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Side Effects Of Zoloft/sertraline - Is This Normal?

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Started Zoloft/Sertraline a week ago. It was making me really, really shaky and anxious, and I spent hours in bed convulsing yesterday and this afternoon. That seems to have subsided, but the other side effects remain and they're making me feel like I'm losing my mind.

I'm hyper sensitive to sound. Everything is amped up - the sounds of my pants on the couch when I move, the hum of the refrigerator, everything sounds a million times louder than I think it should. Patterns and textures are more visually alluring, to the point where I'm spending an obscene amount of time just looking at the texture of a blanket or the wall, so absorbed I can't pull myself out.

I alternate between feeling so awful and depressed and feeling like i'm going to burst out laughing.

I see my doctor in two days, so I'll definitely talk to her about this. But is it normal? I know I'm really sensitive to medications, and I'm trying to give this a fair shot before I decide to call it quits, but I'm not sure if this is within the realm of what I should tolerate or not.
 
What did your doctor say about these reactions? Not normal - convulsing is a definite "no no." I had a bad reaction to this medication and to all SSRIs I've taken. I don't think my endocrine system likes its estrogen messed with and my brain definitely doesn't like it's serotonin jerked around.

With Zoloft, in particular, I had everything on the mild list in terms of reactions, then about 2 weeks in, I started craving sugar and alcohol (same thing). Anyway, I stopped, immediately as I hadn't been taking it for too long. I'm an alcoholic, so that was my STOP sign. Plus, I was eying Peeps like an addict would eye heroin. Seriously! :wideeyed:

I hope you're feeling better and that you were given some answers by your doc. Take care. VB
 
Could be an akathisia reaction. Regardless, maybe you ought to stop taking until talking with doc.

I had akathisia in reaction to Zoloft specifically back in 1996. I recently went on it again (a few months ago) and it was helping but also increasing anxiety so I stopped before anything more extreme would happen. If I hadn't I never would have heard of this reaction.
 
I did manage to see my doctor before the holiday, and she told me that my reaction wasn't medically possible. Not sure what to think about that. In anycase, I'm coming off of it slowly. Wondering if she started me at too high of a dose (50mg) and if I cut back and then ramp up slower, it might work better.
 
50mg? That does seem high to start. Yikes! Be safe coming down too, I hope you're alright.

I tired Zoloft for PPD after my third baby and it made me violent, shaky and suicidal. I felt like attacking my kids or anyone who made a peep of noise, I ended up almost hurting my middle child and a result. I stopped and realized what I was feeling was NOT normal!

Needless to say, it wasn't real effective at treating my PPD.
 
I did manage to see my doctor before the holiday, and she told me that my reaction wasn't medically possible. Not sure what to think about that.

Oh no! Any chance that you can switch doctors? Doctors who are at all good scientists will understand that their profession has yet to understand everything under the sun. They should be willing to at least entertain the possibility...

You don't want a doctor who disbelieves your report; many of us are incredibly honest due to a variety of factors... the improbability of being believed to start with *plus* low self-esteem; the difficulty of figuring out our own truth can leave us with no appetite or energy or time for intentional lying in our lives. Intentional lying just is not an option for many of us. I understand that not everyone is in that state, and doctors have to deal with all sorts of people in different places with different issues. However a person who knows they are not lying does not need to stick around with such a doctor...:mad:

Also there is a very good chance that there *is* evidence or research somewhere pointing toward what your physical reactions might mean, and this doctor just doesn't do thorough homework. Easier to decide you are not credible, after all you lack a MD degree!

Please find a doctor who believes your reports even if they have trouble figuring them out, I think your medical care will be better long-term as a result since the doctor might look into newer research occasionally rather than assume they know everything... You deserve to not have convulsions plus to be believed!:confused:

Has this doctor ever heard of PNES? (seizures from ptsd issues, essentially.) How do they know that this medication might not set off some of that tendency if your brain is borderline doing that, for instance?

