Posted by 49er on December 25, 2009, at 7:32:51
In reply to Re: SSRIs in Elderly, posted by mtdewcmu on December 24, 2009, at 18:00:34
<<Unless the doctor knows something we don't, I concur. My drug book lists the half life of zoloft at 24 hours. It may be longer in the elderly, but still, that does not seem like enough to hold somebody for two days. Paxil has a half life of 21 hours, and the manufacturer considered that short enough to justify a time-release form. So donnam's mother will be seriously bottoming out by the time she takes her next dose.
>
> If it was Prozac, I would say that every-other-day dosing was perfectly natural. But with Zoloft, I'd cut it in half.>>First of all, Merry Christmas to everyone who is celebrating and happy holidays to everyone.
In my opinion, I think cutting the dose in half is too much of a cut at once as that is 50%. Perhaps that would work at a higher dose but since Donna's mom is elderly, I think that would be taking a huge risk.
I still feel the cuts should proceed very slowly to be on the safe side.
I thought Zoloft only came in the liquid form for 10mg and under but it looks like according to drugs.com, I am wrong,
http://www.drugs.com/pro/zoloft.html
Zoloft oral concentrate is available in a multidose 60 mL bottle. Each mL of solution contains sertraline hydrochloride equivalent to 20 mg of sertraline.
Of course, you would have to figure out how to measure the right dose.
Other options for cutting slowly:
1. Have the dose written for a local compound pharmacist. They will make the doses that you can't get at your local CVS pharmacy. Can be expensive as I am not sure medicare would cover this or not.
2. But a digital jewelry measuring scale from Ebay on .001g denomination and weigh out right dose. Can be pain to cut and get the fragments exactly right.
3. Crush the 100mg pill and put it in an empty gelatin capsule. Weigh that and then decide by what % you would cut by and take the right amount out. Unfortunately, due to my cognitive issues, I have forgotten exactly how I calculated that. But hopefully someone can help.
I apologize if I come across as belaboring the point as I don't mean to. But obviously, I feel very strongly about this issue as time after time, I have seen people badly burned and suffering greatly because they made cuts too fast. I see it constantly on this board even though people don't seem to make the connections to cutting too fast.
Again, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone.
49er
poster:49er
thread:929718
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20091217/msgs/930811.html