Question:
typed: – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -<Posted and Mailed Boy does your description ever sound familiar. I tapered off Effexor and went on Wellbutrin and it was 3 weeks of pure hell. It was all I could do to move my head around without feeling the brain zaps and the extreme dizziness. Maybe it’s the Effexor-Wellbutrin combo. What do you think? I am NOT in favor of changing two meds simultaneously!!! IMO you should be slowly (and fully) tapered off a med BEFORE starting another. I am at least conservative in this pharmacological principle. Also I am a firm believer in the adage "Start with low dosages and titrate slowly." In addition I strongly believe in polypharmacy (the use of multiple mood stabilizers). I firmly believe if pdocs followed these rules, we would not be having so many problems with adverse side effects and achieving mood stability. For example I selected, titrated, and still use 5 psychotropics. The result – I no longer experience ANY mood swings. :0))) And they also control the absence seizures brought on by taking Depakote and lithium. Of course I can never fly or drive again. But that’s OK since I have no money for either. <G Janice All the best from, James
You had seizures brought on by Depakote? Can you explain to me how that happened? I have recently gone through a seizure experience myself and all three of my docs believe that they were brought on by the Remeron I was taking at the time and that I was also on too low of a dose of Depakote. -Hilaire
Response:
Hi James, It is so wonderful to find you back here on-line! The last month or so during the worst of my transition (being on half of the required dosage of two different antidepressants does not equal one full antidepressant dose) I sank into one of those introverted isolated depressions. I wasn’t emailing anybody, my apologies. I presume this is Wellbutrin SR which is taken twice daily. For more information please see: I presume this is Effexor XR which SHOULD be taken twice daily if you don’t want to run into problems! For more information please see: —– Yes, you are a more precise thinker than I am. My doctor never prescribes anything other than extended release of anything because of the severity of my illness. So Effexor XR and Wellbutrin SR, correct. According to the Prescribing Information, the half-life of venlafaxline is 5 (plus or minus 2) hours and the only active metabolite ODV is 11 (plus or minus 2) hours. Consequently taking Effexor XR only once per day is insufficient from a biochemical standpoint IMO. FYI I take Effexor XR BID. Yes, I fully realize that the Prescribing Information says that you can take Effexor XR only once per day – but some patients will have all sorts of problems if they do so! They are the ones whose metabolisms are much faster than normal. Lets assume that they are 2 standard deviations faster than normal. Then the half-life of venlafaxline for them is only 1 hour and the half-life of ODV is 7 hours. Clearly these individuals should be taking Effexor at least twice per day! —– I agree now. My experience is a testament to bid for Effexor. What can I say, I believed/trusted my pdoc on that one. He’s usually correct, but this time not even close. I am going to refer him to the facts you cite so that hopefully someone else can benefit from my pain. The maximum dose of Effexor XR I can tolerate is 37.5 mg BID. —– Wow. YBMV!!!!! I was on 225 and only 60-70% out of the depression. Radically increasing Seroquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg)
Surely there are sleeping meds far less potent than the powerful antipsychotic Seroquel with fewer adverse side effects??? Have you ever tried the sleeping aid Sonata? —– What can I say? You and I may tend towards different extremes, or maybe it is I who tends toward an extreme. Sonata, even 2-3x recommended dose, is was if I didn’t take anything at all. For a while Ambien worked, but at the more intense insomnia levels again 2-3x my recommended dose and an hour later I’d be staring at the ceiling wondering when it was going to kick in. I have always had "king-sized" insomnias when they are bad. When I am normal 1/4 the 25 pill of Seraquel is plenty to get me to sleep, now 100 mg and it still takes a while to sleep. Not only does my biochemistry reach extremes, it also varies considerably (as it has during last 2 months). What worked once doesn’t work now. Wellbutrin increases the dopamine neurotransmitter. Some people find that this aids them in quitting smoking. Were you also trying to quit? —– No, I am remarkably health-conscious other than this beast. No beast, almost no caffeine, no drugs liquor nicotine etc. I manufacture my own mind-altering experiences. This time on Effexor if I forgot a dose, that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep.
