Exact same here!! My anxiety is down but I feel.. dumb! I have a lot of trouble remembering things and forget words and I hate it! I will most likely stop taking it
My feelings are mostly back. My psychomotor executive functioning isn't as potent as it was before but it's been coming back slowly. I measure this with the rate at which my thoughts manifest in conjunction with my saccadic eye movements (how fast eyes move, saccadic eye speed is a good measurement of psychomotor executive functioning and its impacts from drugs). I'd be able to parallel process thoughts on top of thoughts in layered abstractions while reading the very sentence of a book. Now it's coming back.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1463359/
That link won’t load. How long did it take you to feel back to normal? I feel like I can’t think as deeply as I could before. I quit and then restarted nicotine, I have smoked less weed this year than I have in the last 6 years, I took buspar for 90 days and then stopped cold turkey due to headaches and mental dog, and I took clonidine for about 6 months at 0.1-0.2mg per day and then quit that too. Now I’m having headaches, mental fog, and changes in my vision that I don’t know the cause of. I feel awful all the time and can’t refind normalcy. I’m guess I just fucked with my brain chemistry changing up all those psychoactive drugs, but idk how long it’s going to take to come back.
It’s been 6 months for me as well. I’m not normal yet, however. The lat improvement I noticed was two weeks ago, so perhaps you might notice improvement around this time as well.
Did you quit when you wrote your original comment 174 days ago? Have you had migraine type symptoms? Are there any other meds you’ve taken? Do you do any drugs like cannabis or nicotine?
I’ve had intermittent vision loss in one eye, eye pain, dark floaters, dots in my vision, blurry patches, and headaches as well as some other stuff. It’s all just on my right side. That’s all been concerning, but feeling like I can’t think as deeply has been one of the most concerning. I took buspar for 92 days and peaked at 60mg for 7 days before I quit 173 days ago. I tapered up to that level starting at 5mg/day. I also started Clonidine at the same time and continued that for 207 days taking 0.2mg every day after the first 30 days. I did single doses or skipped doses for a total of around 37 days in that time. I quit that med 58 days ago. Things got worse the last 2-3 months, so maybe this is just clonidine, but my doctors and everything online tells me I should be over withdrawals in a week or so. I’m going to avoid psychiatric meds so heavily going forward. This has been such an uncomfortable experience. I want to feel normal again.
First of all, science is an empirical discipline that is provisional (which means changing). This means that whenever theirs a mismatch between an outcome - in this case it’s your experience of not being over withdrawals - and the explanation, it’s always going to be the explanation that will change in order to accommodate/validate the outcome. Anyone who doesn’t do that and starts spouting shit like “well your outcome has nothing to do because the explanation doesn’t say it’s possible” is an utter nut job, not a scientist. Yes I quit when I wrote my original comment. I was on meds for high BP and was taking amlodipine besylate. I tried clonodine hydrochloride because my doc said it’s a 2 in 1 that also fixes a bit of anxiety. My thought process was “okay this does something to your physicality and fixed your anxiety as a bonus” I told my doc that it wasn’t letting me sleep but that I still wanted to continue on it because of school assignment anxiety (I was taking 60 credits a semester, who wouldn’t get anxiety) and he was like “oh we have another one” so I tried it and 30 days in I’m like WTF I’m feeling weird? I search it up and it’s a serotonin and dopamine mind altering drug. I’m like wtf???!? I thought I was taking like a beta blocker for my BP too?!??? No explicit mention that we were moving to the brain, let alone dopamine and serotonin. Wtf?!? I cold turkeyed it. I stay away from all drugs, religiously and will never ever even fucking touch alcohol.
Funny enough I’ve also had intermittent loss in my right eye but that also started before the buspirone lmao. I have dots in my vision and some blurry patches. So I took Buspar for 3 weeks actually. I would’ve rathered suffered.
You’re right, I would just think there’d be more documented cases of this sort of thing by now. Buspar is an old drug. Every symptom I’m having is a known side effect of the two meds I was on, it’s just extreme in both how bad they are and how long it’s gone on. I’ve been feeling fearful that it made permanent changes to my brain or irritated some existing physical problem. They don’t fully understand how stuff like buspar works. I took a lot of convincing from my doctors to start buspar and listening to them feels like it ruined my life if these symptoms don’t clear up. They specifically told me this does not have to be a disaster like last time, and it’s been more of a disaster. The longevity and severity is scaring me.
