Managing Serotonin Syndrome

Serotonin syndrome, also known as serotonin toxicity, is a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when there is an excess of serotonin, a neurotransmitter, in the body. Serotonin is involved in regulating various bodily functions, including mood, appetite, sleep, and muscle contraction. It is commonly associated with medications that affect serotonin levels in the brain, such as certain antidepressants, migraine medications, and illicit drugs.

Serotonin syndrome typically occurs when multiple drugs or substances that increase serotonin levels are used together, or when the dose of a single drug that affects serotonin is too high. It can also occur when certain medications are abruptly stopped or changed, leading to a rapid increase in serotonin activity.

Common symptoms of serotonin syndrome include:

1. Agitation or restlessness
2. Confusion
3. Rapid heart rate (tachycardia)
4. Dilated pupils (mydriasis)
5. Elevated blood pressure
6. Excessive sweating
7. Tremors or muscle twitching
8. Shivering and chills
9. Nausea and vomiting
10. Diarrhea
11. Muscle rigidity
12. In extreme cases, high fever and seizures

The severity of serotonin syndrome can vary, ranging from mild cases with minimal symptoms to severe cases that can be life-threatening if not treated promptly. It is crucial to seek medical attention if you suspect you or someone else is experiencing serotonin syndrome, especially if symptoms are severe.

To prevent serotonin syndrome, it's important to be cautious when using medications that affect serotonin levels, especially if you're taking multiple medications or changing your medication regimen. Always follow your healthcare provider's instructions and inform them about all medications, supplements, and substances you are taking. They can help you make informed decisions about your treatment plan and monitor for potential interactions.

If you suspect serotonin syndrome, it's important to seek immediate medical attention. Treatment may involve discontinuing or adjusting medications, providing supportive care to manage symptoms, and, in severe cases, hospitalization for close monitoring and management of complications.

Remember, this information is not a substitute for professional medical advice. If you have concerns about serotonin syndrome or any other medical condition, consult a healthcare provider.

[mariabadgers]

2/3 hospitals told me i was faking it. Then the 3rd had to resuscitate me. More hospitals and ERs need to hear information like this

[adammurray]

Serotonin syndrome nearly killed me. I was in a coma for 4 weeks and in that time I had double kidney failure and a collapsed lung. I'm very lucky to be alive all caused by my medication SSRI'S antidepressants. It's been about 11 weeks since I woke up and I've still got bad muscles.

[vera]

Serotonin syndrome is the scariest thing to go through. I had seizures, agitation, uncontrollable limbs, tachycardia and my mouth was moving in a weird way. I was misdiagnosed and the treatment I got from the doctors and nurses left me traumatized. The only comfort I had was the voice in my head to keep on fighting even though I wished I wasn't conscious. I'm so sorry for anyone who has experienced it.

[hassan....]

I suffered from serotonin syndrome after two weeks of taking Prozac, and then the doctor added another medication to me, which I took, and I had a panic attack, severe fear, and confusion, and I felt like I was going to die. I went to the emergency room in the hospital and met with another psychiatrist who had no experience. I told him, unfortunately, he told me that you have anxiety that is not from the medication, and he gave me another medication. So I believed his words and went into a coma due to serotonin poisoning. The medication was withdrawn from my body, but I suffered severe depression and anxiety after that because of this incident. I continued to suffer for years, and I am now fine, much better than before, and I am still recovering without antidepressant medication. When I went to a psychiatrist, he went because I have a phobia of... Providing lectures at the university only..I am very regretful and wrong for going to a psychiatrist. I lost 3 years of my life because of that.

[term]

September 18, 2022 is my second birthday. My symptoms lasted for 20 hours, I passed out countless times, I was shaking UNCONTROLLABLE, I had diarrhea, my heart wanted to jump out, but at the same time I couldn't stand on my feet. When I was conscious I prayed to God to forgive my sins if this is the time for me to leave. After everything, they told me in the emergency room that it was a panic attack, countless infusions, because I was in two hospitals. I knew it wasn't because I was passing out all day. I was on anti-depressants and migraine medication, both of which have high doses of serotonin. I thank God for a second chance, and I am afraid of the incompetence of our doctors. 18.09. is the date of my patron saint and I know who saved my life then. Since then, I've been fighting and struggling with panic attacks, but that day was not one of them.

