My name is Nelson. I’m a 35-year-old mental health therapist from Utah, and I was put on antidepressants after experiencing anxiety and OCD symptoms when I was 19. I remember being in a dark place when the medication was prescribed, so it was hard to decipher exactly what was from the medication. However, I remember feeling uncomfortable zap-like electrical sensations jolting downward from my head and feeling emotionally foggy on the medication.

At the time, medication was one of the frontline treatments recommended by professionals. The overall message I got was that I would have to manage my condition for life, and antidepressants were going be part of that.

This never sat well. I was hungry to heal, and I intuitively knew that if my brain could descend into the experience I was in, I had to be able to get back out.

I started looking for answers. I saw therapists who provided me with tools and experiences with varying effectiveness, but I didn’t find anything particularly groundbreaking. I also scoured the internet, and after about 7 years filled with ups and downs I discovered a YouTuber named Mark Freeman who changed my life.

He taught basic mental health skills, like mindfulness and emotional acceptance, along with instructing people on how to change belief systems that were contributing to emotional suffering. I fully leaned into these practices, and I improved rapidly.

After achieving consistent balance for some time, I decided it was time to work my way off the medication. (Up to this point I had been on a full dose of Fluvoxamine for about 6 years and later was moved to 100 mg of Sertraline).

In the beginning it was easy. Sometime around 2018 I dropped from 100mg to 50mg of Sertraline, then from 50mg to 25mg with minimal impact. Eventually I went from 25mg to 0.

I was fine for a handful of days and then lost my ability to sleep. I averaged 30 minutes to an hour per night for about a week, and I intuitively knew it was the medication.

I went back onto the 25mg and withdrawal resolved almost immediately. I concluded to myself that I just needed to taper more.

My new target for jumping off was 6.25mg. I halved my pills again and over the course of a few years made my way down. Sometime around 2022 I decided to go to 0 again.

After 3 weeks, I again was met with withdrawal, which impacted my sleep severely and gave me manic-like anxiety. I stuck this out for a week or two, but after no improvement I went back onto the pills, stabilizing in about a month.

I stayed here for a couple years before deciding to taper again. At this point I’d read a bit about withdrawal but had no idea how serious it could be. One of the things I’d learned was that it was easier to taper using a liquid formulation.

In May of 2024 I went to my general practitioner and requested liquid. I told him about my experience with the medication, and his response was basically that he’d never heard of someone being so sensitive to the drugs, especially at a low dose. But he was supportive and wrote the prescription while also giving me a syringe. I didn’t receive any instruction on using the syringe or how to taper, so I figured I would go for it on my own.

I jumped to the liquid and dropped my dose all in one go, felt fine for two weeks, then withdrawal hit. However, this time it wasn’t as bad as previous times, so I stayed with the liquid.

This was a mistake. If there’s one place I could change my approach to my taper, it would be here, and I would have immediately reinstated back to the pill.

On the liquid I got worse for about 6 months. I experienced intensifying insomnia, emotional blunting, powerful negative emotions, brain fog, memory problems, crying spells, digestive issues, and eventually neurological symptoms like involuntary movements and tingling electrical sensations throughout my body.

It was horrifying, and I was becoming a shell of a person. It was daily emotional and physical torture.

It was at this time that I took a serious look at my medication process and realized I’d been using the syringe improperly and that the syringes I had purchased appeared to vary in their accuracy. Both of these factors along with jumping directly to the liquid were all likely contributing my destabilization. When I addressed these issues in December of 2024, I started to improve and have been ever since while holding my dose constant.

Almost a year and a half after switching to the liquid I’m now feeling much better, though not yet 100%.

Another bit to my story is that I’ve found myself in trouble with getting hooked to a supplement, which I’m working on tapering before moving onto tapering the Sertraline.

As horrible as this experience has been, there have been lessons to glean from it. I’ve further discovered myself and how much I had previously self-abandoned. I’ve learned how precious life is, and that it’s far too short not to do the things we love. I’ve also tasted bitter loneliness through this process, which has taught me how to better tolerate being misunderstood and how to more fully meet my own emotional needs. It’s also taught me to cherish the relationships I have that are good for me.

I’ve also noticed that one of the biggest withdrawal symptoms is fear. In my opinion this is perhaps the most important aspect of the experience to address and work with. Through this last year, I’ve moved through intense fear over and over, and each time I’ve come out the other side. Darkness has repeatedly turned to light again. And better yet, I’ve learned to bring my own light into the darkness, which can make it feel a little more tolerable.