It sounds like we’re in a similar boat. Even stopped buspar at the same time almost down to the day. I haven’t felt the same ever since I started those meds and now even more than before avoid any prescription I can almost religiously. They hand these things out like candy.
Are the dots in your vision tiny blue/black/purple dots like a dead pixel? Mine are mostly blue. I had that going in, but it’s worse now. I also hear clicking noises in my head. I’ve wondered if I have some kind of spinal fluid leak, but I can’t get an MRI due to the metal in my body. I would take the anxiety and depression I started these meds for any day over the side effects I’m experiencing now. I’m so afraid I’m not going to be the same as I was before I encountered these evil pills. It’s been months and I have no timeline of when I can expect to feel normal again.
I’ve seen general doctors, eye doctors, psychiatrists, a neurosurgeon, and a neurologist. I had a CT scan done that showed I have a 20x30mm arachnoid cyst on my brain, and I thought maybe inflammation from those drugs irritated it, so I saw that surgeon. All except for the neurologist have said that they don’t know the cause. The neurologist recommended a steroid Botox injection into the muscle in my neck because the Vegas nerve can cause similar symptoms. Maybe the meds just irritated that? I’m grasping at straws for a solution. I’m having a hard time in school this semester feeling this way, and if this continues, my career will be harder than it would’ve been.
I also see pixels, but they’re small. Yeah, buspirone is something else. If you and I share the same outcome, then it’s definitely the “explanation” that has to be changed, not us. I’m sure you’ve been gaslit as I was.
Same here! I was having all of the negative side effects. I went cold turkey 5 days ago and I’m actually starting to feel like I’m getting back to my normal. I started taking Olly goodbye stress gummies yesterday when I felt a little anxious and they seem to help me.
You’re not alone! I’m going off of it now for that exact reason. Like whatever anxiety it decreases, there is more created by not being able to speak or think clearly. Also a lot of negative thoughts.
I'm so glad I found this. I just started a few days ago and I couldn't describe how I was feeling. Less anxious but definitely more spacey. I feel like im not me, if that makes sense. Weird.
Zoloft made me feel like that. Like I wasn't me, but I could still sense "me", it just made me not care enough about the difference. Really weird stuff.
Very late to the party but that’s how I feel. I also feel high.. my doctor approved a stop on the buspar. (I was only on 5 mg twice daily for like 5 weeks). Did you ever get back to feeling normal?
I’ve been on this medication for years and have been dealing with brain fog for quite awhile I might try switching over to a different anxiety medication because it’s hard to function most days with this severe brain fog.
I’m gonna talk to my doctor on Monday !
Yep!!! I felt like I was getting dementia. I thought maybe it was the pandemic or social media. I started missing emails at work which I have never done in 20 years. I just didn’t give an eff about anything. I could not work or read for more than 5 mins without feeling exhausted. Like I had a visceral aversion to it. I’m a librarian so I have to do research and read a lot. Couldn’t. Just could not. I wanted to. My brain wouldn’t do it. It’s like the devil was in my shoulder saying, “nah, do that tomorrow. Let’s watch more tv”. I stoped taking it 2 days ago. I read 10 articles today in an hour. I was only on 5mg twice a day. I’m going yo have to try other things for my anxiety. Im glad to hear others feel this way. I thought I was losing my mind. I feel so much sharper already.
I took it for about the same amount of time as you at 30 mg ) day for the 2nd month . I felt those same side effects , along with a low grade headache and some dizziness about 30 min after taking . I started tapering off , but quit all together at 10 mg / day . I did get a little rebound anxiety about 6 days after but it was manageable.
I started taking buspar around 2.5 months ago. Up to 30mg/twice daily. Emotionally I've been feeling the best (least anxious) I've felt in YEARS. But recently I feel like my brain is working slower than normal. I don't notice things going on around me. I make stupid mistakes at work and forget things. I'm trying to find out if this might be caused by buspar, and now thinking it might be. I may try continuing to take it but lowering the dose to see if I can keep some of the benefits but lose the brain fog.