[zakaref]

Concise, helpful, and informative. Thanks

[experienceofchris]

Was prescribed a few different medications by a few different doctors and didn’t know that there was a high probability of serotonin syndrome. First of all I have been consuming kratom for years now and I have also been taking an SSRI of some sort for years now and went from citalopram over to paroxitine. Although it worked for a little while and I had absolutely no serious side effects that I could really tell. So I started to get anxiety again and so I was prescribed buspirone by a completely different doctor (it’s complicated but I have lots of friends in the medical field and didn’t have time to go to an appointment and all that) and around the time I started to take it religiously i started to get very bad tremors in arms, legs, hands and feet. Along with a few other problems that I just chalked up to either bad anxiety and wasn’t really sure what was going on. I was also given trazodone from another doctor friend that had a bottle that they never consumed and they gave it to me bc I was having problems sleeping. I never really took it but only a few times within a several month period and only took a half of one.

So last Wednesday that day I consumed some adderal, along with my usual paroxitine, buspar, and kratom. Something I’ve combined quite a few times and besides my typical tremors and high amounts of anxiety that is pretty much my baseline, I wasn’t having anything crazy going on which would soon change…. So that night I decided I was going to take a trazadone bc i was stimulated more so than usual probably bc of the adderal but I had only ever taken half of the pill and only enough times in my whole life for me to count on one hand . So that night I took a whole one but still ended up only getting around 3-4 hours of sleep.

I got up the next morning and I knew immediately something was wrong. My pupils were VERY dilated which is strange bc they are always pinpoint from kratom, and I was more paranoid than I have ever been and felt like I was having a non stop panic attack on top of having audio-hallucinations of police sirens that 100% weren’t real and I knew I was hearing things. Once I got to work I felt as if people were looking at me and talking about me despite having absolutely no reason to think they were and I was just honestly delusional. I felt like I was drunk and so much to the point where I kept dropping things, spilling the ink my company creates, and just literally looking like I was very very messed up on something.

It was a very important day at work and I didn’t want to mess that up bc the higher ups already had meetings and stuff planned for me to attend and a few tests for me to take and I was already very paranoid so I was super scared to go and talk to my boss and say something was wrong bc I thought he would think I was heavily intoxicated from alchohol or some type of other illicit drugs and I didn’t even know what was going on myself and wasn’t able to even think correctly to even make a reasonable judgement on the situation, I was in pure survival mode.

I ended up getting into an argument with the guy I was partnered with because he was being super annoying and trying to tell me how to do certain things a certain way despite it not mattering and everyone has their own way of doing these specific things and I was shown many different ways by many different people and it’s kind of “a whatever works best for you as long as you don’t take forever and the product turns out the same” (specifically he was getting mad about stuff like me putting labels on boxes in a different order than he does and other stuff that really makes absolutely NO difference in the product or the time it takes me to complete and he was acting like a literal child ) it got heated and soon after I went on break and sat in my car. I tried to calm down and I couldn’t. I came back in and started working and ended up spilling a ton of the ink all over the scales and of course my team lead and the guy who was arguing with me were looking at me after that happened and I 100% know they thought I was drugged up or drunk. So at that point I was losing my mind and was so paranoid I had adrenaline pumping through my veins and couldnt stand still for a single second and was looking around like a maniac thinking people were watching me when they weren’t.

I don’t remember anything after that really but I figured out that stepped up on the step ladder after that to pour some ink and only know that bc my arm was covered in ink that only could have gotten on me from falling onto the machine which is only accessible by step ladder, and I proceeded to have a major seizure in which I I fell off the step ladder and hit the concrete ground and seized so bad that I wasn’t breathing and turned blue. I seized for around 4 minutes, around 2-3 minute mark I coughed a few times and they told me I started breathing again and regained my color and I came to and of course couldn’t remember my age or anything really, couldn’t walk, and really just didn’t even know anything happened at all and had typical post seizure symptoms.

After a few minutes with paramedics I ended up leaving work with my sister who is a doctor after refusing to go to the hospital bc they can’t really do anything for a seizure and haven’t the past two times I’ve had them in the past and I already have huge amounts of hospital bills I owe. So started doing some research and realized all three of those medications are not supposed to be combined and puts the patient at very very high risk for serotonin syndrome.

What I think was the two huge things that really sent me over the edge was the trazadone (added to my already bad combo of Peroxitine and Buspar) and also me getting into that argument with my coworker and having that stress on top of running on only a few hours of sleep.

Anybody taking buspar needs to be very very cautious if combining with an SSRI and same thing with taking any combination of any of the three medications I fore mentioned, let alone all three together. I got very lucky and didn’t get severely hurt besides a bruise on my face from hitting something while falling and also my shoulders I’m guessing from either landing directly on them or landing in some weird way while seizing and almost tearing my rotator cuff’s.

