ZAP!

August 10, 2024 5:35 AM

I very slowly weaned myself off of Zoloft/Sertraline, taking my last dose last week. I'm getting occasional brain zaps. They're tolerable, but I'd love to hear about anything people have done to help with them (other than taking other psych meds.)
posted by needs more cowbell to Health & Fitness (12 answers total)

The answer is to taper more slowly, where possible. Assuming your medication was in a tablet that was okay to snap in half, then I would take a whittling knife to the tablet and go back onto taking a tiny sliver per day. If you then taper down like the fussiest person in the world then you can avoid the withdrawal effects altogether. I bought a jeweler's scale just for getting the doses tapering down smoothly, but you're at the tail end of it so you can probably judge by eye fairly well. If you can be bothered, it is achievable. Good luck!
posted by dragon garlanding at 7:06 AM on August 10

Some people's brain zaps don't go away even after tapering. I still have brain zaps more than a year after tapering very slowly off Venlafaxine and anecdotally this is not unusual. I would also love to know whether there's anything to be done about them - I suspect they're caused by a dysregulation of my vestibular system as they're so often triggered by my moving my eyes, especially when I'm lying down.

It might help your search for an answer if you keep track of when the zaps happen - are they totally random, or is there something in particular that triggers them?
posted by Zumbador at 9:04 AM on August 10

Anecdotally, I had them when I weaned off of lexapro and they went away with time. I also weaned off of Effexor—which is fairly infamous for its withdrawals—and I had no side effects because I did it so incredibly slowly. I literally broke open the capsule and slowly removed the little beads inside over weeks and weeks until finally I went off of it one day. In your situation I’d be inclined to believe it will likely resolve on its own with time and just wait it out, though you may want to wean more slowly if they become a big problem or aren’t going away.

I also was not afraid to take matters into my own hands and wean off the medication far more slowly than the doctor recommended. I would encourage you to do the same if needed. Good luck!
posted by Amy93 at 9:14 AM on August 10

I just marathoned TV shows and played immersive videogames as a distraction until they went away. Took a few weeks.

I was also coming off benzos at the same time (lost my health insurance and thus had to abruptly taper off all my meds on my own) and it was rough but I knew it was just a matter of toughing it out until the withdrawal symptoms stopped. So I did all the things that I knew from experience to be massive "where did the last 20 hours go?" timesucks to make the time pass quickly.

This might be a good time to take up World of Warcraft lol.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:20 PM on August 10

Time’s the only thing. I get brain zaps tapering up on sertraline as well as tapering down. Usually takes between two weeks to a month at full dose or completely off for the zaps to stop. I don’t know if it’s a matter of taper speed, like, they are consistent whenever the dose changes and then a window after that.
posted by Mizu at 6:36 PM on August 10

Slllloooooowest taper possible is the only thing that's working for me. I'm on 4 *beads* of venlafaxine a day at this point. I have also been taking 5HTP supplements and Cerebiome probiotics, but don't know how much either of those actually help. I hope your symptoms resolve quickly.
posted by gingerbeer at 7:34 PM on August 10

I know this is not an answer, so will likely get deleted...

But what is a "brain zap"?

My google-fu is failing me. Other folks seem to understand what you are saying, but that is not listed on the Wikipedia page for side effects of ending Sertraline.

Just curious. Good luck.
posted by Windopaene at 9:03 PM on August 10

Brain zaps
posted by gingerbeer at 9:18 PM on August 10

My brain zaps coming off Effexor were like--- imagine your skull is a IMAX movie theater with a really good soundsystem. And you're watching a space movie, and the buzzing starship flies, FAST, right from one corner of the massive screen, over your head, into the far corner, with the dopplering;

--nnnNEEEYOWwww--,

leaving you reeling for a moment.
posted by The otter lady at 10:28 PM on August 10

A small but important thing you should do to support your body and nervous system during the tapering process is simply take care of yourself very well: hydrate with electrolytes, don't short yourself on sleep and rest, eat as well as you can and make sure you're getting fiber, avoid anything you know that causes gut issues (as best you can, but at least skip any "treats" you know usually cause trouble and generally you'd say it's worth it, but it may not be in this case). Be careful with caffeine.

The last time I dealt with these, I definitely had the zaps worse when I was overtired (and I got them a lot on the edge of sleep), and I agree with the vestibular theory above because being in a moving car or doing anything with a lot of head-eye movement seemed to make it worse. It's maybe a bad time for watching sports (especially in person) or taking long road trips.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:01 AM on August 11

But what is a "brain zap"?

For me, they felt like someone snapping a big rubber band against my brain. Not painful, but very disconcerting.

OP, I don't have a good answer for you. I only got them the first couple times I forgot my sertraline on some weekends away- when I quit cold turkey* a couple years later, I had no brain zaps.

*I was only taking 50 mg, had forgotten to take them for a couple days, and just kept on... not taking them. I don't recommend this approach to anyone even if I had no ill effects.

Ah, this suggests that after a couple years, some people may be less susceptible:
Longer antidepressant use appears to be more commonly associated with brain zaps (7.8% in people who have been on medications for less than 60 days vs. 36.4% in those who’ve been on it between 60 days and two years). Notably, antidepressant use for more than two years showed a consistently declining prevalence.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:43 PM on August 11

I would like to report that I no longer have brain zaps - I think they have been gone for at least a month. So if you are a person experiencing brain zaps, take heart and I hope things get better for you.

I'm not sure that much helped - I tried to get more sleep, drink more water, and I took some omega-3 supplements, though those are all things that are just good to do anyway to support mental and physical health. (Well, the value of almost any supplement could be debated, but I digress.)

I was already weaning off more slowly than my doctor recommended, and at the stage that I posted this things were not bad enough to want to go back on sertraline and then wean off even more slowly. But that may be a reasonable choice for some people.
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:59 AM on November 11