my whole life i ve dealt with the trifecta of depression anxiety and ocd i wa always functional with all disorder clocking in at maybe a 0 depression always felt like more of a chemical thing it wa never situationally based anxiety amp ocd were usually health related hypochondria i guess anyways i never knew episode existed i always just hovered at the same baseline then in 0 i had a severe panic attack after smoking some potent weed it really shook me and it sent me into what i guess would be my first episode it wa my first time experiencing dissociation and it terrified me i wa in a constant state of panic for month at the time i had been on lexapro for year my gp wa ill equipped to deal with this so she recommended a new doc for med big mistake new doc decided i should quit taking lexapro and switch to zoloft which perhaps would have worked if she had done it correctly instead of cross tapering or weaning off lexapro she decided to have me stop taking lexapro cold turkey wait a month until it wa out of my system and then start zoloft going cold turkey off lex wa a nightmare of biblical proportion and sent me further into the most intense depression and anxiety i d ever experienced after a hospital visit they suggested an outpatient program i agreed and there they got me back on the lexapro after a few more long month thing evened out i returned to a manageable baseline although the depression wa a tad higher because i could no longer self medicate with weed the experience ruined weed for me would immediately send me into panic mode but still thing were going well fast forward to january 0 and suddenly out of the blue i wake up one day super depressed no appetite couldn t sleep at night i wa so confused my first episode had a clear and obvious trigger panic attack ill advised cold turkey med change i d never had something like this happen with no trigger that s when i started to dig deeper and found out that episode exist this time i had a doc i trust added remeron which wa awesome at first felt better than i had in year wa sleeping and eating great for about 0 day then splat all that went away back to square one and i even developed tinnitus from the remeron so i nixed the remeron and we decided to switch from lexapro a well but the right way this time i did a seamless cross taper to effexor i m on my th week of it went from 0 my last day on the lexapro wa last friday which wa the day i did the increase to 0 thing have improved slightly def not where i wan na be tho i now know that episode can last anywhere from day to month or longer so i m trying to be patient it s tough tho eventually i may have to decide whether to increase effexor again or augment with something else an aa perhaps not sure what i meant to accomplish with this wall of text but if you read it kudos to you i guess i just wanted to document this strange journey maybe you ve been through something similar or know someone who ha maybe you can offer advice which i d welcome either way i hope whoever is reading this is doing well and i wish you all the best of luck in this thing called life