Definitely the brain jolts which I TOTALLY forgot until another redditor posted about them. Also very very irritable. Dizziness if I recall correctly and overall not feeling well at all. When I was finally able to "stop" taking the med, I had a few episodes of not feeling well sort of hard to explain the exact feeling and wondered what was causing them and then I recalled the ssri I was taking and I instantly accounted those symptoms from that drug. Those lasted for about a year after completely being off the med.

That's great to know but I wonder why it isn't more commonly performed. Wonder if it's $$$?

Hopefully it helps someone avoid our problems.

It was what it was. What's amazing is that most people can just stop taking the med cold turkey without any problems.

augh! what were your side effects? Glad you didn't have problems getting off the med. Most people don't but enough people do that there should be mandatory precautionary discussion with doc before a script is written.

I would suggest that they were. I also remember to some minor degree jolts running through various parts of my body.

I SOOOO forgot about the brain zaps until first reminded about them by another poster. The brain zaps for sure, but I also had a personality change. Very irritable. You could say good morning and I'd snap at you. Not sure I ever recovered from that 100%. I also had dizziness, and an overall just unwell feeling. Several months after weaning myself "off" I had mild symptoms of the same and kept wondering what was going on and thought of going to the doc until I realized it was the sertraline. Took about a full year for those side affects to finally go away.

Yes! I forgot all about those. My wife and I were on sertraline together and both ran out at the same time, a week before vacation! I thought we were going to kill each other, no joke. Luckily the script came in the mail a few days after we ran out and we were back to just wanting to kill each other in time for vacation. :)

For some people about a third if I recall correctly, it's extremely difficult to stop taking the med. You have to reduce the amount you take over time. Some people can do that over the course of a couple months. I wasn't so lucky. In addition, I gave up at one point and just started taking it because my mood in addition to other issues were really that bad.

Some people also build up a tolerance to the med and have to increase the dosage. I don't know if this med has a max dosage, but if it does, when you hit that point and it stops working as well as it used to, you'll need to stop taking the med, most likely before starting a new one.

I am not trying to scare anyone or tell anyone not to take this drug. I'm just sharing things that I wish I knew so I could have made an informed decision before taking it.

Not sure sertraline helped me at all with the mini anxiety attacks but I hear you on the withdrawal!

Very happy for you that you have it all worked out! I just wish the doc would have talked to me about possible issues with the med. I learned to ASK questions and research meds on my own before getting a script filled and starting to take it.

It would be nice if they found SOME way to try to determine effectiveness of a med for a person before having to blindly scribe it. I was on sertraline for really no reason, but my doc was way too quick in writing a script for it. About a year later I decided there was no reason for me to be taking the med and decided to stop taking it. I'm one of the lucky ones who has a very difficult time getting off the drug. Took me three years to be able to stop taking it and then had withdrawal affects for another year. I could not imagine having to go through that after finding out that the medication didn't work for you at all.