So you were taking Effexor XR only once a day? You must have been finding the norepinephrine to have an excessively stimulating effect on you. Thus it was interfering with your sleep. Clearly you were taking too large of a dose! The doses given in the Prescribing Information are only meant for a rough guideline. A competent pdoc ALWAYS adjusts the dosages according to how his/her patient is FEELING. To blindly follow what the PDR says is the height of INCOMPETENCY! Cookbook recipes don’t work for us! In case pdocs haven’t noticed, we are not COOKIES! We are individual humans with each one of us having individualistic reactions to EVERY psychiatric med! DUH!!! —– James it is good to see you rant. 
) Sometimes you can come off a little cool and a little heat balances that off. I think that the pdocs should have some of us teach and/or oversee some of the psychiatry classes in med school. We could give them several ear-fulls excuse me I mean orifice-fulls of experience/advice. Your problems were compounded by: (1) Taking too large of a dose of Effexor XR for YOU. (2) Not taking a smaller total dose and dividing it up into 2 equal daily portions – so that you would not have gotten such a "spike" of norepinephrine into your system. I believe this large spike caused your system to develop a dependency for it and exacerbated your withdrawal symptoms. In essence your pdoc got you "hooked" on this stimulant. —– (1) I disagree. Taking over the recommended maximum daily dose I was still not getting out of the depression. Seems to me more like wrong drug for me. (2) Absolutely. That is why I came here to post, even though I still feel spectacularly lousy. If one person reads these posts and "encourages" their pdoc to divide Effexor into 2 doses, thereby missing this misery, that will give me a sigh of gratitude. Obviously he knows NOTHING about biochemistry and the effects of short to moderate half-lifes and the effect of metabolism rates! If I were you, I would get a new pdoc. IMO only about half of them are competent to practice. They frequently do more harm than good. :0((( —– Hmm. Maybe I’d better rethink forwarding your post to my pdoc. 
He is a decent, respectful pdoc who isn’t nearly as bright as I am (boy did it surprise me when he told me that) but who returns my phone calls, allows me to direct parts of the treatment (he let me go out on the Internet and choose Wellbutrin as my next AD), and went with me (gratis, for his own education) to the best psychopharmacologist in our state when I was exploring non-Lithium options. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap.
Let me know how you respond and I will try to come up with a more conservative tapering schedule. —– A little late oops. I’m totally off the stuff and damned if I’m ever taking it again. Yes, I know that it was mismanaged. But even the risk of this again is enough to give me a terrible case of the dear-me’s. Wishing you all the very best from, James D. Milton, Ph.D., Sc.D. —– This was wonderful! I didn’t realize that you were PhD. If I ever get the energy/brain together in time to finish by December I too will have tangible proof of my over-educated nerdiness. Bless you, and please stay in asdmm, -Gandalf (who is going to take her mind off her troubles and go see Matrix Revisited)
Response:
<Posted and Mailed
<Continued from Part 1 – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – This time on Effexor if I forgot a dose, that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep. So you were taking Effexor XR only once a day? You must have been finding the norepinephrine to have an excessively stimulating effect on you. Thus it was interfering with your sleep. Clearly you were taking too large of a dose! The doses given in the Prescribing Information are only meant for a rough guideline. A competent pdoc ALWAYS adjusts the dosages according to how his/her patient is FEELING. To blindly follow what the PDR says is the height of INCOMPETENCY! Cookbook recipes don’t work for us! In case pdocs haven’t noticed, we are not COOKIES! We are individual humans with each one of us having individualistic reactions to EVERY psychiatric med! DUH!!! —– James, it is good to see you rant. ) Sometimes you can come off a little cool and a little heat balances that off.