PNES is really not well understood. A bit of humility on a doctor's part makes them a better scientist, in my humble but frustrated opinion. (rant rant rant)

Our issues seem to often be complicated effects from our individually organized brains that all experienced different traumas at different developmental stages and have different genetics -- I bet we reroute our neural networks in some chemical and physical way when we block off trauma; this stuff is all chemical, neurologial-organization-based, and psychological at the same time... the research showing that PTSD survivors have different activity levels in different brain areas is going to mean unusual reactions in some of us, I'd guess (from my non-professional but geeky perspective.)
 
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Oh no! Any chance that you can switch doctors? Doctors who are at all good scientists will understand...

I agree with all the posts that your doctor must be incompetent. I'm no doc, but I have known at least two other people who have had side effects like yours. It can't be all that rare. I take Zoloft myself, without side effects like yours, but I had uncomfortable side effects from Paxil. Some people are fine with Paxil, but can't take Zoloft.

Your doctor must think of Zoloft as some kind of sedative, which it is far from being. That kind of sloppy thinking reminds me of the "country doctors" I grew up prey to. They shouldn't have been practicing. Maybe they got their educations in new drugs only from the pharmaceutical salesmen. Plus that, many of them were simply too burnt out to work for a respectable hospital.
 
Wondering if she started me at too high of a dose (50mg) and if I cut back and then ramp up slower, it might work better.
Generally, once you're on the target dose, it's better to just stay there are wait out the adjustment period. I am not a doctor - that's just my experience. The dosing protocols listed do allow for starting right at 50mg, though that's for major depression, not PTSD.

I'm as surprised and annoyed as everyone else that your doc said it wasn't medically possible...tremors, agitation, and irritability are all things that showed up with some consistency during the trials, according to the info sheet. Is your doctor a GP or a psychiatrist?

The only thing I can imagine would be if your doctor assumed you meant convulsions, medically - and you meant to be describing something like large tremors. Not that you're exaggerating - just, sometimes doctors forget that they speak medicine and we speak some combination of science and prose. Of course, it's their job to translate...sigh.

This site is an awful lot of words, but they are very accurate. http://www.drugs.com/pro/zoloft.html
 
I had a bad reaction to Zoloft in 2012. I was on a low dose and had become shaky and just "not right" for a couple of days but thought I just needed to get used to it. My third dose I passed out, I barely made it to my bed. I probably should have called an ambulance but I didn't think of it and wouldn't have had time to even find my phone, it happened that fast. I never took another dose after that but a year later I had a different doctor and she put me on a different drug and it was great. I got my life back and I felt normal again for the first time in years.

One thing I did was to talk to my pharmacists, they are trained on drugs, possible sideaffects and the interactions drugs may have with other things we take, over the counter meds or herbal supplements can interact in ways that doctors don't know about. If the pharmacist thinks that the dosage is wrong they can also talk to your doctors about it and adjust the medication or alert the doctor about dangerous interactions.
 
Has this doctor ever heard of PNES? (seizures from ptsd issues, essentially.) How do they know that this medication might not set off some of that tendency if your brain is borderline doing that, for instance?

The only thing I can imagine would be if your doctor assumed you meant convulsions, medically - and you meant to be describing something like large tremors. Not that you're exaggerating - just, sometimes doctors forget that they speak medicine and we speak some combination of science and prose. Of course, it's their job to translate...sigh.

I never even got as far as describing the convulsions I was having. Sat down and told her I wasn't sure I could tolerate the side effects, and she launched into telling me (based on observation alone, not anything I had said) that my symptoms were not medically possible, that my shaking and agitation was all psychosomatic, and that if I just tried hard enough, I could stop. I was so humiliated and ashamed after that, I didn't even mention the time I had spent convulsing in bed.

And as far as seizures/convulsions - I do have a history of these, although doctors don't take me seriously when I mention them (even though they've resulted in being toted off by ambulances before). What was happening felt like the beginning of when I've had more major seizures, which is why they scare me.

Is your doctor a GP or a psychiatrist?

A psychiatrist. I'm amazed and alarmed at her reaction, and how she didn't even try to listen to me. I'm a little angry about it, too.

Time to keep looking for new providers, although it is so, so exhausting.
 
So, she isn't keeping up with research on issues related to PTSD, but lots of other things too, I bet. I guess she hasn't even read all the research stating that "somatic" problems are not under conscious control. I have sympathy for the people she sees who have those problems...
 
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