![What to Know If You Want to Stop Taking Antidepressants [Updated]](https://lifehacker.com/imagery/articles/01HF2HCMCTTMGA4T9BVC5EKND8/hero-image.fill.size_1248x702.v1699833295.jpg)
Antidepressants work well for many people, and can be literal lifesavers. Due to the way your body gets used to them, starting and stopping the drug isn’t simple: If you’ve begun a prescription, you know that they can take weeks to start working. And in the event that you and your doctor decide it’s time to stop taking them, antidepressants can also be tricky to discontinue.
After the New Yorker recently ran an article on the challenges one woman faced with switching and discontinuing psychiatric drugs, I began hearing from people who got the idea that antidepressants are difficult to impossible to quit, and that they were afraid doctors don’t know how to safely guide people through the process. Fortunately, that’s not the case: psychiatric professionals do understand that this is an issue, and it is possible to discontinue the drugs—but you’ll need to do it slowly, carefully, and with professional help.
Not only does the process require working with a professional, but so does the question of whether you even should quit your medication. Just because you’re feeling good at the moment, that doesn’t mean you can or should change your meds. Likewise, if you’re concerned about side effects or any potential risks of the medication, you need to have a conversation with your doctor about whether the benefits outweigh the risks in your particular case.
Why discontinuing antidepressants can be difficult
If you quit your antidepressant cold turkey, or even by cutting down over the course of a few days, you may experience “discontinuation symptoms.” UptoDate, a medical professionals’ reference, lists the most common as fatigue, dizziness, headache, and nausea. But you could also have agitation, anxiety, chills, tremors, or other unusual symptoms like the feeling of occasional zaps of electricity.
Jenny Chen writes at Elemental about what discontinuation can feel like. She also notes that there’s no clear cut process to quit the drugs, because the symptoms and timeframes vary from drug to drug and patient to patient.
Paroxetine is one of the hardest to quit, and paradoxically it’s because the drug is metabolized so quickly. When you stop taking it, your brain has to suddenly do without. Fluoxetine, on the other hand, lasts longer in the body and thus you can taper off it more smoothly.
How your doctor might want to taper your medication
If you’ve only been on a medication for a few weeks, it’s probably easier to quit; if you’ve been on it for years, you may have a more difficult time. The typical time to get off an antidepressant drug ranges from two weeks to four weeks or more. To get an idea of what this process might look like, this chart shows typical tapering regimens for several common drugs. Some psychiatric researchers argue that the process should go even more slowly than those guidelines suggest, tapering over the course of months or even years.
But don’t just start cutting your own doses. It’s key to go through this process with your doctor, not in spite of them. Some of the discontinuation symptoms can look a lot like depression returning, and you’ll need help to sort out whether you should be taking more or less of the drug.
UptoDate suggests that if a patient has mild discontinuation symptoms, their doctor should provide reassurance but continue reducing the drug according to plan. For moderate symptoms, you might need to taper off more gradually. For severe symptoms, it’s often best to go back to the last dosage where you didn’t have symptoms, and work down more gradually from there.
Another approach may be to switch to another medication that is easier to discontinue, such as fluoxetine. All told, the process is delicate and complicated, but doable—assuming that you’re right about not needing the medication to control your depression anymore. Which makes it all the more important to undertake this journey with the help of a professional you trust.
Updated 4/24/2019 in response to concerns that people could read this article as advising them to change their medication on their own. We originally ran this story with the headline “How to Quit Your Antidepressants.” The piece has been updated to give more context about the issue, and to clarify further that we are not endorsing changing your medication on your own.