Slavishly following the Prescribing Information is one of my Hot Button Topics! It is too bad that pdocs don’t first have to take every med they prescribe!!! That would make them a lot more careful if they had to take a taste of their own medicine. <G I think that the pdocs should have some of us teach and/or oversee some of the psychiatry classes in med school. We could give them several ear-fulls excuse me I mean orifice-fulls of experience/advice.
That is a Good Idea! But unfortunately pdocs don’t usually pay any attention to anyone who doesn’t have a M.D. after their name. :0( Your problems were compounded by: (1) Taking too large of a dose of Effexor XR for YOU. (2) Not taking a smaller total dose and dividing it up into 2 equal daily portions – so that you would not have gotten such a "spike" of norepinephrine into your system. I believe this large spike caused your system to develop a dependency for it and exacerbated your withdrawal symptoms. In essence your pdoc got you "hooked" on this stimulant. —– (1) I disagree. Taking over the recommended maximum daily dose I was still not getting out of the depression. Seems to me more like wrong drug for me.
Possibly. But also possibly you were taking it in the wrong way. Oftentimes the WAY in which a med is taken, is as important as WHAT is being taken! As an example the half-life of Neurontin is so short that it should be taken 4 times per day – not the 3 times per day as the PDR recommends. (2) Absolutely. That is why I came here to post, even though I still feel spectacularly lousy. If one person reads these posts and "encourages" their pdoc to divide Effexor XR into 2 doses, thereby missing this misery, that will give me a sigh of gratitude.
Let us both hope that it will do some good! Obviously he knows NOTHING about biochemistry and the effects of short to moderate half-lifes and the effect of metabolism rates! If I were you, I would get a new pdoc. IMO only about half of them are competent to practice. They frequently do more harm than good. :0((( —– Hmm. Maybe I’d better rethink forwarding your post to my pdoc.
Feel free to edit out any offensive (but nevertheless true) parts. He is a decent, respectful pdoc who isn’t nearly as bright as I am (boy did it surprise me when he told me that) but who returns my phone calls, allows me to direct parts of the treatment (he let me go out on the Internet and choose Wellbutrin as my next AD), and went with me (gratis, for his own education) to the best psychopharmacologist in our state when I was exploring non-Lithium options.
He sounds like a Good Guy then. My pdoc sometimes sends his refractory cases to me and he writes the scripts. Did the psychopharmacologist recommend a Calcium Channel Blocker (like verapamil) as a replacement for lithium? * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Let me know how you respond and I will try to come up with a more conservative tapering schedule. —– A little late oops. I’m totally off the stuff and damned if I’m ever taking it again. Yes, I know that it was mismanaged. But even the risk of this again is enough to give me a terrible case of the dear-me’s.
I misunderstood. I thought you were still having these terrible effects of withdrawal from Effexor XR. Wishing you all the very best from, James D. Milton, Ph.D., Sc.D. —– This was wonderful! I didn’t realize that you were PhD. If I ever get the energy/brain together in time to finish by December, I too will have tangible proof of my over-educated nerdiness.
If for some reason you are unable to make it by December, please be sure and apply for a medical extension of the deadline. You surely have more than sufficient justification! Bless you, and please stay in asdmm,
I will try to – but it is my physical health that prevents me from posting more. I have to stay in bed a lot. -Gandalf (who is going to take her mind off her troubles and go see Matrix Revisited)
I saw the first Matrix – but just couldn’t get into it. Wishing you the very best of success and meds from, James
Response:
<Posted and Mailed Hi James, It is so wonderful to find you back here on-line! The last month or so during the worst of my transition (being on half of the required dosage of two different antidepressants does not equal one full antidepressant dose) I sank into one of those introverted isolated depressions. I wasn’t emailing anybody, my apologies.
