Viibryd - What are brain zaps?

I told my psychiatrist about the brain zaps, calling them shocks (or something along those lines) because I didn't know what they were, and she said to keep taking it. Would have been nice to know that this is apparently a normal side effect but, you know, I do now I guess lol.

I don't get them when everyone else seems to, though. They seem to get more *common* at night, but not when I'm falling asleep. For example: I had two awful ones back to back at, like, 4:30 this afternoon. They've gotten more intense from when they started, to the point where I'll gasp and risk losing my balance if they happen while I'm standing up. I've gotten lightheaded from them before too (though it always passes after a heartbeat). I get the buzzing sound too, now that they're stronger, which is *very* distinct from my tinnitus so I know for sure it's the zaps. No sleep paralysis yet though, thankfully.

I don't have a point persay, just adding my experience to the data pool in case anyone else is searching for an answer to this 12 years later

One minute I would be in a vegitative state and the next i was on full alert, easily angered and ready to pounce and cry and scream. It was horrible. My doctor immediately called me back and told me to split the pills in half... and after a short while we stuck to 20 mg and introduced 150mg of Wellbutrin and after a few years upped the Wellbutrin to 300mg. Its pretty perfect now. I feel like myself. Now on to the weird “zaps” and sleep paralysis that comes with this Viibryd. I can say that it will happen to you most assuredly. But the good news is that they will dwindle from happening a couple times a week to now it happens maybe twice a year. Completely fine because I love what the medicine does for me. I will tell you this too! Take your medicine like clockwork!!! I take mine between 8-10pm every night. Now... The zaps and the paralysis, when they happen will happen together on the same night and they would always happen to me when i was EXHAUSTED. Like if I hadn’t slept well in several days. It had nothing to do with missing my dose because I DONT MISS MY DOSE! Let me tell you why... This medicine is so powerful for me that the few times I had forgotten to take it and dozed off at night, it will wake me up within a few hours because thats how awful you will feel. You feel almost hungover... dizzy, itchy, and very sleepy and you almost dont want to move so sleepy. Getting back to the zaps... they would happen when i was wide awake but getting close to dozing off and it sounds like a large bumble bee buzzing by your ear really quick.. BUUZZZZZ! And the feeling in your head is like a hard vibration... all over your head and it happens real quick with the buzz sound. And I would say to my husband “oh no! Im gonna have the dreams tonight!” Meaning the sleep paralysis. Those at first were pretty horrifying. You are asleep but you arent because you know exactly what is hapoening around you real time (if the tv is playing its on the show thats actually playing and the people in the room are there)... you can see it through the slits in your eyes that are barely open. And you have this eerie feeling that something or someone is in the room with you that is sinister (I know it sounds made up) for me they were always hunched down next to me by my side of the bed. Sometimes I could hear it whispering incoherent things in my ear. And you cant move!!! You cant talk or scream. You cant reach for your spouse who you see lying right next to you. Sometimes it felt like it was crushing me and I couldnt breath! But I had learned through the years to relax and think “its not happening wake up wake up wake up” and I would wake up. The problem was when you wake up and them each time doze off right back where you were again. But something about it you are sooo exhausted you cant get up and walk it off. And when you do wake up you are terrified like there IS someone in the house. This rarely happens anymore. I try not to let myself get that exhausted. But for all the bad it sounds like the medicine is worth it to me.

(Not a reassuring feeling) Generally, I do not have a sound with it, if there is a sound it's just a small electric sound or sometimes a liquidy sound in the center of my head. They only last a few seconds but then I struggle to awaken sort of even though it startled me awake. It's hard to describe how that can be. I have had them on occasion from 2009-to present. I googled it extensively and never was able to find out what it was and doctors looked at me like I was insane. It has only been since I started Viibryd in 2017 that I finally saw a forum online that called them brain zaps and I realized that's what other people call them. The things I most often called it to try and google it were "the sensation of dying in your sleep", "the sensation of being electrocuted in your sleep" and "the sensation of your brain being fried". All pretty terrifying when you don't know why it happens. Thankfully, I generally only get them on occasion and not consistently so they don't keep me from sleep too much but every time I get one, it feels like I'm struggling to come back from something and I feel certain that if I lose the struggle, I'm dead. So generally, I'm then awake for a bit contemplating death and life and a complete existential crisis. Not very fun. Even now that I have something to call it and it seems fairly common, I think more research would be nice and particularly, it'd be nice if doctors actually knew about them as a side effect so patients didn't have to resort to google. Everything I've read claims they are harmless but since doctors barely know about them, I don't think they really know the long term affect they may have. I've never seen any report of anyone studying it or looking further into it. I do feel much better on antidepressants and Viibryd has been the most helpful yet so I keep taking it but it'd be great if there were a med that didn't cause brain zaps.

As far as the nightmares it only happens for me whenever I've forgotten a dose, like tonight. I'm currently waiting for the dose I just took to kick in because I can't sleep until it does. No exaggerating, I must have fallen asleep 50 times in the last hour and every time a nightmare began extremely quickly and I would pull myself out of it. It's then I realized that I didn't take my viibryd as this has happened before and I can see the signs. So like I said, exploding head syndrome, google it.

As much as I hate to... I might ask to be tapered down and put on something else. I'm excited that I found this forum and can show my doctors that I'm not crazy... but I'm more worried about what the brain zaps really are. I hope thus helps some people.

It actually hurts sometimes. Other times, I cannot perform any activity until they quiet down. One VERY IMPORTANT thing I found out, at least for me, and quite by accident is that the zaps are worse the higher my blood pressure is. When the zaps were at their worse, I took Clonidine, a short acting BP medicine. Later on, I had to go on a blood pressure medicine for medical reasons. My doctor prescribed Lisinopril which I take once a day @ 20mgs. That solved my brain zap problem, but I know immediately if I ever forget to take my BP medicine as the zaps, although not as strong, return. If your getting off of SSRI's, if recommend asking your doctor about Clonidine for short term use to get you past the worst of it. Hope this helps!

Also, after I take it and before I go to bed, I feel the head pressures and dizziness. I take it everyday and the same time, I've tried without food or with food, nothing helps. Sometimes I don't even sleep through the night. I wake up angry, frustrated, and fatigued. Not a good way to start the day and I've been grumpy all day because of this. My family can't stand to be around me. Time to start over with something else, hate that transition.

Overall I find this experience very uncomfortable but I've been putting up with it as it doesn't happen every day. However, after reading about this on the web, I think I will discuss this again with my doctor (the first time he didn't seem to have heard of this before). I'm worried what would happen if I ran out of Viibryd for some reason beyond my control (I live in California and if we had a big earthquake, I could be without meds for a while). I'd rather not have to worry about that...