I took ADHD pills for years. No one warned about coming off this fast

At seven years old, Danielle Gansky was the kid who beat to her own drum.

The second grader was bubbly and energetic, but her teachers were more fixated on her sloppy handwriting, slipping grades and how much she fidgeted in her seat. 

They insisted she was showing signs of ADHD and recommended her parents take her to a children’s psychiatrist.

Gansky was immediately diagnosed with the attention disorder and an unspecified learning disability, and promptly prescribed her methylphenidate, sold under the brand name Ritalin.

The drug – a stimulant to increase levels of dopamine and norepinephrine to control attention and impulsive behavior – left her agitated and irritable, which led to further diagnoses such as anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive behavior (resembling OCD).

‘From there I was diagnosed, labeled and medicated,’ Gansky, now 29, told the Daily Mail. ‘I was far too young.

‘I wasn’t in a crisis or asking for help, but I think the environment that I was in really only honored one narrow version of “normal”, and I just didn’t fit that template of how a child was supposed to behave or perform in the classroom setting.’

By the time she left her home in Philadelphia for college, Gansky was on 14 different medications every day, including stimulants Adderall and Concerta, and the antidepressant Prozac. 

‘I was told I had a chemical imbalance and I needed to treat it, but as I got older, I knew something wasn’t right,’ she said.

‘I wanted to see who I was underneath all these drugs, and I knew I needed to come off them.’ 

After Gansky graduated in 2019, her doctor began to taper her off the cascade of medications over a course of several weeks. But Gansky felt this wasn’t enough time to allow her body to adjust. 

One 2025 study found that a longer duration of antidepressant use, or at least two years, was associated with a greater likelihood of severe withdrawal symptoms such as dizziness, stomach cramps, balance issues, mood swings and mania. 

Another 2021 study suggested people who have been on multiple behavioral and psychiatric medications for several years need to taper off of them over a period of years, not weeks. 

‘[It was] dangerously fast for someone who has been on these drugs long term,’ Gansky said.

‘I was simply harmed by coming off these drugs exactly the way my doctor told me to. And then, what followed was a severe, life-altering, full-body neurological crisis.’

In 2020, Gansky had stopped all of the drugs and was thrust into a ‘living nightmare of physical and psychological torment’ when she developed a condition called akathisia, which can occur after discontinuing antidepressants or antipsychotics. 

The name comes from the Greek word ‘akathemi,’ which translates to ‘inability to sit.’ Patients like Gansky suffer such intense restlessness and tension that a burning sensation rips through their bodies, leading to extreme anxiety that drives many to self-harm and suicide. 

‘It completely changed the course of my life,’ Gansky said. ‘The pain was unlike anything I’d ever known or experienced or thought humanly possible, like my entire nervous system was hijacked.’

While the exact cause of akathisia is unclear, experts believe it is due to sudden shifts in neurotransmitters – like dopamine and serotonin – and disrupted pathways as the body adjusts to changes in medication.

Dopamine is key for controlling movement. People with Parkinson’s disease, which is caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells, suffer uncontrolled movements due to this relationship.

Akathisia is the most common movement disorder associated with psychiatric drug use and withdrawal, according to Mayo Clinic, yet there is no definitive treatment.

It is unclear how many people have it, but experts estimate about 15 to 35 percent of the 6 million Americans on antipsychotics may suffer from the condition. 

While experiencing the akathisia, Gansky was unable to eat and saw snow-like dots in her vision. She could hardly focus between bouts of rage, agitation and ‘brain zaps,’ and her skin seared with a ‘constant sensation of acid being poured’ on her body. 

‘It’s like a state of internal torture to your nervous system,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘It was just chaos, and I was basically bedridden and physically couldn’t take care of myself because I couldn’t function. It’s just chemical torture. I never experienced suffering like that in my life.’  

Gansky told the Daily Mail that her doctor claimed ‘withdrawal doesn’t exist’ and is not possible because the pills ‘were out of her system.’ He insisted her symptoms were proof she needed to be on her medications and such severe withdrawal was not possible.

Signs of depression and anxiety, including panic attacks, returned with a vengeance as well.

‘I felt very betrayed,’ she said. ‘I had to trust him to keep me safe, but his credentials automatically outweighed my lived experience. I was just completely gaslit.’

Gansky spent about five months completely bedridden, often waking up from nightmares shaking and screaming on the floor and unable to get dressed, before checking herself into a hospital for in-patient psychiatric care.

However, she claimed that doctors insisted she was exaggerating or just suffering from bipolar disorder.

Out of desperation, Gansky decided to start taking the SSRI fluvoxamine, which is used for OCD and social anxiety, in hopes it would give her her life back. 

Over the course of two and a half months on fluvoxamine, her body slowly began to stabilize and allow her to function once again. However, she ‘never quite felt right’ after initially going through withdrawal and would frequently suffer emotional breakdowns or periods of severe depression and anxiety that lasted for weeks. 

Gansky claimed that doctors insisted she just needed to go back on the medications she had so desperately tried to quit.

At one point, she said a doctor believed her wanting to taper slowly was a sign of OCD. Another doctor, however, claimed she could go off fluvoxamine ‘cold turkey’ with no tapering.

This led Gansky to stop fluvoxamine without tapering. But in just weeks, ‘I basically found myself back in that same withdrawal nightmare again,’ she said. 

Within a few months of quitting fluvoxamine, she lost 20 pounds and again felt chained to her bed. Doctors prescribed her olanzapine, sold under the brand name Zyprexa, an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, neither of which Gansky was formally diagnosed with. However, doctors suggested her behavior may have been a sign of bipolar.

When taken unnecessarily, medications like Zyprexa can worsen or cause akathisia. For Gansky, it was like suffering from ‘a chemical lobotomy.’

‘I was bedbound for another couple years, and then I was unable to drive or do basic tasks,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘I lost my sense of self. I had profound cognitive impairment, memory loss. My creativity, my intelligence, my ability to feel love or joy, everything that made me, me, was gone. 

‘I had to relearn basic functions. I was getting lost in my own house. I went from being a vibrant, joyful person who loved life to feeling chronically ill and disabled. I was in my 20s grieving the loss of my own mind and life. I felt like it had been taken from me too soon.’

To escape from the endless loop of withdrawal, Gansky is now back on about 58mg of fluvoxamine, just over half the typically recommended 100mg starting dose, and is working with a compounding pharmacy that can adjust her dose by a fraction of a milligram if needed. Her original dose was 150mg.

She has, however, been able to stay off her other medications, and the fluvoxamine helps to prevent her from suffering from withdrawal. 

She also sits on the advisory board for the Antidepressant Coalition for Education, a nonprofit that works to raise awareness of antidepressant side effects and withdrawal. Currently, the group is working with the FDA to establish firm tapering guidelines and add black box warnings about withdrawal risks. 

Her work has also led her to meeting FDA commissioner Dr Marty Makary and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, both of whom have openly criticized the ‘overmedication’ of SSRIs in minors. 

Gansky told the Daily Mail that while she is not against the use of antidepressants, she hopes her advocacy work and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement pushed by RFK Jr can lead to stricter tapering guidelines.

Much of that advocacy work, however, is done from Gansky’s bed, as she is still weakened by the effects of such severe withdrawal. 

‘I’m still healing,’ she said. ‘For most of my life, my inner reality was dismissed or reinterpreted for me.

‘I was silenced and dismissed at every turn, and I know so many others are as well. My story is just one window into a much larger public health crisis.’