That’s OK – but I was concerned when I did not hear back from you. Adjusting two meds at the same time is not a procedure that I recommend. You never can tell whether the effects are from one med or the other. I presume this is Wellbutrin SR which is taken twice daily. I presume this is Effexor XR which SHOULD be taken twice daily if you don’t want to run into problems! —– Yes, you are a more precise thinker than I am. My doctor never prescribes anything other than extended release of anything because of the severity of my illness. So Effexor XR and Wellbutrin SR, correct.
Good for him! I am a Big Believer in the extended release formulations. However extended release does NOT equate to once per day dosing – no matter what the Prescribing Information may say. According to the Prescribing Information, the half-life of venlafaxline is 5 (plus or minus 2) hours and the only active metabolite ODV is 11 (plus or minus 2) hours. Consequently taking Effexor XR only once per day is insufficient from a biochemical standpoint IMO. FYI I take Effexor XR BID.
I see that I have misspelled "venlafaxine". <Sigh! Yes, I fully realize that the Prescribing Information says that you can take Effexor XR only once per day – but some patients will have all sorts of problems if they do so! They are the ones whose metabolisms are much faster than normal. Lets assume that they are 2 standard deviations faster than normal. Then the half-life of venlafaxline for them is only 1 hour and the half-life of ODV is 7 hours. Clearly these individuals should be taking Effexor at least twice per day! —– I agree now. My experience is a testament to bid for Effexor XR. What can I say, I believed/trusted my pdoc on that one. He’s usually correct, but this time not even close. I am going to refer him to the facts you cite so that hopefully someone else can benefit from my pain.
IMO the Marketing Departments won out over the guys in the white coats in the cases of Effexor XR and Depakote ER. The maximum dose of Effexor XR I can tolerate is 37.5 mg BID. —– Wow. YBMV!!!!! I was on 225 and only 60-70% out of the depression.
There are several possibilities for you: (1) You are not lacking in the norepinephrine and serotonin neurotransmitters that Effexor XR increases. Or at least they are not the SOLE cause of your depression. (2) Wellbutrin SR will raise your dopamine neurotransmitter level. So we will see whether or not you are deficient in dopamine. (3) There may be something totally unrelated to neurotransmitters that is causing your depression. Have you ever tried Thyroid Augmentation Therapy to raise your free T3 and free T4 levels to 125-150% above normal? Most thyroid panels do not even check for these. What is usually checked is your TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) level and your Total T4 level. The latter is the bound T4 and is really meaningless insofar as your brain is concerned. I am willing to bet that 10-15% of the people on this NG would benefit from Thyroid Augmentation Therapy to have their depression alleviated. I will post more on this IMPORTANT SUBJECT. Radically increasing Seroquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) Surely there are sleeping meds far less potent than the powerful antipsychotic Seroquel with fewer adverse side effects??? Have you ever tried the sleeping aid Sonata? —– What can I say? You and I may tend towards different extremes, or maybe it is I who tends toward an extreme. Sonata, even 2-3x recommended dose, is as if I didn’t take anything at all.
Sonata is perhaps one of the most gentle sleep meds available. It doesn’t so much induce sleep as most hypnotics do – but it aids normal sleep. And its half-life is so short that you wake up without that "drugged" feeling in the morning. But in your case you obviously need something more heavy duty that doesn’t merely encourage sleep. For a while Ambien worked, but at the more intense insomnia levels again 2-3x my recommended dose and an hour later I’d be staring at the ceiling wondering when it was going to kick in. I have always had "king-sized" insomnias when they are bad.
I presume that your spells of insomnia did not only correlate with your episodes of (hypo)mania? Obviously many people find sleep hard (or impossible) to come by when they are manic. When I am normal, 1/4 the 25 mg pill of Seroquel is plenty to get me to sleep, now 100 mg and it still takes a while to sleep. Not only does my biochemistry reach extremes, it also varies considerably (as it has during last 2 months). What worked once doesn’t work now.
You obviously have the ability to unfortunately develop tolerance for your meds. Wellbutrin increases the dopamine neurotransmitter. Some people find that this aids them in quitting smoking. Were you also trying to quit? —– No, I am remarkably health-conscious other than this beast. No beast, almost no caffeine, no drugs, liquor, nicotine, etc.