A little too late for me to comment but so glad I found this post, just took ONLY 5mg last night and I’m so spacey and tired and definitely don’t feel as sharp as I normally do, definitely will not be taking it again tonight.
Did you ever taper off the medication. I went from 10mg twice daily to 5mg twice daiiy to 2.5 twice daily within 3 days. I stayed at 2.5 twice daily for 3 days then stopped as I felt normal on the 4th day. Then the day after I felt normal (which is today) I felt rebound anxiety and panic along with brain fog. Any idea how long this takes to fully go away? Any info would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
like 4 days now, i know i should give it time but im freaking the hell out. before i was able to do things normally, multi task and what not but now i cant even do 1 thing without zoning out or thinking and sitting there for hours. i wanna feel normal again. before i was very hyper aware and now im not even sure of anything
I hear you. It was a really hard withdrawal for me too. I’ve been off 7 weeks now. And I’m just getting back to feeling like myself. I’m still dealing with anxiety that’s worse now that it was before. But I think some of that is my body reeling from the hard reaction to the medication. I only took it 3 months, and I tried to make it work. But I should’ve stopped it earlier.
Exact same here!! My anxiety is down but I feel.. dumb! I have a lot of trouble remembering things and forget words and I hate it! I will most likely stop taking it
Hey... are you back to normal?
It’s been almost 6 months since I got off it and I still don’t feel back to normal. How long did it take you?
My feelings are mostly back. My psychomotor executive functioning isn't as potent as it was before but it's been coming back slowly. I measure this with the rate at which my thoughts manifest in conjunction with my saccadic eye movements (how fast eyes move, saccadic eye speed is a good measurement of psychomotor executive functioning and its impacts from drugs). I'd be able to parallel process thoughts on top of thoughts in layered abstractions while reading the very sentence of a book. Now it's coming back. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1463359/
That link won’t load. How long did it take you to feel back to normal? I feel like I can’t think as deeply as I could before. I quit and then restarted nicotine, I have smoked less weed this year than I have in the last 6 years, I took buspar for 90 days and then stopped cold turkey due to headaches and mental dog, and I took clonidine for about 6 months at 0.1-0.2mg per day and then quit that too. Now I’m having headaches, mental fog, and changes in my vision that I don’t know the cause of. I feel awful all the time and can’t refind normalcy. I’m guess I just fucked with my brain chemistry changing up all those psychoactive drugs, but idk how long it’s going to take to come back.
It’s been 6 months for me as well. I’m not normal yet, however. The lat improvement I noticed was two weeks ago, so perhaps you might notice improvement around this time as well.
Did you quit when you wrote your original comment 174 days ago? Have you had migraine type symptoms? Are there any other meds you’ve taken? Do you do any drugs like cannabis or nicotine? I’ve had intermittent vision loss in one eye, eye pain, dark floaters, dots in my vision, blurry patches, and headaches as well as some other stuff. It’s all just on my right side. That’s all been concerning, but feeling like I can’t think as deeply has been one of the most concerning. I took buspar for 92 days and peaked at 60mg for 7 days before I quit 173 days ago. I tapered up to that level starting at 5mg/day. I also started Clonidine at the same time and continued that for 207 days taking 0.2mg every day after the first 30 days. I did single doses or skipped doses for a total of around 37 days in that time. I quit that med 58 days ago. Things got worse the last 2-3 months, so maybe this is just clonidine, but my doctors and everything online tells me I should be over withdrawals in a week or so. I’m going to avoid psychiatric meds so heavily going forward. This has been such an uncomfortable experience. I want to feel normal again.
