Forgot to take celexa for 2 days - what can I now?
October 26, 2015 11:55 AM   Subscribe

I'm on 20mg day of citalopram/celexa for generalised anxiety. I stupidly forgot to take it over the weekend. Have found it and taken today's dose but can already feel withdrawal anxiety amping up. Is there anything I can do to make this less painful until it gets back into my system? I work from home so suffer from loneliness and lack of distractions, though I have meetings with a nice colleague tomorrow. I also have a legal appointment on Thursday that is making me very anxious.
posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (5 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Probably the usual self-care advice applies:

- remind yourself that this will pass
- self-soothing in whatever way makes healthy sense for you; a long hot bath, a run, kitteh peekshores, ASMR videos, whatever
- avoid caffeine or other stimulants. Depending entirely on how you yourself react to such things, alcohol is probably right out as well. Pot may or may not be--you know yourself.
- any anxiety-causing stuff that you can reasonably and rationally put off until tomorrow or (better) Wednesday is likely best moved to then. Beware of robbing Peter to pay Paul here though.
- might also help to remind yourself that there's still citalopram in your system (although at greatly reduced levels) so however unpleasant this feels right now it's not going to be as bad as going cold turkey for a week
- MeFi chat can be hit or miss in terms of who's around and vocal at any given time, still might be useful to distract yourself
- get a good solid hour of sunshine today and tomorrow, and some exercise if that is a healthy thing for you to do
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:16 PM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


As a fellow anxiety sufferer on Celexa, I am here to tell you it will be okay. Going off for two days won't make a huge impact and now that it's back in your system you will feel normal again in no time. Try to remind yourself of this so that you don't give yourself anxiety worrying about the anxiety coming back.

In the meantime, try to do things to soothe and distract yourself. Take a bath, drink some tea, go for a walk, listen to some music. Try to think of what you're experiencing right now as a headache and you are just waiting for the pain relief medication to kick in. This might sound weird, but in my experience one of the worst parts of having anxiety disorder is the way you can give yourself an anxiety attack just by thinking about the possibility of having an attack and losing control. Try to put yourself in a position where you can remind yourself that you are in control.
posted by joan_holloway at 12:19 PM on October 26, 2015


Definitely utilize your self-soothing mechanisms.

If you are also prescribed a short-term anxiety med (for an as-needed boost), use that to help stave off anxiety for now in case you're exacerbated by being anxious about your anxiety.

In case facts help soothe your anxiety, the half-life of citalopram is 35 hours and it takes 6-8 days to get to steady-state plasma concentrations. So, if you missed roughly 48-72 hours of dosage (2-3 days), your previous dose is down to roughly 50%-25% but your overall plasma concentrations should still be near steady-state or only now beginning to decrease.
posted by bookdragoness at 1:03 PM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am working on these exact issues in therapy (anxiety around loneliness and boredom) and I've found that making a plan for the day and sticking to it really helps. Are there errands you need to run? Museums you want to see? Neighbourhoods you haven't been to? Just getting up and getting out the door has been hugely beneficial for me.

(Also, are you in London, by chance? We can get Anxiety Lady herbal tea together, if you'd like!)
posted by harperpitt at 1:08 PM on October 26, 2015


You can also call your doc. When we tried to wean my son off his anti-anxiety med (Prozac) and it didn't work, his shrink prescribed something else short-term as he went back on it. The something else both helped with acute symptoms and made it more likely the Prozac would work again.
posted by not that girl at 4:18 PM on October 26, 2015


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