Right, but splitting isn't sufficient for many people. The person I know was on 50mg. They tried to carefully shave off 1/8th initially, then 1/4 etc. It was error prone cutting them exactly and even a 1/8th change in dose at a time with a two week adjustment period caused them to have terrible effects. They cross titrated to Prozac and it became easy to taper down slowly. Reddit and forums are full of people that needed to reduce Sertraline by 1-5mg at a time over a period of months if they've been taking it long term.
I think far more people might find that they need to taper very slowly if more people got past the first step of tapering instead of just staying on them indefinitely. Many people feel more anxious and depressed on a slightly lower dose and take that as confirmation that they were born needing it, when it might be more the case that their brain has adapted to depend on it. If they were able to reduce more slowly and comfortably this might be more obvious. That matches what I saw with the person I know who is finally doing well on low dose Prozac.
Ah, I see, I mistakenly thought it came in smaller doses than 25mg.
> Right, but splitting isn't sufficient for many people. The person I know was on 50mg. They tried to carefully shave off 1/8th initially, then 1/4 etc. It was error prone cutting them exactly and even a 1/8th change in dose at a time with a two week adjustment period caused them to have terrible effects.
This was the case for me! It took me months to titrate down to 0 from Sertraline. Withdrawal side effects were terrible, and I’m pretty turned off to SSRIs in general now. My past doctors talked them up as “safe”, and treated the ramp down process as a tiny inconsequential mention.
I had tried to stop after stabilizing on a half dose, 1/4 dose, etc., and the side effects were too unpleasant so I had to start back up. I could only stop after I titrated down to 1/8th, every other day.