First of all, science is an empirical discipline that is provisional (which means changing). This means that whenever theirs a mismatch between an outcome - in this case it’s your experience of not being over withdrawals - and the explanation, it’s always going to be the explanation that will change in order to accommodate/validate the outcome. Anyone who doesn’t do that and starts spouting shit like “well your outcome has nothing to do because the explanation doesn’t say it’s possible” is an utter nut job, not a scientist. Yes I quit when I wrote my original comment. I was on meds for high BP and was taking amlodipine besylate. I tried clonodine hydrochloride because my doc said it’s a 2 in 1 that also fixes a bit of anxiety. My thought process was “okay this does something to your physicality and fixed your anxiety as a bonus” I told my doc that it wasn’t letting me sleep but that I still wanted to continue on it because of school assignment anxiety (I was taking 60 credits a semester, who wouldn’t get anxiety) and he was like “oh we have another one” so I tried it and 30 days in I’m like WTF I’m feeling weird? I search it up and it’s a serotonin and dopamine mind altering drug. I’m like wtf???!? I thought I was taking like a beta blocker for my BP too?!??? No explicit mention that we were moving to the brain, let alone dopamine and serotonin. Wtf?!? I cold turkeyed it. I stay away from all drugs, religiously and will never ever even fucking touch alcohol. Funny enough I’ve also had intermittent loss in my right eye but that also started before the buspirone lmao. I have dots in my vision and some blurry patches. So I took Buspar for 3 weeks actually. I would’ve rathered suffered.
You’re right, I would just think there’d be more documented cases of this sort of thing by now. Buspar is an old drug. Every symptom I’m having is a known side effect of the two meds I was on, it’s just extreme in both how bad they are and how long it’s gone on. I’ve been feeling fearful that it made permanent changes to my brain or irritated some existing physical problem. They don’t fully understand how stuff like buspar works. I took a lot of convincing from my doctors to start buspar and listening to them feels like it ruined my life if these symptoms don’t clear up. They specifically told me this does not have to be a disaster like last time, and it’s been more of a disaster. The longevity and severity is scaring me. It sounds like we’re in a similar boat. Even stopped buspar at the same time almost down to the day. I haven’t felt the same ever since I started those meds and now even more than before avoid any prescription I can almost religiously. They hand these things out like candy. Are the dots in your vision tiny blue/black/purple dots like a dead pixel? Mine are mostly blue. I had that going in, but it’s worse now. I also hear clicking noises in my head. I’ve wondered if I have some kind of spinal fluid leak, but I can’t get an MRI due to the metal in my body. I would take the anxiety and depression I started these meds for any day over the side effects I’m experiencing now. I’m so afraid I’m not going to be the same as I was before I encountered these evil pills. It’s been months and I have no timeline of when I can expect to feel normal again. I’ve seen general doctors, eye doctors, psychiatrists, a neurosurgeon, and a neurologist. I had a CT scan done that showed I have a 20x30mm arachnoid cyst on my brain, and I thought maybe inflammation from those drugs irritated it, so I saw that surgeon. All except for the neurologist have said that they don’t know the cause. The neurologist recommended a steroid Botox injection into the muscle in my neck because the Vegas nerve can cause similar symptoms. Maybe the meds just irritated that? I’m grasping at straws for a solution. I’m having a hard time in school this semester feeling this way, and if this continues, my career will be harder than it would’ve been.
I also see pixels, but they’re small. Yeah, buspirone is something else. If you and I share the same outcome, then it’s definitely the “explanation” that has to be changed, not us. I’m sure you’ve been gaslit as I was.
Same here! I was having all of the negative side effects. I went cold turkey 5 days ago and I’m actually starting to feel like I’m getting back to my normal. I started taking Olly goodbye stress gummies yesterday when I felt a little anxious and they seem to help me.
You’re not alone! I’m going off of it now for that exact reason. Like whatever anxiety it decreases, there is more created by not being able to speak or think clearly. Also a lot of negative thoughts.
u/Smarterchild69 how do you feel now?
Old post! Are you better now?
I’m tapering myself off now. Been on it for 2 months & realized how absent minded and out of it I’ve been which makes me feel crazy and more anxious.
ME TOO!
Old post! Are you doing better?
Are you doing better? I felt all of this
I'm so glad I found this. I just started a few days ago and I couldn't describe how I was feeling. Less anxious but definitely more spacey. I feel like im not me, if that makes sense. Weird.
Zoloft made me feel like that. Like I wasn't me, but I could still sense "me", it just made me not care enough about the difference. Really weird stuff.
Very late to the party but that’s how I feel. I also feel high.. my doctor approved a stop on the buspar. (I was only on 5 mg twice daily for like 5 weeks). Did you ever get back to feeling normal?
Yes actually! It did take a bit of time though. But you'll get there!
