100mg, now I’m at 75mg, which maybe doesn’t seem like a big deal, BUT IT IS since I’ve been on this medication (and roughly 100mg) for 20-some years.
I have intentionally decreased only by 12.5mg each time. Everything online from actual people who have done this have advised a slow taper. My first taper was in August, my second was in December. My next will be in June. My goal right now is to get down to 50mg and stay there for a while. I will hit that goal (if all goes accordingly) by December.
I feel fairly similar to how I felt before I decreased, which is interesting. Was this medication really not doing anything for the last several years? It hurts to think about that, to be honest. With everything going on in the world, plus my health scare in January, and other bullshit happening this month, I have been able to handle it all. I may cry a lot, but I always cried a lot. I am not floundering. I am not afraid to leave my house (most days). I am doing the things I need to in order to take care of myself.
As someone who had original diagnoses of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, and Sensory Integration Disorder at 16, I think what I really have is C-PTSD, and you can’t medicate away C-PTSD. I saw a Thread this week that said:
The reason CPTSD goes undiagnosed: it doesn’t look like trauma. It looks like personality. PTSD is an event. CPTSD is an environment you couldn’t escape during, most often, your formative years. It’s trauma that gets woven into the fabric you mistake for identity.
This is exactly what it feels like. I had compounded and varied trauma from the age of 3 onwards. By 16, I had another traumatic incident which is what I was eventually medicated for. As an adult, I then had a multitude of traumatic incidences, which didn’t help the already existing C-PTSD. Everything I do, everything I am is at least partially related to having experienced too much ongoing trauma in my formative years.
When I think of it this way, I feel immense grief and sadness, but it’s also a bit freeing (it explains so much!). It’s hard to exist in an already difficult world with a gaping, open wound. I do not apologize for how I show up in this lifetime. Much of it was not really my choice.
If you have any questions specific to the SSRI tapering process, let me know below! I’m happy to try to answer them!
“Alt, Gay, and From New Jersey”: The “Babes of Glory” Are TikTok Fancam Fuel - Abby Monteil
Redlining links Black women and higher rates of breast cancer - Syris Valentine
Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Hospitals. Now It’s Banning Doctors Without Borders. - Eman Abu Zayed
Letter From Minnesota: Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Frontier, From an Immigrant in Minneapolis - Sun Yung Shin
ICE’s Mistreatment of People with Disabilities - Mike Ervin
Tumbler Ridge Shooter Created Mall Shooting Simulator in Roblox - Emanuel Maiberg & Matthew Gault
Philanthropy for Radicals - Claire Dunning
When Artists Lose Their Archives - Damien Davis
Mood:
I’m so pleased it’s going smoothly so far ❤️
Well, I'm happy to hear you've managed the decrease so far....none of any of this life is easy....☺️