That is good! I manufacture my own mind-altering experiences.
Do you experience hallucinations? If so – what types? <End of Part 1 – because the Moderation software can’t/won’t handle long posts.
Response:
Molly, Sorry to hear that. Although this isn’t the worst withdrawal symptom for me, it is definitely the one that made me decide to stop driving for a while. You don’t want drivers on the road for whom their gyroscope is meandering! -Gandalf
* YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well.
This happens with Lexapro withdrawal too. It’s really unpleasant. Molly — There was a young monk of Dundee Who complained that it hurt him to pee, He said, "Pax vobiscum, Now why won’t the piss come? I’m afraid I’ve the c-l-a-p."
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Hi Kathleen, Yes, isn’t it bizarre?! I wouldn’t have believed Effexor withdrawal (or I’d have been skeptical it was really that bad) if I hadn’t experienced it. Unfortunately my recent thinking is that because I didn’t have those withdrawal symptoms the first time, that perhaps I could have predicted this withdrawal from the fact that I had symptoms if I missed a day. The links/info were in the first post I made before I gave my personal experience: http://www.google.com/groups?dq=&start=25&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8… alt.support.depression.manic&selm=bcaph8%24dla%241%40peabody.colorado.edu Here is part of that post: —– RESOURCES FOR EFFEXOR (and other AD) —– —– withdrawal symptoms —– Threads on Effexor withdrawal at about.com (there are others about Effexor in general: Brain Shivers from Effexor http://forums.about.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=ab-depression&msg=916… Effexor withdrawal [11 new of 93] http://forums.about.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=ab-depression&msg=114… -Gandalf Gandalf, you’ve described my experience withdrawing from Effexor to a tee. I take 225 mg. in 3 time release capsules in the morning, roughly the same time every morning. If I forget, I’m light-headed by the next morning and getting queasy, and that’s when I realize I must’ve forgotten them the day before. Within about an hour to 3 hrs. after taking them that second day, I’m feeling fine. A couple times I’ve thought I had another bottle in the cabinet, only to realize I’m indeed finishing up the third bottle–I get them in 3 month supply–and once I was without any for four days. I kept thinking I’d get better, only to find that the next day was even worse. Visual distortion is something very peculiar to add to the list; rectangular tables slowly changing into diamond-shaped tables, or maybe round, and who cares anyway because the floor is moving and the walls are waving in slow motion and I’m going to throw up. I was ready for the hospital by the time I was able to send a friend to my doctor for some samples. Then I took my 3 caps, was no better by late afternoon, and took another dose to boost my level. By that night my guts had stopped churning and the room was beginning to stay more still and I could actually lift my head without throwing up. You’re right, it’s hideous. My depression is too immobilizing when I’m not on them, though, and I feel good when I take them–along w/ some coffee in the morning–so I’m going to just be sure I’m never EVER without that drug! It is a wonder drug for me. Good to hear from you, Gandalf! Kathy F. p.s. would you send us a link to the site you’ve found concerning ad withdrawal?
