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Originally Posted by Brianna

Most SSRI's have such long half-lives that missing one dose here or there really makes very little difference once your levels are up.

Prozac, yes. From what I've read, Paxil and Effexor have distinctly shorter half-lives than other SSRIs, which is one reason why both are notorious for being very very hard to quit.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

What kind of implications does it have on your everyday life. If it really gets in the way, and regularly, and it causes you a large amount of anxiety, then it's something you need to address. If you're using this as an excuse to not do things, for example, that's a big impact on your life. If you can get by every day with just a little worry, not such a big deal.

This is not a new development; I've been living with it for 20+ years. Key phrase: "living with it." If 10 is a full-on spastic freakout and 1 is perfectly calm and healthy, I've spent most of those 20 years at 1 or 2.

Even in recent months, it's not a curl-up-in-a-ball-in-the-corner-of-my-room thing. I'm more keyed up on some days than others, but I still go to work, play on the computer, do things with my wife and lead a pretty normal existence. The "anxiety attack" on Saturday afternoon was a typical spike; it wasn't pleasant and it cut my day short, but I was still okay enough to walk around and drive home. If I'd had a hotel room nearby, a nap might've fixed it well enough to enjoy the evening, but in this case I didn't have that.

The last few months have had more spikes than more typical times.

You won't have those sorts of thoughts while on the medication. The self-fulfilling prophesy is that taking the med stops you from being unreasonably anxious about it.

But what about when I stop taking it?

An SSRI isn't exactly a Halls cough drop. It's a drug that tweaks brain chemistry, can affect the emotions and libido to varying degrees, and to which I'd be committing myself for a minimum of months at a time. That alone is a pretty hefty commitment, particularly knowing that a low dose of Zoloft _did_ zombify me when I took it briefly years ago; Paxil or Effexor may be better in that respect, or I could well be signing up for half a year or more of feeling like a department-store mannequin.

In the short term, yeah, I want the recent yips to calm down. In the long term, I don't feel comfortable with the notion of taking one of these meds indefinitely; it's like taking Advil every day for headaches. Working out what causes the headaches is better than masking the symptoms and eliminates the need for the masking agent.

It's not that I'm pounding my manly chest and yelling "I'm too TOUGH to use a crutch." Hey, sometimes we _need_ crutches, we're human. But I also want to be able to put the crutch _down_ without staring a couple of weeks of hell-ride in the face.

And, yes, Tom Cruise is an ass.