Adam shares: I just read this study on Psychiatry online that surprisingly came out all the way back in May of 2004, yet this is NOT common knowledge today. Most doctors wouldn’t have a clue what these drugs receptor occupancy is at a particular dosage.
It shows that the minimum “Theraputic” dosage of these common AD’s like Z, Cel,Pax,proz,Effex, have an 80% receptor occupancy (Impact of the drug on your brain). This tells me even a therapeutic dosage, or starting dosage of these drugs is extremely powerful and this is why many of us quickly see changes in our spouses or loved ones.
I have read many stories that read something like this: “After 20 years of blissful marriage and 4 children, within 6 weeks of taking an antidepressant my spouse told me they no longer loved me and weren’t sure why they married me in the first place and want a divorce”
Imagine a doctor starts you at 100mg of Z, which has about an 85% receptor occupancy (impact of drug on brain) and you start tapering it down 5-10% every 4 weeks and you have not had any WD symptoms at all and you get down to 25mg and you think to yourself, I have not had any issues at all, I can just jump off now. Well, 25mg still has a 70% receptor occupancy, so if you jump off there, you will very likely have major WD symptoms.
Now let’s say you get all the way down to 5mg of Z instead and think, I haven’t had any issues this whole taper, I should be fine to jump off here.. well, think again, even at 5mg, the receptor occupancy is still at around 50% receptor occupancy!
This is why you MUST continue to taper down in most cases to below 1mg. My personal recommendation for most people who have been on the drug for more than a year, is to taper down to .5mg before dropping off. At .5mg, the receptor occupancy is down to 5%. I am not a doctor, so this is just my personal opinion after doing a LOT of research.
This is just very interesting to me, because I cannot tell you how many people out there have a doctor that starts them off at a “therapeutic” dose, and tells them it’s a very small safe dosage to start with, but in reality it is all it takes to completely spellbind them and potentially ruin their lives/marriages/etc.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.161.5.826