Welcome to Quintox Support – the website for



Why are you here?

You're probably here because you've been taking ciprofloxacin or levofloxacin or one of the other fluoroquinolone/quinolone antibiotics and suddenly your body feels like it's crashed.  You might have been to your doctor already and he or she said it's not likely to be the fluoroquinolone/quinolone; so you've searched on-line and found some horror stories.  You discovered that you've been floxed - and then you found us.

Why are we here?

We're here to offer help and friendly support to fellow UK sufferers of adverse reactions to fluoroquinolone/quinolone antibiotics – ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, ofloxacin and norfloxacin.  We hope at least a little good will then come from our collective agonising experiences of being floxed.

We're here to campaign for doctors to only prescribe fluoroquinolone/quinolone antibiotics as a last resort medication after everything else has failed.  They are very powerful drugs designed to tackle life-threatening infections such as sepsis, pandemic pneumonia and anthrax.  They are called last line of defence drugs yet have often been prescribed for very ordinary infections when other antibiotics would have been more appropriate.

We're here to raise awareness amongst both doctors and patients as to how debilitating, disabling and even life-threatening adverse reactions to fluoroquinolones can be.

We're here because we've been there before you.  We took ciprofloxacin for a UTI or maybe prostatitis, or we took levofloxacin for sinusitis.  Whatever it was, we weren't really dangerously ill, but we did want to get better.  None of us were warned by a doctor that the antibiotic we'd been prescribed could ruin our lives.

Who are we?

We're an assortment of people from all walks of life, who have come together because of the effects of fluoroquinolone toxicity.  Our Facebook group was founded in September 2015 by me, Miriam Knight (see story no.10) and Debbie Carol (see story no.3). I had been searching for help, advice or just anything about floxing on the Internet. I started chatting with a very knowledgeable sufferer, Debbie, who said she wished there was a UK group, but that she felt too ill most of the time to do anything about it. I blithely said I would do it, but then we did it together anyway. We and Ray Miller are the Admins of the FB group and Ray maintains this website.

You can find information about joining us on the Contact Us page.

We are neither funded by nor affiliated to any group or organisation.  We do not have a vendetta against any company or organisation. We know that fluoroquinolone antibiotics do save lives and only ask that they be restricted for use in life-threatening situations.


In our website content we use the term 'fluoroquinolones' to cover both actual fluoroquinolones and the original, unfluorinated quinolones. This is for brevity and because fluoroquinolones are overwhelmingly the most commonly used worldwide now. We use the term 'quinolone' in our identity, because it has been used commonly in the UK to cover both classes of these drugs and helps to identify us as a UK support group for members in the UK.

We are not medically trained and therefore not qualified to give advice. You should always do your own research and consult your Primary Care Doctor before acting on any medical information you find on the internet.

With all suggestions about supplements and other ‘remedies’, please remember that we’re all different and ‘one size doesn’t fit all’. What may seem to help some people, might harm others.

We all have varying degrees of tolerance to any substance eg., medication, food, chemicals etc., and what one person can tolerate, another can’t. We experience different adverse reactions to quinolones/fluoroquinolones, though they can appear to be the same. For example, our perception and description of pain can be different; it’s subjective and what ‘floors’ one person, can allow another to carry on with normal activities.

No two people have an identical experience. Please try not to compare yourself with someone else, despite certain things looking similar. The same is true of recovery. Some recover quicker than others. Some relapse, or have ‘flare ups’, whilst others don't. This doesn't mean you will experience the same. The recovery isn't generally a linear progression and it's often ‘two steps forward and one step back’ or could be ‘one step forward and two steps back’. Sometimes new symptoms appear and some things come and go.

Please bear in mind the following when reading the Group Stories. A word of warning - some of the stories are harrowing so, if you’re feeling particularly anxious or fragile, you might prefer to leave reading these until you feel stronger. Again, do remember that just because you read something awful happened to one person, it doesn’t mean this will happen to you. Many stories need bringing up to date, as some people have improved or recovered. Many (maybe most) people do recover, though they tend to move on with their lives and not write about it. So what you read on the internet, is generally about those who are still suffering, especially if severely and for a long time.