I have a medical mystery that no one can solve, been to numerous doctors and specialists with no help given. I had an adverse reaction to the pharmaceutical escitalopram. I took 20mg of escitalopram (Lexapro) pills quite a while back and they made me instantly sick. Ever since then I have been sick and my health is now declining quickly. Pretty sure it’s killing me. I had no history of using this type of medication. Some backstory, I went to walk in clinic because I was having some family worries and wasn’t sleeping like I usually do. The doctor prescribed me the escitalopram and said I would worry less in the day and sleep better at night. I just trusted him took his word for it.
I used to be so fit and active, walk 5kms daily. I worked out regularly, ate healthy, biked, skied, and skated. I can’t do any of that now. I never smoked or drank alcohol. I thought I was in perfect health with literally, no issues to complain about. I was also number one in my job and lived for my family. Now doctors don’t know at all what to do. It seems like my serotonin system is not working properly anymore.
My best guess about what is happening is that the SLC6A4 is not making SERT to reuptake serotonin, the HTR2A gene (5-HT2A receptor knock out) is not making its proteins, or the reuptake pump is not working. It is supposed to be impossible, but I know something went seriously wrong when I took those pills. It’s not serotonin syndrome because this happened over a year ago and I am still sick. I stopped the drug immediately as symptoms as soon as the symptoms appeared.
I might have been susceptible to this type of reaction because when I was a teenager I did some weird drug that was supposed to be LSD but I don’t think it was, and it changed something in my brain. I never touched a drug again after that. Physically, I had no problems, but the way my brain felt was different and I just copped with it.
Escitalopram Reaction and Long Term Symptoms
I went the ER about 6 days after consuming escitalopram. I thought the drug would have cleared my system and any side effects would have disappeared but they didn’t. Doctors said it was very unlikely and that I was still having a reaction to the drug and attributed the symptoms to stress. All of the symptoms began with drug ingestion and have never gone away, not even for a minute. I just seem to add more and grow worse in intensity. I went to the ER again about 30 days later and they just sent me home with Ativan.
I am suffering pretty badly, clinical symptoms point to serotonin system not functioning properly and I don’t know how much more my body and mind can take. Here are the main symptoms:
- My sleep is destroyed. I only get about 4-5 hours of restless sleep per night. I did a level 1 sleep study and the results showed that I spend over 80% of the time in stages 1 and 2 level sleep, with only 7 percent deep sleep. The sleep issues began immediately after taking the pills.
- My throat randomly swallows on its own. This started next day.
- I know everyone is tired but my energy is gone. There is nothing left. This started immediately.
- Brian issues: I get these attacks where I can’t concentrate or function and it feels like agony. I am completely useless during these. They seem to longer as time goes by. Initially, these symptoms were fleeting but now they are brutal. It is not anxiety or panic. It is far too painful and debilitating. Sinuses also close up when this happens and I become weak and I get a headache
- I have lost 35 pounds of muscle; 20 pounds in the first month. The doctors have no explanation for the weight loss. I can’t afford to lose as I wasn’t overweight before all of this.
- My testicles turned bright red immediately. They don’t hurt. I have been on antibiotics, but that did not help.
- My testosterone dropped to almost nothing, to the very low end of the range.
- I have zero libido and it used to be fine.
- I have had a change in mood for the worse.
- My joints hurt initially, mostly wrists and hips but this is mostly gone now. Could be because I am too ill to be active
- My whole life I fall asleep on my back with hands crossed on chest, now if i do this my hands fall asleep every time. This happened immediately after drug consumption and will not go away. Same thing with feet if I cross them.
- Used to have unbelievable / excellent control HA1c control, not bragging, just did with the continuous sensor, in the 5-6 range mostly. Now I have to take at least 3-4 times as much insulin to get not nearly as good control. This happened immediately after drug.
- I have a white thick coating on tongue with new grooves. This began immediately.
