forgot to take celexa

[gj13]

Yesterday I forgot to take my celexa.  I was on 20mg/day....then, long story short, I ended up taking half doses for about a week and a half.  Forgot to take it yesterday.   I have been on it for about a year. 

I feel great.  Late in the afternoon, I physically felt like my body was waking up.  Throughout the evening, I had energy, a happy mood, etc, and at bedtime the restless legs that had been getting worse over the past couple months all but disappeared.

Kind of glad I forgot to take it.  I think I'll forget to take it today, too. 

[sixpack]

thing about meds is that they stay in your system at some levels for a period of time.  "forgetting" more often may not help in the long run.  Just my opininon

[gcalex]

If you want to go off it, I would get a responsible taper from your doctor.  This could catch up with you, be careful.

[WiSp]

Watch out. The first step while missing a dose is sometimes to feel abnormally good. It doesn't happen for everyone, but it happened to me too. If you miss it more, your body will enter in a withdrawal phase, and I've never heard of a "feeling good" withdrawal. The situation may twist in a very unpleasant way.

Maybe you need to try it to be convinced. But when things will be bad, I cannot say how much time you will need to feel good again, assuming you restart to take celexa at this time. I know how it's frustrating to not be able to keep this wonderful feeling forever. But it's the med that make you feel so good (whatever you take it or skip a day). Celexa has a 35h half life. It means you are still on 20mg even if you skip it. You are on 20mg until you reach 35h without a new dose. Then only 10mg remains in your bloodstream, for another 35h. Then 5, 2.5, 1.25, 0.625 etc but stepping under 20mg will start the withdrawal phase. And this is not fun.

And even if you start taking 20mg again, it may not stop immediately. Your body need one week to get a steady state on celexa. It means, until one week, there is an unbalanced dose in your blood from entering and exiting. After a week, the same amount of the drug is getting in, and also getting out. There you have a balance. So you may feel bad for a week even if you restart to take 20mg again. Skipping one time doesn't really break the balance (it's easy to get things back balanced again on the next dose), but it may happens if done twice or more.

[sohelpless]

I was on Celexa for several years and would "forget" to take it now and then.  It's a longer acting med so it usually doesn't give any trouble when skipping doses.  Withdrawal effects don't usually happen until about four or five days in and that's when those "brain zaps" occur.  Emotions can start getting a little wacky and underlying anxiety can start to come back.  Unless you want to stop the med altogether, I wouldn't mess around with skipping doses.  I've seen people lose a good med after doing that.  Meaning the med decided to stop working properly.

[gj13]

I'm going to see the doctor today to discuss this whole situation. 

[gj13]

You are on 20mg until you reach 35h without a new dose. Then only 10mg remains in your bloodstream, for another 35h. Then 5, 2.5, 1.25, 0.625 etc but stepping under 20mg will start the withdrawal phase. And this is not fun.

So at this point I'm at 5mg in my system.  I dropped from 20mg to 10mg for a week and a half,  which means the first day and a half blood stream was still at 20mg.  Then over the next several days I would have stabilized to 10mg.  Then I dropped from 10mg to not taking any. 

It's been 48 hours since my last dose, which would mean that I'm now with about 5mg in my blood stream.

I've been getting the brain shivers, but I've had them before when I stopped taking Zoloft--which I had tapered from under a doctor's supervision.  So I can handle the zaps.  Nothing new.

The zaps remind me of when I was in college (and taking no meds for anything--not even beer on the weekends  ).   I was struggling with sleep problems, depression, anxiety, ADD, etc.  and my body felt like it was zapping itself to wakefulness.