I can only chime in about
Zoloft. When I was on a
summer internship in California one year, I ran out of
Zoloft and didn't have any easy way to get a resupply (no written prescription, my doc on vacation for two months, yadda) and in the
Grand Procrastinatic Tradition of the Truly Depressed, I decided not to think about it. When I ran low, I halved my dosage for a few days, thinking that would count as '
titrating down' from the stuff.
About six days later a colleague walked into my office, looked at me, and said "Did you know that you're gray?"
I bitched about my hair which was, indeed, graying.
"No. Your face."
That gave me pause. I hadn't known. However, I did know that for around twelve hours, I'd been jumpy, dizzy, at times enervated, and having what felt like heart palpitations. I decided to give in and call my Mom, who's also a psychiatrist (and no, she hadn't prescribed the stuff) and ask her what to do.
I got maybe ten words into saying hi-how-are-you-can-I ask-you-a-question? when she interrupted me.
"Why are you stuttering?" (I don't normally).
I'm stuttering? I looked at my colleague, still watching, and he nodded decisively.
Oh. Um... So I told her. She cut me off immediately after I'd explained that I was out of Zoloft and said "Go to the emergency room. Do it now." When I objected, she demanded to speak to my colleague (a friend from home whom she knew) and told him to take me to the emergency room.
So I went. They looked at me and threw me on a bed in the back, and had a doc in to talk to me in less than ten minutes, which is amazing for a non-trauma ER visit with a mobile, alert (well, okay, mostly alert) patient that doesn't involve poison control. I told him what had happened, and he dug up a Zoloft sample bottle and made me take some (after I'd shown him my empty bottle to prove I wasn't just lying to get some) and then gave me a week's worth and strongly suggested I get my head out of my ass and call my doctor or whoever was covering for him that week. I humbly accepted the pills, paid the bill, and went home via a 24-hr pharmacy to fulfill his one-week scrip.
Don't try this at home, folks. It took two days on the stuff to even feel remotely human, and then another three before my blood levels built back up far enough to take away the last symptoms of the discontinuity.