Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

For anyone curious about Paxil, here is an update of my situation. I was on 20mg for about two months and had great results with my IBS-C. I decided to go off of it, though, because it made me sleepy early in the evening. My doctor had me take 10mg for five days then go off completely. I felt perfectly fine for the first three days afterwards, but then on the fourth day the withdrawal hit me. My symptoms are dizziness, nausea, sleepiness, and something Paxil-takers are apparently calling "zaps". I feel these sort of electrical pulses through my legs, especially when walking. They have me quite off balance. None of my symptoms are devastating but they are very uncomfortable and I am sick of feeling "drunk" and off balance. I am unable to exercise (walk) because of the "zaps". It's been five days now and people on Paxil message boards are claiming weeks and months of symptoms. Hopefully that will not be the case for me since I was only on it for two months but I haven't felt the symptoms let up at all in the last five days.

If I could do it over again I don't know if I would choose to take Paxil. It worked wonders on my IBS symptoms but I don't think it is worth being off-balance and nauseated for weeks. But having said that, if my IBS symptoms were unbearable and nothing else seemed to work, then I think it might be worth the withdrawal symptoms. Also, I didn't taper very much so perhaps this could have been easier.

Oh, and one other negative experience I had with Paxil...one day I didn't remember to take my pill until about 8 or 10 hours later than my usual time. I was extremely nauseous for almost a week and my doctor agreed that it was because of my late dose.

But wait, here's a positive--I did get to experience a sort of calming affect and am hoping to be able to replicate that on my own. I almost felt like I was on the outside looking in as I was in the middle of a situation that would normally stress me out, but instead I just felt like, "Oh well, it's fine. It'll all work out."

So, like Shannon114 posted earlier on this thread, I don't want to scare anyone away from Paxil, but it's definitely a decision to be taken seriously. It did help me a lot when I was on it plus some people don't experience the withdrawal. And if your IBS symptoms are really bad then you may gladly trade a few weeks of withdrawal for several months of relief from IBS. Of course shannon114 had 11 months of withdrawal...

...did this post just make it a hundred times more confusing?! Sorry!

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