I used to be an intelligent, decently capable boy. I was a full-time university student for 3 years before I quit. My major was Computer Science. I also had some jobs related to my major. I significantly outperformed all other students in a number of math and physics classes at the university.
About 2 years ago, I started suffering from migraines which came with dangerous mental problems. This gradually increased over the last 2 years. After I was forcefully hospitalized for suicidal ideation, I quit school and went to live with my parents. My migraines kept torturing me, so we tried one of the most popular medicines for migraine: amitriptyline.
I took 25mg amitriptyline per day for 18 days (2.5 weeks). When I started, the effects were mild. It made my sleep worse, especially on the first night. On that night I had difficulty falling asleep then woke up before my alarm. Then, once my alarm went off, I fell asleep and I slept for about 30 minutes. That was the first night. My migraines were worse if anything for that 2.5 weeks, so I stopped.
I had no idea that stopping would be 100 times worse than starting. I had the following severe symptoms for 4 days:
- Inability to sleep. The night after my first day of reduced amitriptyline levels, I slept zero. I laid in my bed wanting to sleep for a lot of hours, but could not fall asleep. The next night I actually slept a lot, probably because my body needed it so bad. The next night I got extremely little sleep.
- Inability to eat. I lost 12 pounds in 4 days. Note that I only gained about 3 pounds during the 2.5 weeks of amitriptyline. I had severe nausea but never vomited. Applesauce became my staple food. Once I tried to eat a slice of pizza and I spent the next 15 minutes gasping for air. I think my digestive system was consuming too much oxygen.
- Severe lethargy. I spent a lot of daylight hours laying down.
- Feeling cold all the time. I wore my jacket most of the time, even though I never went outside.
These became increasingly severe for about 4 days. Finally, on day 4 of reduced amitriptyline levels, these effects came to a climax.
I was laying on a couch without enough energy to get up. I tried to sit up to get a drink of water from my water bottle. But I started feeling increasingly out of breath instead. After approximately 45 seconds of feeling increasingly out of breath, I had a strange neurological event. I have no history of seizures, but I think that's what this was. For about 30 seconds, I was in more head pain than I had ever been in before. I was screaming but the pain drowned out all other senses. I don't know if I was convulsing or not. Fortunately, this event ended after approximately 30 seconds (I really don't know how long it lasted, these numbers are just guesses). I was turning blue. My dad was there so he rushed me to the local hospital. I almost died trying to get to the car because it was extremely cold outside and I was already turning blue. But we made it to the hospital. The hospital didn't do anything useful for me. But after that, my health got better. However, amitriptyline seems to have done severe permanent damage.
One interesting note is that my head did not hurt at all during the 4 days of severe withdrawal symptoms (except for the seizure-like event). I wish I could isolate that effect, but I am not trying any medicines any time soon because I don't want more permanent damage.
Ever since the end of those severe withdrawal symptoms, my head has been extremely easily provoked to pain. It is like when I do things my brain heats up and I have to let it rest so it can cool down. For some reason, this is especially bad in the morning, within 3 hours of waking up. A typical pain-provoking activity is washing dishes. After 30 seconds of washing dishes, my head might be hurting severely and I must put down the dishes and sit down to let is stop hurting. Almost all pain-provoking activities involve standing up, probably because keeping my balance requires the brain to work. I certainly do not feel safe driving right now, even though I could drive before and during the 2.5 weeks of amitriptyline. I used to only have headaches in "attacks." My head would hurt at least some on almost any day. Sometimes it would be severe. That pain was not effected by my actions on the short term. If something triggered a headache, the headache would usually be the next day. But now, after amitriptyline, I can spin up severe head pain in 30 seconds. It goes away in 30 seconds too, but it is very disabling.
It has been 3 weeks since I stopped amitriptyline and I am still suffering from the activity-provoked headaches. I did not have these headaches before amitriptyline. The medicine seems to have done severe permanent damage.
I have read many reviews of amitriptyline and none sound as bad as what I am experiencing. I don't know what kind of curse has been placed on me.
03 Sep 2019, 6:38 am
