After quitting antidepressants, some people suffer surprising, lingering symptoms

toggle caption Daniel St Louis for NPR

Phillipa Munari started antidepressants in 2003. Her doctor recommended one, she said, after she complained of feeling tired. She didn't think it helped, but she kept taking it anyway. When she decided to stop taking the drug 10 years later, her doctor helped her taper off it.

At first, this went fine.

"And then, six to nine months later, I started feeling horrible," she said. "I had nerve pain. My neck and shoulders were sore all the time. My anxiety was through the roof." These were symptoms Munari had never experienced before.

Munari, who lives in New Brunswick, Canada, said she became so exhausted and physically weak she found it difficult to continue her job at a call center. She spent much of the next two years in bed. To receive disability, she agreed to go back on the drug she'd been on, Effexor. She then weaned off it again, this time much more slowly.

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The nerve pain and exhaustion gradually improved, she said, but the anxiety got worse.

"I had complete panic. I couldn't leave the house," she said. Driving in the car, she said, "I'd be in the passenger seat with my eyes closed." It took two more years before things began to improve, she said in an interview as she choked up.

Munari is one of the tens of thousands of people who have turned to online forums to discuss lasting health problems after going off antidepressants. Many say their doctors didn't warn them this could happen, and didn't believe them when they said they were having a problem.

Doctors have long understood that stopping antidepressants can cause short-term withdrawal, with patients suffering from symptoms like dizziness, anxiety, insomnia and nausea.

What most prescribers and patients don't understand is that "you can have symptoms that persist for long periods after y