My case after quitting low-dose Zoloft and Citalopram cold turkey: Advice hugely appreciated!

[Forest]

I had lot of ignorance just how powerful and long-term mind-altering these substances would be, I was naive as I had history of using low doses of LSD and cannabis in years past, and had no problems with those, no long-term negative side effects, so I thought a legal drug would not be harmful either, especially not as how easily they are prescribed to people in this country...
...
It began in late February where I had a lot of anger, stress and frequent sexual dreams (that tend to give spontaneous ejaculations) and I remember that I had been prescribed Zoloft years earlier the doctor claimed would "make me happy" (as random doctors tend to assume I'm so "depressed" all the time, when I wasn't really at ALL more than mildly) so I thought I could "try it out" as it could supposedly help against "Nocturnal emissions" "OCD" and "social phobia" among other things... But after 3 days of using 25mg I noticed I could barely masturbate, and felt blunt, so I stopped.
(Also was concerned about the safety of using several-year old stored SSRI, and a friend was worried about both the safety and how I should "definitely" have regular contact with a doctor while taking it.)

After some 5 days of stopping it led to such terrible "brain zaps" that felt like electric shocks through the body, and the only thing I had that worked to blunt or disassociate me from the pain was 5mg ambien pills, which I used up to 3 times daily. Then within a week I was recovering, and I could masturbate without problems, pretty much normally, except feeling a horribly drained feeling the day afterward, which made me go to the local clinic in early March and ask for treatment, where I was prescribed Citalopram... And this is where the true nightmare started...

Day one of using 10mg Citalopram I had a weird, literally trainwreck of a dream with a subway train and other things...Then other random and unsettling dreams until I noticed compulsive teeth-grinding, which I never have done in my life before, so I stopped with it... and that lead to the worst crash in my life. I ended up not being able to get up from bed without extreme effort, nor to wash myself, barely able to even eat, and food only barely gave tiny amount of energy back, all I could do was lay down, read and look at things on the phone to pass the time and I randomly passed out apparently from the collapse in serotonin levels. There did not seem like there was any way out, I tried out ingesting a lot of cheese, chili and other foods that is said to boost tryptophan and serotonin but I felt so horrible all the time. I felt like a animated corpse.

I tried everything and eventually I got such extreme, extreme anxiety I nearly killed myself and called emergency and I had 2 doctors and one district psychologist come here... They adviced me to use Hydroxyzine which did help against the extreme anxiety feeling, but they did not know anything else they could do, only considering taking me to the psychiatric ward but i'd likely only feel even worse there. The district psychiatrist only seemed interested in why I said I was "angry" about things... And the doctors could only see I was in a terrible state, but had no idea what else to do, so they eventually left... Days later I remembered that 5-HTP supplements can be used to recover from feeling/being drained from certain substances such as MDMA, so I took an old that my brother had in his shelf Almost the instant I took one I felt mental and physical energy return to me and, I ordered a lot more of them (50mg 5-HTP + Vitaminb6) from a online store. I could live increasingly normally again... Apart from unpleasant ejaculations and pinching/burning pain on the penis.

Unlike some really unlucky and tragic cases I see here, I can get erections, and ejaculate normally, but it does not feel any fun anymore and I often have pinching/burning pain on the glans and/or foreskin instead of pleasurable sexual arousal... Often with a strange sick, gross feeling that feel all the way up the stomach, but at least that has been reduced since March-April, but all issues seem to come and go.

I pretty much never feel aroused/horny anymore, which was a huge mood- and confidence boost, and without it feels empty and anxiety-inducing... And I worry it might be permanent. If just the pinching/burning sensations and sick feeling would go away, I'd care less about not having pleasurable orgasms, but really do miss the sensation of feeling horny as that was the only sexuality-thing I really cared about, made me much more motivated for a lot of activites in life. I would feel horny just after having enough food and activities. It has now been 5 months and still not recovered more since, with but at least I can still ejaculate every week like before, but I don't know when I would be interested with the lack of arousal sensations. I used to normally feel too drained to enjoy doing that more than once a week but would easily end up in some sort of "sexual high" within 1-1½ weeks where I'd enjoy it more or less much... I miss that now, it was constant reward to wait for each week even that I often did not care for it, an complained that it only pleasurable "maybe 1 time out of 10", at least I would always be easily aroused and had no pain.

[arahant]

SSRi is really nasty in terms of os side effects.

And, bruxism/jaw spasms is also another overlooked side effect, and I had it a lot when I stopped to take pills, and It was the worst month of my life.

There are two options:

The most difficult one is to give it time from drugs and supplements and try cognitive behavioral therapy, while give your body time to recover.
I said it is difficult in cases of a background of extreme worries, OCD, something that messes long term plans.

Another option is using drugs as minimum as possible:

After a horrible month without meds, my p-doc prescribed buspirone. He told me that is the prescription he uses when patients had problems with SSRI, like sexual dysfunction, jaw spasms, bruxism etc..

Evedience for helping with bruxism/jaw spams:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 20bruxism.

Bruxism associated with antidepressant use is an underrecognized phenomenon among neurologists, and may be treated with the addition of buspirone, dose modification, or medication discontinuation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5914744/

Evidence for sexual disfunction:
https://www.jwatch.org/jp19950401000000 ... ale-sexual
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10350034/
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1987004621A1/en

If you value people like us reporting their experience:

https://www.drugs.com/comments/buspiron ... duced.html

The main difficulty while on prescriptions is finding a good dosage, especially if the medication is eliminated rapidly (2-3 h half-life), while giving it enough time to kick in after every dose adjustment.

A review about buspirone:
https://youtu.be/zRpAwicLWwI

Best of luck,
Arahant

[Forest]

Thank you! I hope it'll be of help for me and others affected with minimal trouble.