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes. Specifically what I’m been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday Radically increasing Seraquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Just finished researching Effexor withdrawal on the newsgroups and on the Internet, and once again the most accurate cutting edge information is in these newsgroups (the drug companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the recent admission that there is such a thing as antidepressant withdrawal). While the experience is still debilitating me I figure this is a good time to describe my personal experience, strength and hope about this. The first time that I went off Effexor I worked carefully with my doctor and tapered VERY slowly off the antidepressant. I had no symptoms whatsoever going off of it. This second time is EXTREMELY different for me. I was on Lithium both times, using various sleep medications both times. Only real different is that this time we’ve been tapering upwards on the Wellbutrin simultaneous to the taper down on the Effexor. Two very similar scenarios, two *very* different experiences. This time on Effexor, if I forgot a dose that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep. If I missed a dose, the next day I would begin to experience extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms by midmorning, painful enough that I would definitely remember to take it that morning (I never skipped 2 days in a row). I joked with my pdoc that I believed that this was a built-in characteristic of Effexor, put into the pharmaceutical nature of Effexor by the drug company so that people would stay hooked to the drug. My doctor was literally in stitches for 5 minutes. Ha, ha. [Now at $75 for a 15 minute appointment that means he owes me...] The withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the ones that I am experiencing now, listed below. Then (after taking 225 mg one day and 0 mg the next) the withdrawal symptoms were more severe than they are at the moment. But they went away completely about 3-4 hours after I took my next 225 mg dose. Now, after reading the anecdotal experience that I compendium-ed in the last post, I know that it may be 3 weeks before Alice can walk through the looking glass back into her living room. I must note that I did not get these dose-skipping withdrawal symptoms the first time I took Effexor. Also, there is really only two differences in the two Effexor regimens – (1) my 188 mg last time was divided into 2 doses (upon awakening and at 1pm), and (2) This time we increased it up to 225 before deciding to try a different AD. One change that I will definitely implement if I ever take Effexor again is to divide it into two daily doses like I did the first time. My pdoc didn’t believe that that would make any difference, and I now am suspicious. The posting that I just made aptly describes the Effexor withdrawal symptoms, sometimes in humorous terms. I’ll try to describe this delight in my own words. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very unpleasant] and (2) someone applying a [pulsing, it isn't steady] electric shock to your skin and 2 inches inward. It is a very industry, and at whatever moron you used to be that started taking this god-forsaken drug. * GASTROINTESTINAL DISTRESS. Diarrhea, lack of appetite, and all-around weirdness and uncertainty. * GUILT AND ANGER. "I must be imagining this." "It can’t be this bad, it wasn’t last time." "But I did everything right, and everything the pdoc told me to do. It must somehow be my fault." I wanted to document what this particular case study was like. This is very stressful and most of all very VERY bizarre. Also, this is what day… Thursday – Sunday = how many days? After I stopped taking the Effexor, and the symptoms haven’t even slowed down. THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Yea sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned. -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
Response:
Hi Maggie, Yes it does sound like our situations are similar. Figuring out what caused what is well night impossible. But for me, like you, being on Effexor for an extended period of time just didn’t get me completely well. And they say there is evidence that if we don’t get out of our depression completely that the likelihood of future depressions increases. Good wishes, – Gandalf
Although we may be on two sides of a fence it sounds like we are both on the same "lovely unadvertised effects . Effexor got me 75% cured of depressions, but that last 25% was debilitating. I need better results (particularly the Effexor didn’t bring my brain or energy level up to par).
You know, Gandalf, I’ve never really like Effexor in the 3 years I’ve been on it. The getting the brain speed up to par is right there with me, too. Glad you mentioned it, because I sometimes wonder if the icked out state I’ve been in for so long is due to the severe depression not lifting (hey……why hasn’t it with 3 years of Effexor?) and a combination of "the invalid factor". I actually sometimes wonder if in some bizarre way I don’t want to get better. However, in the last month or so I have realized that i do have a set up that is incredibly inviable, and could have a very nice life without a whole lot of stress if I could just shake this mental health thing. (get the BR2 thing at a manageable level) I have a pretty nice life pension with full medical benifits. I am allowed to work in my field and earn a nice bit of money without effecting the penison. I have a profession that can be done part time. there is no real reason not to "snap out of it," And yet I just can’t seem to get across the threashold. Your comments on effexor have given me pause for thought. Way back in the olden days, 1990-ish, I went on Prozac and stayed on it for 10 years. while it was not a silver bullit, I remember feeling immediatey better when I started it. (within the first month or 2.) When they finally put me on a mood stabelizer a year and a half ago…. I felt immediately better relatively soon……and hopeful for the first time in a very long time. Now, re: the Effexor. I have never liked it and I just don’t think it’s the one for me. It’s been a constant series of taking my level down, with p-doc’s acceptance after the fact due to the hand tremor and zombie effects. It just doesn’t feel right to me! I’ve discussed this with my p-doc, but I think it’s time to sit down with her and have in indepth discussion about other antidepressant oprions. Thanks for starting this thread, Gandalf. It’s clarified my situation a lot ! Maggie
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<Posted and Mailed Boy does your description ever sound familiar. I tapered off Effexor and went on Wellbutrin and it was 3 weeks of pure hell. It was all I could do to move my head around without feeling the brain zaps and the extreme dizziness. Maybe it’s the Effexor-Wellbutrin combo. What do you think?