- My muscles always twitching somewhere. This began immediately.
- I can’t regulate temperature frequent chills or freezing colds or at times very hot.
- Extreme change in color and frequency in bowel movements.
- Urine is totally different. It is cloudy and smells awful, with a weak stream that is foamy and I can barley go. At the beginning of my illness, I couldn’t stop urinating and went all the time for extremely long time. It was strong and clear, like I was trying to get rid of something.
- I developed cough about 4 months in with mucus, but it is not an infection. Sometimes now has blood in it. Had X-ray, said hyperinflated lungs. I am a non-smoker and have never been around bad air.
- I had an ultrasound and CT on liver that showed a lesion on liver, either focal stenosis or fatty, but I am not overweight and I don’t drink.
- I have lots of spells of nausea.
- Penis leaks 24-7. This started about 5 months in.
- Change in appetite.
- I can’t nap because I feel nauseas when I wake up. This happens in the morning too. This started about 6 months ago.
These are the main symptoms. No one seems to know what is happening to me and I cant get an actual diagnosis from any doctor for any of it or an underlying cause. I never had any of these above issues before the escitalopram.
More Details
My diet is ok but not as good as before the reaction because my appetite isn’t as strong. Breakfast is toast with peanut butter sometimes with eggs, sometimes with the yogurt. Lunch is ham and cheese and lettuce and tomato sandwich with fruit. Supper is usually a meat like chicken or beef with vegetables like potato, broccoli, or carrots and and whatever fruit is in season. Right now, it’s blueberries, apples, and pineapple. Snacking would be corn chips or granola bars.
The doctor gave me a sleeping pill (Zolpidem 10mg), which I tried a couple times before I took the escitalopram. I had no issues with it. It seemed to work the way it should. I took some night before I took the escitalopram. I stopped taking the sleeping pill after reaction because it stopped working.
Sometimes when the symptoms get really bad I take 0.5mg of Ativan. It helps sometimes with some symptoms and with sleep sometimes.
Before the reaction took vitamin C, vitamin D, fish, oil, and a curcumin tablet every day. Since the reaction, I’ve tried different combinations of supplements and amino acids. Nothing seems to work and sometimes they just make me feel awful. They never did before. I’ve tried amino acids like L-theanine and taurine and GABA and I’ve tried B complexes, fish oil, magnesium, zinc, potassium, a mitochondrial support, capsule, NMN, probiotic, and others. Nothing helps. A lot of it just makes me feel worse.
Not sure what nutrient testing I’ve had but there are lots of minerals and electrolytes tested during blood work. Sometimes my sodium is low.
That is it. I am hoping that by publishing, someone, somewhere can offer some insight. I am suffering immensely.
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I can help you perhaps, for free. From a functional medicine perspective, comprehensive long term management plan. Do you have an email for contact?
It is possible to recover.
AG, are you a doctor? Have you ever seen or treated anything like this before?
Email is toshi1_def@hotmail.com
I honestly believe something was damaged by those pills. This is going off how healthy and good shape I was in and how well my body and brain were functioning immediately before I took the escitalopram.
I appreciate everybody suggested I’ve tried a few and will try the others that I can.
Lexapro contains fluoride.Boron and Iodine can help the body detox from flouride. Boron also increases free testosterone levels.
I suggest cutting down on the high oxalate foods you are eating – peanut butter, potatoes. Vitamin C breaks down into oxalates in the body. Don’t take more than 250 mg of Vitamin C per day. Oxalates are neurotoxic and can make you feel like you are going crazy. Oxalate can also destroy your sleep. My urine leakage stopped when I cut down on oxalate. There are several good articles on oxalates on this website.
I also highly recommend Dr Stasha Gominak for getting your sleep back on track.
Keep trying with the B vitamins especially thiamine. I had spells of nausea when I was severely thiamine deficient. Many of your symptoms sound like thiamine deficiency – insomnia, temperature disregulation, twitching, tingling hands and feet. This study shows a correlation between thiamine deficiency and fluoride retention – Influence of Thiamine on Fluoride Retention in the Rat George K. Stookey.
