Posted by King Vultan on May 23, 2004, at 10:47:22
In reply to maoi washout prozac v. zoloft, posted by fuji on May 23, 2004, at 8:11:18
> I realized that this is the first time I have been off of effexor in about 5 or 6 yrs so I thought I would give zoloft a try on its own while waiting out the prozac 5 week off period. So the obvious question is how long between zoloft & maoi and if it is also 5 weeks then I am back to that but I will deal with it. Apparently the thought of 5 weeks without an ad is not sitting well with me!
Two weeks appears to be the recommended amount of time to wait in switching to an irreversible MAOI after the last dose of Zoloft. It takes five half lives for a drug to completely clear, and Zoloft has a half life of about 26 hours, so 5 x 26 = 130 hours = 5+ days.The wrinkle with Zoloft is that its major metabolite desmethylsertraline is also pharmacologically active and has a substantially longer half life (varies among individuals; I have one listing at 98 hours). However, it is substantially less active than the parent molecule at perhaps 12-25% relative to the starting molecule sertraline. I suppose if you were ultracautious, you could wait 5 x 98 = 490 hours = approximately three weeks, but if it were me, I would feel pretty safe just waiting the two weeks.
Todd
poster:King Vultan
thread:349843
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040521/msgs/349863.html