I have been depressed for the past couple of years, and not quite sure why, though I have been going thru some changes lately.

My depression manifests itself as extreme fatigue and irritability. My doctor has ruled out other health problems and thinks it may be depression.

I tried st. john's wort and loved how it made me feel positive about the future and gave me happiness and made it easy for me to laugh again. But, it stopped working about a year ago.

So, I have started taking 20mg of prozac a day. The first week or so, I felt great and felt super positive. But after that, I seemed to get a bit more snappish and irritable.

I really want this to work and I am thinking that I should go up in dosage and will ask my doctor this week to increase the dosage.

Will the dosage go up to 30mg or does it usually jump to 40mgs? And if I have already been on prozac for the past month, will the increase negatively affect me?

Hard to say how it will affect you. You should really consult your doctor and see what he/she thinks.

Hi,

I am on the max dosage of prozac and I did not have any problems as
I went up. I increased from 20 to 40 to 60 to 80. The only side effect
I seem to have is some fatigue and weight gain.

Best wishes,
starr

Talk to your Doctor about it. Since they know all your history and everything they will most likely be able to tell you what is best.

Also, I think it goes by 20mgs... my dr just upped my dosage from 20 to 40 and all the other people I know have gone up by 20's. Although I have a friend with OCD and she is on 10mg.

I am currently taking 30 mg., which are 20 mg. tabs, and I break the second pill in half. I've been on this dosage for four years and recently experienced a setback due to some stressors in my life going on since the holidays. Since my main symptom right now is severe anxiety, my pdoc put me back on Xanax. She does not want me to up the Prozac at this time since I'd be doing so well up to this point.

My question is: has anyone had to tweak their dosage after being on it a long time?

If a low dose is no longer working for you, then it would be logical to try a higher dose as your next step. Have you made any lifestyle changes since you started feeling depressed? Pills will not fix it all by themselves--a good diet, regular exercise, and a good sleep pattern are ways that you can help combat depression on your own.

Were you referring to me or the original poster of the thread? If you were responding to me, I have had to deal with a lot of stress lately, but now that the crises have ended, I am falling apart! I've been fairly stable on 30 mg. Prozac, but last week, started to feel very anxious, and that old iron band around my head is back...that's the first sign that I'm falling into another episode.

So far, my pdoc is telling me to take Xanax for the anxiety until I see her on the 29th. She did not advise me to go up on the Prozac right now, since it's the anxiety we're dealing with at the moment and not depression...yet.!