At first, that person should ask his\her physician if a special dose produced by some pharmaceutical companies and offered them as in the form of sample to doctors exists for the specific goal of discontinue.

If such a dose is not available, the main idea is that patient should try to decrease dosage gradually, in a smooth flowing manner. It is usually recommended to use half of the increments that health care provider would normally suggest for the process of discontinue in most people.

Pills

Patient should always carefully read leaflet of his\her drug to make sure that pills can be splitted. He\she can halve pills with help of pill splitter (it can be purchased for some dollars at the nearest pharmacy). This makes very easy to get half-arrow dosage of the original titration recommendation and take each step down for a week.

Capsules

Patient obviously can’t open them and take the contents raw…but dosage can still tapered off. Some empty gel caps should be purchased (just a couple bucks for a hundred). He\she should take a single daily dosage, open capsules and redistribute the medication into the empty gel caps to spread the total daily dosage into smaller increments. Each capsule should be rubbed before storage with a dry cloth to get any of the medication off of the outside of the capsule. A daily dosage amount should be gradually reduced, using each amount for a week.

That method showed a right spirit when discontinuing Paxil, one of the most notorious drugs for causing SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome. Doctor may acknowledge patient with the discontinuation problem and to give him\her helpful suggestions for reducing the discomfort. So, and the side effects were much more tolerable due to abovementioned method.

The main condition of minimizing of withdrawal symptoms is that the brain’s production of acetylcholine is not interrupted. Using food supplements containing choline, lecithin, and B complex is the easiest way to do it. Prerequisite levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain can be maintained with the B vitamins. Shortage of that neurotransmitter induces abstinence symptoms. Choline supplements or lecithin supplements (which are 13 percent choline) are also recommended because they are able to amplify the level of choline used by brain to produce acetylcholine during decreasing of dosage or discontinuing of antidepressant therapy.

Physician can suggest making dietary changes until the drug is not fully discontinued. A wide variety of foods contains lecithin and choline, but many of them are high also in cholesterol and fats. One of the best dietary sources of lecithin and choline is egg yolks. Beef steak, liver, organ meat, spinach, soybeans, cauliflower, wheat germ, peanuts, and brewer’s yeast also contain significant amount of dietary choline.

A lot of medicines (monoamine oxidase inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants, antiparkinsonian agents, traditional antipsychotics, and clozapine.) acting on the central nervous system can lead to appearance of withdrawal syndrome symptoms. Condition known as rebound (an agitated state of emotion that occurs at the end of the dosage cycle, and lasts for 15-20 minutes, then disappears) was observed in some people. It happens when patient takes medications of short acting. Doctor can prescribe dietary modifications to solve that problem.

That phenomenon was voted as valid by psychiatric professional community. Notwithstanding that the symptoms can be different and have both physical and psychological origin, doctors are able now to detect patterns of SSRI abstinence syndrome.

MAIN TYPES OF ANTIDEPRESSANTS