@marisa_bell We have a free, step-by-step, self-directed tapering manual available at the @_innercompass website, along with a supportive community of fellow travelers. I hope you'll visit us to get yourself meaningfully informed-- you are far from alone! ♥️

Tapering off antidepressants can look very different from person to person. I hear often that someone reduces their medication, feels stable for weeks or even months, and then suddenly experiences intense withdrawal symptoms seemingly out of nowhere. That delay can make it difficult for people to recognize what they are experiencing, especially when the dose reduction happened long before the symptoms appeared. Withdrawal varies widely between people, and symptoms can emerge on very different timelines. For anyone who’s decided they no longer wish to take their medication, starting a taper rate low, making changes slowly, and seeing how it goes— start low, go slow, see how it goes can give people the best chance of reducing the risk of severe withdrawal symptoms. @_innercompass

“What can happen is that a lot of people get caught between the adverse effects of taking the drugs and the withdrawal effects from not taking the drugs.” “Now that's a trap.” Some people are able to stop taking SSRIs and other psychiatric medications and experience little to no severe withdrawal effects. But others enter a cycle that the current system often fails to clearly recognize or properly support. A person stops taking their medication, they experience withdrawal symptoms, and those symptoms get interpreted by them or their doctors as proof that they still need the drug. This is why informed choice and transparency about withdrawal have to be standard, not optional. Otherwise people will keep mistaking withdrawal for relapse and getting pulled back into treatment by the effects of stopping itself. @_innercompass @_AndersSorensen