Anecdotally, I’m not sure how true this is. But I’m also not sure what’s slow enough. I cut down in dosage half a pill every two weeks, as my doctor recommended. He said it was slow enough to avoid problems but the withdrawal was awful.

Those several weeks were hell. I was having anxiety attacks all the time.

I initially thought something else was wrong and didn’t even consider withdrawal (since the doctor had said I should have no issues) but later googling revealed withdrawal was pretty common with the drug I was on.

I’m just glad it’s over.

Except sometimes you can't quit them slowly because if you have severe side effects from them you need to quit immediately and then have to go through withdrawal which can be worse than the initial problem. Also you can't always get hold of your drugs for various reasons and sometimes have to take another medication that interacts with one you're already on and so have to come off quickly. Here's my personal story over the last three or four years: I was put on aripiprazole (Abilify) as an adjunct treatment for major depression after having to come off Quetiapine, also used as an adjunct in combination with an SSRI, due to its long term side effects. This kicked off a manic episode with some mild psychosis so I had to stop it immediately. The withdrawal effect in my case was about three months of suicidal depression. I am currently using Lamotrigine as a mood stabiliser in conjunction with Prozac because the manic episode triggered off by the Aripiprazole has left me with fairly severe manic depression which I hadn't suffered from before my exciting Abilify episode (this is a known side effect). Previously it was "just" major depression. I recently couldn't get hold of Lamotrigine because we've been having drugs shortages in the UK due to stockpiling and drug diversion to more profitable markets. This kicked off another, milder manic episode, followed by a few weeks of moderate depression ("moderate" in my case meaning no suicide attempts or psychosis) After seven weeks I think now I'm just about ready to go back to work. In the past I've also had to do wash outs (stop taking everything suddenly) twice, once because one of my meds was giving me liver damage and we didn't know which one, and once when I was hospitalised with a major injury and was kept in an induced coma for two weeks. Dealing with withdrawal along with multiple broken bones was not fun. The ideal is you are taking one medication and can slowly reduce it an swap it out for another, or slowly come off, all the while being medically supervised. This is not what actually happens the majority of times because of issues like the above, and because a lot of us are on multiple medications. There's also the "you need to come off one SSRI / Tri cyclic in order to try another" issue which means you either reduce slowly and have a period of being essentially unmedicated before starting the next one, or you do a wash out, start the new one immediately and try to ride out the withdrawal effects / hope that the new med will counteract them. The pharmaceutical side of psychiatry is basically throwing darts while blindfolded and drunk.

Try finding a psychiatrist willing to help you through that. Most won't (it is seen as risky and liability-generating).

I'm absolutely not suggesting anyone should do this without their doctor's approval, but:

When I was in my 20's I tried various SSRIs - at least three, possibly four different ones - and my pattern was always the same, which was to take them for six months, get frustrated because they didn't do anything but make my hands shake, etc., then flush them down the toilet and quit cold turkey with no ill effects. Same thing with Ritalin. I was taking it for a few years because it (shockingly!) made me a more prolific computer programmer, then my doctor moved to California and I never got a new prescription. No withdrawal whatsoever that I noticed.

My personal, subjective, anecdote-based take on this is the stories of withdrawal are as overblown as the stories of effectiveness for a lot of these.