Posted by joe schmoe on January 10, 2013, at 18:44:43
Just thought I'd drop some notes here.
As some of you may recall, I posted awhile ago about problems with a certain generic of citalopram (Aurobindo) that was giving me problems like waking up at night, feeling hot and sweating etc that I had never had on citalopram before. Well I think I have figured out what was going on.
Even when I switched back to my trusty old Amneal brand, these things started happening again. I noticed a pattern: they happened after drinking alcohol. Not immediately after, but usually 4 or more hours after drinking, I would get really hot. If I drank close to bedtime this would happen while I was asleep and I would often wake up sweating. If I drank early in the evening I would often get red hot late at night, long after I had sobered up. On days I did not drink, it did not happen at all. So it is definitely some kind of delayed reaction between the alcohol and the citalopram.
This did not happen in the past because only in the last two years or so have I developed a taste for craft beer, which I started drinking daily. As a result, in the time before the last two years, I rarely drank so this effect didn't happen (and when it did, I doubtless attributed it purely to the alcohol). For some of the last two years, I was either on Wellbutrin, or on no AD at all. This effect did not happen then either. It was only when I went back on citalopram, while drinking a beer or two a day, that this started happening every day - so I attributed it to the citalopram, since it had not been happening before on just the alcohol. (It had not been happening before on just the citalopram either, which is why I thought the different brand was to blame this time around.)
I have a strong feeling if I went back to the Aurobindo it would be the same as the Amneal - no hotness/sweating on days when I didn't drink, and hotness/sweating on days when I did. Since I was drinking a beer every day this relationship was hard to spot.
I am continuing my taper down of clonazepam which seems to have pooped out. I often have gone up and down from 2 mg a day to 1.5 mg a day without problems, so I started my taper by going to 1.5 for awhile, probably a month or more. Then I started the real taper. I went to 1.25 for two weeks, then 1.0 for about 2 and a half weeks, and yesterday I dropped to .75 a day. No horrible effects so far from the tapers, just some headaches, a little muscle tension in my neck, and some very minor twitching (but I had very minor twitching anyway while on 2 mg a day, maybe more proof it pooped out awhile ago).Interestingly as the dose drops, I feel sexual sensation returning. I definitely notice an increase in sexual sensation when I temporarily reduce (or go off) citalopram, but I have never noticed it from reducing clonazepam before. (I am on 20 mg of citalopram right now, often dropping to 10 mg for a few days when I want more sexual sensation.) I did not realize clonazepam could dull sexual sensation, but maybe it can in the same way alcohol can, since they have a lot of similar effects.
I haven't been on this low of a dosage of clonazepam in over ten years. I am hoping that the taper continues to go smoothly till I am off it. Getting more sexual sensation back while remaining on citalopram would be a real unexpected bonus.
poster:joe schmoe
thread:1035208
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20121231/msgs/1035208.html