Claritin causes major side-effects and withdrawal for some

When I first started taking Claritin for really severe allergies this season (due to abnormally high precipitation resulting in record pollen and mold counts this Fall), I would give it an A+ for solving my awful allergy symptoms and not making me drowsy. In fact, Claritin and a cup of coffee would actually rev me up, almost like speed, for the evening classes that I teach, and I could still get drowsy enough to sleep with a benadryl or two around midnight.

For several weeks, I took 10 to 20mg Reditabs daily (20mg is actually the recommended dose in some countries). I realized I could vary the dosage depending, I suppose, on the allergens in the air - 10mg after a rain would suffice, but I required 20mg on a dry, breezy day to keep from weeping, sneezing, coughing, snorting, etc. And interestingly, 20mg not only cleared me completely up, but it did not make me drowsy - if anything, I was even more speeded up! I had to consciously slow my speech down while teaching.

However, after these several weeks, I started developing numbness in my left arm (it would just "go to sleep" while holding my cat), shriveled fingertips, a lack of appetite, very light short sleeps (which grew shorter and shorter until I couldn't sleep at all) with weird lucid dreaming (dreaming while still awake!), a racing mind, a very dry mouth and a sore dry throat every morning, arthritic-like joint pains, and then arrhythmias every time I checked my blood pressure (and I've never had irregular heart beats before). I also noticed that my personality seemed to be changing - I was far more irritable, unable to stop ruminating in anger about things I would normally find trivial, talking non-stop to myself (??), and finally paranoid - with an alarming feeling of some unknown threat.

Doing some research, these symptoms matched those of so many people's posts on the internet, so I decided I had to quit Claritin ASAP, as allergy season is almost over, and I need some sleep as well as a return to normal! Well, since I've quit, even though my allergy symptoms haven't returned, I've fallen into deep depression in just two days, dreading to get out of bed and sleeping 12 or more hours a day, feeling bad social phobia (just going to the store is stressful), and experiencing periodic tingling in my extremities. My blood pressure has been very erratic - BUT the good news is that I have no more arrhythmias, and my left arm doesn't go numb on me. If I can just shake this dark depression (a strong coffee helped just a bit) and regain some motivation...and stop wanting to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head all day....

Talk about a major mood swing!! And I'm falling asleep as I type this, and I've already napped twice today - for hours! After four cups of strong coffee!

Many professionals may say that Claritin is not addictive, or nothing that would cause withdrawal, but I beg to differ.