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Editor: Robert Binstock
Profession: Paxil Side Effect Attorney

Category: Paxil News

After seeing commercials for Paxil, many people decide to try it. In most cases, after little discussion with their doctor, some leave the office with a Paxil prescription in hand. Soon after starting the drug, they feel their livelihood had increased.

The downside, after a few years of taking Paxil, many feel well and want to stop taking the drug. However, in some cases, when trying to wean off the drug some people are faced with side effects. In fact, many people choose to end up staying on the drug for this very reason.

Some people suffer from selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) discontinuation syndrome, which is a disorder that has recently started getting acknowledged by the medical community. SSRIs help with depression and anxiety and are found in prescription drugs such as Paxil. A study, in 2001, in the Journal of Informed Pharmacotherapy found that approximately 30% of people who try to quit drugs such as Paxil experience "acute discontinuation syndrome."

About five years after the Food and Drug Administration approved Paxil in 1992, patients began to report withdrawal symptoms, according to Dr. Joseph Cannavo, medical director and chief for the chemical dependency unit at Flushing Hospital Medical Center in New York.

Cannavo notes that people who experience SSRI discontinuation syndrome aren't necessarily addicted to the medication. It could be a physiological dependence, in which the body adapts to a drug and the absence creates a rebound.

"Physiological dependence has been conflated with addiction," Cannavo said, noting that only in the past 10 years have doctors started making this distinction.