Long story I know but to end it all I will never take trazodone EVER again and stopped taking the buspar and the very next day the symptoms like tremors are almost completely gone and I feel like I’m completely almost back to more of a normal than I have been in a very long time. Hope someone reads this and it can help them in some way!

I could have very well killed myself, crippled myself, got caught in the machine that I fell onto and where I probably smacked my face, I could have wrecked on the way to work and hurt myself and others and who knows what else could have happened. The thing was I was too out of my mind to think rationally at all and we all need to be on the lookout for symptoms(like my serious tremors for the past few months) and immediately go see a doctor before it gets to the point it did with me and now I have to do something different at my work bc I can’t be trusted to work on the large mill(s) bc I could easily kill myself if it were to happen again.

[khalidthego]

Thank you sir, please continue doing these amazing videos.

[USMLEpass]

should i add subtitle to all of my videos?

[mdaniels]

I had this for sure, and the doctors didn't agree with me and said I had atrial fib with no cause. My hands and arms started cramping (In fact, when I saw the image of the hand I know it was what I had). I got it by taking tramadol as my heart was racing. Huge mistake. I have a medical degree so I'm hospital I told them I'm sure I had this, and they said no you didn't. I tried to explain about the cramping and everything but they just didn't agree.

[tuddley]

Labs were very much a part of my diagnosis, it showed a lot of things were spiking very high. That helped them diagnose it. The labs didn’t say it was SS, but they were far from normal numbers. So your half right about the labs, but I hope no one takes your advice and not get labs.

[Adohleas]

I was diagnosed with Serotonin syndrome when it got severe from just a small dose of an SSRI, I had a high fever, was terrifying to walk as my body would constantly tremor, even eating was a pain, I could not sleep for a week straight, and I was sweeting severely, my muscles felt like they were tightening up really hard too and it was really painful. It eventually got so bad that I had to be taken to the insta-care and was quickly diagnosed with Serotonin syndrome and given a benzodiazepine counteract the effects. Before that diagnoses I have had long history of issues with SSRIs, SNRIS, and TCAs. I have gone through a long list of them and every single one gave me tremors that start up anywhere from an hour after taking to about a day after, the symptoms always got worse within a short time span to the point that I was rarely able to stay on them up to a week.

At this stage I'm trying other routs to treat my depression, anxiety, and PTSD. While still going to both a Psychiatrist and Psychologist, I've tried expermental treatments like Ketamine. However Ketamine treatments are so expensive that even the small benefit I got from it isn't worth the cost as I can't afford it long term. Still trying to find a treatment that works, but as of now, drugs that increase the serotonin or availability of serotonin on my brain are out the window.

[siriusleigh]

I'm currently on Sertraline and Elvanse (lisdexamfetamine) - whilst also taking codeine, Modafinil, dextromethorphan and bupropion. Doc recently upped the sertraline and I feel awful. Very cold and shivering but parts of my body, mainly my face, are burning up. Hypersensitive to any stimuli. Very restless and agitated... could this be Serotonin syndrome?

[willking]

I’m on venlaphaxine 225mg and have been abusing tramadol like an idiot over the last couple of days and now feel like I’m going to go insane

[claudiakayla]

I had this 1 year ago very frightening, I couldn't hold my sandwich in my hand I couldn't even shower myself, open doors and brush my teeth and I couldn't even sign my own signature all my co ordination was taken away I couldn't write and my hand would shake, it went away after 1 week and its never returned it was a freshening experience and very frustrating too, couldn't open doors or dial phone numbers and couldn't type on a keyboard or text, but im 100% fine now co-ordination is 100% back

[lvfdom]

Hi I had a panic attack about 6 days ago and have felt kinda weird since heaviness in my head and shaky and also feel kinda weird turning my head and I’ve been taking 12.5 mg zoloft for about 3 months now (I was on 25 mg for about 7 months) any advice? Thanks

[GregKlein-gp]

Celexa with zyprexa caused me serotonin syndrome. 7 years I suffered. Lately it was joint pain, agitation, anger, racing heart, almost passing out

[Seek.]

Doctor prescribed me lexapro and buspar. Took it for 2 days was throwing up couldn't eat anything dry mouth.. felt very wierd and empty tingling feeling. Felt like I was losing touch with reality . Started to shiver and feel cold . Went to the er. They gave me fluids and vistaril to relax. Its been 4 days since I stopped the meds and my pupils still dilated this sucks ...

[ashishacharya]

I use 10mg serotinne anti depreesion drug is there possiblity of syndrome

[Metalhead-life]

Benzos increase Serotonin production so why would they be used to treat Serotonin Syndrome?
The first recommendation for treatment is to discontinue all meds, so why would you ever introduce another drug that causes SS?