Brief Answer:
Stay on 50 mg for now

Detailed Answer:
Hi, thank you for using Healthcare Magic. It appears that you may have developed withdrawal symptoms from decreasing the dosage, or that the original condition you were treated for is relapsing. I see that you have had an answer from one of the psychiatrists here about continuing the Zoloft 50 mg for now, and I fully agree with her.

If it is withdrawal symptoms and not a recurrence of your underlying problem, getting back on the 50 mg for now will stabilize your current symptoms. Once you are feeling better, you can start tapering the Zoloft but very slowly. Work with your prescribing physician to decrease it in the appropriate schedule for you.

Staying on 25 mg and just fighting it will not do any good. I know you feel like you wasted a lot of time lowering it without benefit, but it also may be that for now you absolutely need this drug to control your symptoms. In other words, a complete remission of your underlying condition has not yet occurred, and every time you try to go off it, the symptoms will come back.

The only way to handle this for now is to work with your doctor, get back on the 50 mg, add other modalities such as psychotherapy to treat your illness, and sometime later you can try again to get off it.

Hope this answers your query. If you have further questions, I would be happy to answer them.

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Brief Answer:
Nothing natural to take

Detailed Answer:
Unfortunately, any natural things to take for anxiety/depression also have potential side effects, some of which are quite serious. The current symptoms you're having now could either be a relapse of your disease, or withdrawal symptoms. If it's a relapse, once you get a remission you won't necessarily have to go through this again. If it's withdrawal, you can work with your doctors to slowly withdraw the medicine and this should reduce or eliminate this kind of reaction.

The other thing that I'm thinking is perhaps whatever is going on right now has nothing to do with the medicine at all. It might be best to get a checkup with your regular doctor to look for other possible problems like the flu or asthma. If nothing physical is found, then changes with the Zoloft can be considered.

However, what you are describing seems to be severe anxiety, panic attacks, and some depression. Get the checkup but continue taking the Zoloft 50 mg for now. Once it gets well into your system, these symptoms should improve. It is difficult to predict how long that will take, but I would estimate probably not more than a couple of weeks.

Talk to your prescribing doctor about some short term anxiety meds such as Xanax that could help you get through this difficult period. But get seen and examined. Your symptoms are so severe that I would want to be sure other things are ruled out, and you get a chance to talk face-to-face with your doctor about alternative treatments.

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Brief Answer:
A relapse is the disease getting worse

Detailed Answer:
Diseases like depression and anxiety can be controlled but not cured by medicine. When the disease is controlled and symptoms are gone, it is said to be in remission. A full remission would be that it remains stable for months or years once you get off the medicine. A partial remission means that it is under control as long as you are taking the medicine, but can come back if you reduce or go off it. If the symptoms come back, this is a re-occurrence or relapse of the disease.

What I think happened was your depression and anxiety were in partial remission on the 50 mg of Zoloft. That dose prevented the symptoms from coming back. When you decreased the dose, it wasn't strong enough to prevent the re-occurrence. It was enough for awhile to keep things under control but ultimately the symptoms re-occurred. It's not unusual for antidepressants to work slowly like this. When I start a new patient on a drug like Zoloft, I tell him/her it may take up to 4 weeks before they notice a difference.

This would be the same coming off a medicine. If the disease were not in complete remission, then symptoms may take several weeks to come back. So that is normal for this medicine.

Sometimes the disease can get stronger and then the dose needs to be increased. 50 mg is a relatively small dose for Zoloft. I have seen people on 200 mg. 25 mg doesn't appear adequate for you, but 50 mg seemed to work quite well for awhile.

I'm glad you had a recent checkup and we can pretty much blame this on the dose reduction. Once you get back on the 50 mg, your symptoms should start to improve. And again, you may want to consider asking your doctor for a short term anxiety medicine such as Xanax to get you through that recovery period.

Let me know if this is still not clear.

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