How long does antidepressant withdrawal take? Where do I go for help?

[Nataliegua29]

So I’ve been on Lexapro 20mg for 8 years and I’m only 21 years old. I’m rather small, I weigh about 120 lbs and I’m 5’2. Over the summer I started tapering off my antidepressant. Every month I went down 5 mg’s but it was too quick so I decided to go down 2.5 every month. Now, I’ve stopped completely for 2 weeks and I actually feel like I’m dying. My symptoms include: severe fatigue (im ALWAYS tired) but when I go to bed, I can’t seem to fall asleep, headaches on and off, severe nausea, randomly crying and feeling sad for no reason, brain zaps whenever I move my eyes side to side, dizziness, anxiety, weakness, and I just overall feel like I have the flu. It’s such a weird feeling. I’m in college and I haven’t felt normal for about a month. My doctor told me that I should be feeling better in 2 weeks but as I’ve read futher, I see that people’s withdrawal lasts much longer. I’m considering going to an overnight mental health clinic for a few days with the hope of getting help. I’m only in college and I can’t even do my work because of these symptoms. They’re extremely severe. Is there anything I can do to help ease the withdrawal? Is there anything an overnight clinic can do?

[Paxiled]

The withdrawal people get when they stop medication differs very widely by individual.  It's not your size, but it might be the early age at which you started.  And it might not be.  What withdrawal is thought to be is, when you were on this drug it altered the way your brain naturally processes serotonin (and, to a smaller extent, choline).  When you stop, receptors that had shut down because the drug made the brain react by shutting them down as they were not longer sensed as being needed, are trying to wake up again.  For some this happens easily and for some a little hard and for others it can be a big and long-term problem.  Most people don't have long-term withdrawals, at least by the standards of how we define this problem, but some do.  You don't know where you fall on this continuum until you stop one -- and if you were on a different drug, you would probably have a different response.  I don't know what an overnight clinic is, but there's nothing they can do about this process the brain is going through and they can't make it work any better at doing this.  The only thing they could offer would be other drugs to make it not feel so bad or put you on another ssri and hope it makes you feel better, but then, you won't have quit taking antidepressants.  So if quitting them is your choice, you have two options:  stick it out and hope it goes away, or go back on the Lexapro at the last dose at which you felt fine and taper off as slowly as you need to, assuming there is a point at which this all stops.  I'm not personally bothered so much by your physiological symptoms as I am by the sleeplessness and the emotional feelings -- the "Paxil flu" as it's called will eventually go away, but those things might not.  But it's your call.  You have on your side that you're young and strong and adaptable, but you do have going against you that you started younger than is recommended and so your brain developed while on this drug rather than as it would have otherwise.  But again, it's your call, and know that what you're suffering isn't unusual, it's very common.  It's said that taking fish oil can help with those brain zaps, but probably not with the other stuff.