"i started taking buspar about 2 months ago. i started having &quot;brain zaps&quot; and i thought it was temporary. it was not. i started getting water retention and i wanted to eat more than usual. i also was extremely irritable constantly. 

i was told to take 5mg twice daily. i started with half a pill then after a week the whole pill 2x daily. 

i since then i decreased my dose to half. now i&#039;m off completely.  all of the side effects have stopped almost immediately.  no brain zaps, irritability decreased slowly, and water retention stopped. 

this pill didn&#039;t do anything except all of the bad. on the positive side - getting off of it does not give you severe withdrawal."