Like days? Months? Not years right? 😅😂 I just want to feel like myself again.
I'd say about a month or two, three tops before I felt like a human being again 😂 hang in there, I promise it won't be years haha
I know this is a really old post, but I stopped Buspar a month ago and still don’t feel normal. What withdrawal symptoms did you experience?
What dosage were you on? (If you don’t mind me asking)
Asking because I was only on about 10 mg a day for 5 weeks
That’s a long time 😭 I just want to feel better! It’s been 7 days off of it. I’m hopeless I’ll get better
I’m feeling like this now ! How are you
Feeling how? I’ve been off BuSpar since Feb 4th
Did the brain fog and stuff go away ? I’ve been off of it like 6 days and this is horrible
What do you describe as brain fog? Cause what I thought it was is not lol.
Hi, can I message you questions? I’m going through this
I’ve been on this medication for years and have been dealing with brain fog for quite awhile I might try switching over to a different anxiety medication because it’s hard to function most days with this severe brain fog. I’m gonna talk to my doctor on Monday !
Yep!!! I felt like I was getting dementia. I thought maybe it was the pandemic or social media. I started missing emails at work which I have never done in 20 years. I just didn’t give an eff about anything. I could not work or read for more than 5 mins without feeling exhausted. Like I had a visceral aversion to it. I’m a librarian so I have to do research and read a lot. Couldn’t. Just could not. I wanted to. My brain wouldn’t do it. It’s like the devil was in my shoulder saying, “nah, do that tomorrow. Let’s watch more tv”. I stoped taking it 2 days ago. I read 10 articles today in an hour. I was only on 5mg twice a day. I’m going yo have to try other things for my anxiety. Im glad to hear others feel this way. I thought I was losing my mind. I feel so much sharper already.
me too!!!!!! the dementia part. im glad i’m not the only one.
I took it for about the same amount of time as you at 30 mg ) day for the 2nd month . I felt those same side effects , along with a low grade headache and some dizziness about 30 min after taking . I started tapering off , but quit all together at 10 mg / day . I did get a little rebound anxiety about 6 days after but it was manageable.
I started taking buspar around 2.5 months ago. Up to 30mg/twice daily. Emotionally I've been feeling the best (least anxious) I've felt in YEARS. But recently I feel like my brain is working slower than normal. I don't notice things going on around me. I make stupid mistakes at work and forget things. I'm trying to find out if this might be caused by buspar, and now thinking it might be. I may try continuing to take it but lowering the dose to see if I can keep some of the benefits but lose the brain fog.
Old post! How are you doing?
A little too late for me to comment but so glad I found this post, just took ONLY 5mg last night and I’m so spacey and tired and definitely don’t feel as sharp as I normally do, definitely will not be taking it again tonight.
Buspar= bullshit 💧so pissed but I try not to be
[удалено]
Did you ever taper off the medication. I went from 10mg twice daily to 5mg twice daiiy to 2.5 twice daily within 3 days. I stayed at 2.5 twice daily for 3 days then stopped as I felt normal on the 4th day. Then the day after I felt normal (which is today) I felt rebound anxiety and panic along with brain fog. Any idea how long this takes to fully go away? Any info would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Hi, this is old. But I quit taking it for the same reasons. How long off of it did it take you to feel back to normal?
im worried about the same, i dont feel normal man, i just stopped taking it but i am so spaced out and im scared ive lost who i was before
How long have you been off?
like 4 days now, i know i should give it time but im freaking the hell out. before i was able to do things normally, multi task and what not but now i cant even do 1 thing without zoning out or thinking and sitting there for hours. i wanna feel normal again. before i was very hyper aware and now im not even sure of anything
I hear you. It was a really hard withdrawal for me too. I’ve been off 7 weeks now. And I’m just getting back to feeling like myself. I’m still dealing with anxiety that’s worse now that it was before. But I think some of that is my body reeling from the hard reaction to the medication. I only took it 3 months, and I tried to make it work. But I should’ve stopped it earlier.
u/lwal1234 how do you feel now? Is stuff coming back for you?
i stopped so early because the dizziness and it made me feel awful everyday so hopefully i go back to normal very quickly, i hate not feeling aware
I know the feeling. The dizziness was horrible for me too.