Hi there, Sue!

nice to see you

First I want to say i'm so sorry to hear about your Dad's experience with Zoloft! I don't blame you one bit for not wanting to go near it with a ten-foot pole witnessing such a bad reaction! Was he ok after the med was stopped?

Unfortunately things like this do happen. For instance, with Paxil (an SSRI just like Zoloft), i actually had an incidence of extra-pyramidal sx (EPS) - extremely rare with AD's! It was horrible: pretty bad akathisia, constant yawning which shook me head to toe, trouble swallowing, and, fwiw, bad nausea. This was at the "low" starting dose of 20 mg my doc put me on (20mg) which i found out is not low - it is already a therapeutic dose, but, as is typical here he did not titrate me from say 10mg. since i knew 20 was not a huge dose, and suicidally depressed, i took it as scripted - no sneaky titration on my part. I had to suspend but after a few days he had me try 10mg - same thing but less severe... but before reaching steady state! Suspended definitely at that point. However even after the med was suspended, and the EPS resolved, I proceeded to have a hypomanic reaction, with a full psychomotor crisis one night - i was hot all over, flushed and lay one the floor which was freezing cold trying to cool off... and couldn't keep still ... i was writhing. And to think, this was the second time he scripted it and I asked him to start "low" and his idea of low was 20mg.

The first time he scripted it for 40mg right off the bat! Gauging by the 20mg reaction, that would have likely put me in hospital! Thank Goodness I never got around to taking it that time because for some reason it was no longer warranted - probably i had switched into hypomania before having the script filled whew! (Proof that Procrastination can be useful! )

~ waves ~ wishing you a healthy, happy New Year