Published on 12, July, 2020
Please fucking help. I've been on Citalopram 10mg and that made me really sick and even more suicidal. I've been prescribed Fluoxetine recently which has scary side effects still, but is it more likely to make me worse because of its sensitivity? The sexual side effects are scariest, then nausea and vomiting is second.
So right now you’re cross tapering from Citalopram to Fluoxetine?
cross tapering is something of A mixed bag. You still have residual Citalopram in your system (roughly 25% of normal id guess) but now you’ve got Fluoxetine in your system as well.
they may not be playing nicely together. With other drugs they wouldn’t let you start a new one until the old one was fully out of your system. But Citalopram and Fluoxetine are both SSRIs so cross tapering is usually not dangerous. You may have to wait another day or two for the Citalopram to be really out of your system.
that said Fluoxetine has a reputation for being pretty bad with regards to sexual dysfunction compared to other SSRIs. But that might be partly because it’s been around longer and therefore more reports of it have accumulated. I’m told sertraline is one of the less bad ones in terms of side-effects. But all SSRIs tend to at least reduce libido slightly.
basically what I’m saying is give it a couple of days. there are only so many SSRIs a GP can prescribe. If he starts to run out he will start thinking about referring you to a specialist who might be willing to give you something more exotic.