I also suggest reading Keto Continuum by Dr. Bosworth. Going low carb is one thing I wish I had done much earlier in my healing journey. You can reverse your diabetes. Make sure to check the supplements you are taking for serotonin toxicity. For example, I love methylene blue. It has really helped me but it can cause serotonin toxicity if combined with other drugs.
Praying that your are healed 100% very quickly.
I feel this is due to fluorine toxicity from the medication.
I have CFE/ME and in 2018, i used lufenuron for Candida treatment and my health worsened big time after that!
Now i can’t tolerate supplements and all my symptoms are worse.
Copper is said to detoxify the toxic halogens so I’ve recently started the copper protocol, using copper, zinc, vitamin C with other nutrients added as the protocol progresses.
Let’s see if it helps. Perhaps this is something you could also look into. There’s a FB group called the copper revolution : healing with minerals. The protocol is discussed there in detail.
Hi
Have you had your B12 levels checked? Your thyroid? Vitamin D and ferritin?
The red testicles is B2 deficiency, my son developed it when his methylation started up suddenly and it depleted his active B2, it was common in POW camps apparently.
So the best advice I can give you is to go to B12oils.com and look at the research pages, learn how to activate your B2 by getting your thyroid working with iodine, selenium and also molybdenum, take B2 and B12 and probably all the other B’s but very slowly. Actually there is a fb group “understanding B12 deficiency “ with a guidebook (opens Wednesday-Saturday) join that for support.
The pale urine was potassium being dumped due to the high amounts of adrenaline caused by the drug.
All the research you need is on the B12oils.com website. You can get through this, best wishes
For the urine as if body detoxing through kidneys, perhaps kidney support and detoxing. I take ayush herbs rentone for kidneys and a detox kit 10 days on/4 days off.
I felt awful on Lexapro for the maybe a week or so that I was on that awful med. I also had trouble with sleep and got a fraction of the deep sleep a normal person would get (four polysomnograms including next day latency testing as my fatigue was insane).
Also systemic Candida. For YEARS. Turned out I had mold behind much of it as well poor detox and inability to absorb b12. Pernicious anemia would align with many of his symptoms. Likely iron deficiency as well as deficiencies often run together.
I eventually completely muscle wasted though the urinary issues were a near miss. Again B12 symptom.
I’ll never forget how angry I was driving to the doctors office that put me on that crap. Then the Effexor. That lasted a hot second before I finally stopped being browbeat that these meds were going to do anything more than harm me further. Lots of B Vitamin issues and low D.
I worked with Stasha Gominak neurologist and got sleep back on track though more than an hour of deep can be elusive still – but we are still remediating all the mold we had.
And long term (because no one figured it out for decades) I also had to deal with Lyme and 18 other coinfections.
It could be you have gotten yourself a CFS/ME this way. https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-023-04808-x
All of those symptoms together screams major autonomic dysfunction. It’s almost as if the autonomic down regulation let all the subclinical things he was dealing with become fully clinical. His gut health is where I would start paired with vagus nerve and nervous system regulation/support.
So I would check gut function first. Sounds like the drug changed something there. How old is this person? Body is in emergency mode right now. Would also check nutrient status and hormonal status. Check genetics as well.
Have you done testing for Babesia, Lyme, Bartonella, Brucella etc..? Those types of infections can cause many mysterious symptoms, including several of the ones you mentioned.
I would suspect the SSRi disrupted your immune system and could have ‘woken up’ some dormant pathogens in the body that your immune system was able to keep controlled until the SSRi.
No one seems to know ‘exactly’ what SSRi’s do, but I would imagine it can interrupt tryptophan/serotonin/NAD balance. Tryptophan can get sent to make serotonin, or to make NAD. NAD is crucial for many things including immune function.