I am NOT in favor of changing two meds simultaneously!!! IMO you should be slowly (and fully) tapered off a med BEFORE starting another. I am at least conservative in this pharmacological principle. Also I am a firm believer in the adage "Start with low dosages and titrate slowly." In addition I strongly believe in polypharmacy (the use of multiple mood stabilizers). I firmly believe if pdocs followed these rules, we would not be having so many problems with adverse side effects and achieving mood stability. For example I selected, titrated, and still use 5 psychotropics. The result – I no longer experience ANY mood swings. :0))) And they also control the absence seizures brought on by taking Depakote and lithium. Of course I can never fly or drive again. But that’s OK since I have no money for either. <G Janice
All the best from, James
Response:
Boy does your description ever sound familiar I tapered off effexor and went on wellbutrin and it was 3 weeks of pure hell. It was all I could do to move my head around without feeling the brain zaps and the extreme dizziness. Maybe its the effexor wellbutrin combo. What do you think? Janice
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes. Specifically what I’m been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday Radically increasing Seraquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Just finished researching Effexor withdrawal on the newsgroups and on the Internet, and once again the most accurate cutting edge information is in these newsgroups (the drug companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the recent admission that there is such a thing as antidepressant withdrawal). While the experience is still debilitating me I figure this is a good time to describe my personal experience, strength and hope about this. The first time that I went off Effexor I worked carefully with my doctor and tapered VERY slowly off the antidepressant. I had no symptoms whatsoever going off of it. This second time is EXTREMELY different for me. I was on Lithium both times, using various sleep medications both times. Only real different is that this time we’ve been tapering upwards on the Wellbutrin simultaneous to the taper down on the Effexor. Two very similar scenarios, two *very* different experiences. This time on Effexor, if I forgot a dose that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep. If I missed a dose, the next day I would begin to experience extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms by midmorning, painful enough that I would definitely remember to take it that morning (I never skipped 2 days in a row). I joked with my pdoc that I believed that this was a built-in characteristic of Effexor, put into the pharmaceutical nature of Effexor by the drug company so that people would stay hooked to the drug. My doctor was literally in stitches for 5 minutes. Ha, ha. [Now at $75 for a 15 minute appointment that means he owes me...] The withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the ones that I am experiencing now, listed below. Then (after taking 225 mg one day and 0 mg the next) the withdrawal symptoms were more severe than they are at the moment. But they went away completely about 3-4 hours after I took my next 225 mg dose. Now, after reading the anecdotal experience that I compendium-ed in the last post, I know that it may be 3 weeks before Alice can walk through the looking glass back into her living room. I must note that I did not get these dose-skipping withdrawal symptoms the first time I took Effexor. Also, there is really only two differences in the two Effexor regimens – (1) my 188 mg last time was divided into 2 doses (upon awakening and at 1pm), and (2) This time we increased it up to 225 before deciding to try a different AD. One change that I will definitely implement if I ever take Effexor again is to divide it into two daily doses like I did the first time. My pdoc didn’t believe that that would make any difference, and I now am suspicious. The posting that I just made aptly describes the Effexor withdrawal symptoms, sometimes in humorous terms. I’ll try to describe this delight in my own words. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very unpleasant] and (2) someone applying a [pulsing, it isn't steady] electric shock to your skin and 2 inches inward. It is a very "crazy-making" symptom. You have this pulsing-vibrating-nasty shock sensation on various random parts of your anatomy (you never know which part, but for me it is most often extremities: hands/fingers, lips, face, feet, inside my head, and then that wonderful full-body zap. * YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well. * FORGET THINKING. BETTER FORGET DRIVING TOO. Next in ugliness is *considerable* memory loss and a marginalized ability to do any higher order cognitive processes. Total lack of forest, only this tree, then that tree, and the next tree, and … remind me, what is a tree and why am I looking at it? You would not believe the mistakes that I have been making, and the things I’ve been forgetting. It has been not only embarrassing and aggravating it for me has been very expensive. Just say that a padded room where they serve you 3 squares a day and you can occasionally scream your head off at the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry, and at whatever moron you used to be that started taking this god-forsaken drug. * GASTROINTESTINAL DISTRESS. Diarrhea, lack of appetite, and all-around weirdness and uncertainty. * GUILT AND ANGER. "I must be imagining this." "It can’t be this bad, it wasn’t last time." "But I did everything right, and everything the pdoc told me to do. It must somehow be my fault." I wanted to document what this particular case study was like. This is very stressful and most of all very VERY bizarre. Also, this is what day… Thursday – Sunday = how many days? After I stopped taking the Effexor, and the symptoms haven’t even slowed down. THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Yea sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned. -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I can certainly relate to what you describe here about Effexor. I was on Effexor XR for several months last year. I tend to be antidepressant-resistant and have always had trouble finding one that would help me at all. The Effexor was starting to help – I could hardly believe it. Probably you (like I) are deficient in the norepinephrine neurotransmitter. However at about the same time I began having more and more trouble with my high blood pressure. I have taken blood pressure meds for years and had no trouble maintaining a safe blood pressure until now. Are you taking an ACE inhibitor? Hopefully NOT a beta blocker – since they are well known to cause depression!
I am taking Hyzaar and normally it controls my blood pressure very well. I had read that Effexor could cause blood pressure problems in some individuals. (Always a *very* small minority – right?) Well, in my case it came close to pushing me into heart attack range. I didn’t notice it at first but day by day I began feeling worse and got to the point that I had a hard time making it up a flight of stairs. I went to my regular physician and he immediately sent me out for a range of heart tests. It was not unusual for my blood pressure to be 198/102 and sometimes higher. Blood pressure elevation is a well-known adverse side effect of Effexor. The amount varies from individual-to-individual. Your pdoc should have warned you to be monitoring your pressure. Of course the higher the dose of Effexor, the greater the effect on blood pressure.
I was aware of this possible side effect and did discuss it with my pdoc before taking the Effexor. I was counting on (or hoping) that I would not be in the minority that can not take this because of blood pressure problems. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I went back to my pdoc with all this and he had me do a very fast tapering off of the Effexor. Lucky me, I was one of the minority that could not take this drug and this was the drug that was finally helping my depression. Now I had to deal with the withdrawal plus the high blood pressure. Bonnie, if you were taking lithium to stabilize manic episodes – there would have been a potential alternative for you. That’s assuming that your pdoc is not old-fashioned. There are anti-hypertensive meds called Calcium Channel Blockers (CCBs) that also have anti-manic properties. The most commonly prescribed is verapamil. It would have likely lowered your blood pressure while possibly allowing you to be weaned from lithium. For more information about CCBs please see my article on 25 mood-stabilizing meds.
My pdoc seems to be on the cutting edge of most therapies as far as I can tell anyway. I am currently taking Lamictal as a mood stabilizer. I am BP2 with primarily the depressive side of the illness. Only occasionally will I become hypomanic, however when I do it can become a big problem very quickly in many different ways. There is another alternative or adjunct to antidepressants. It is called Thyroid Augmentation Therapy. IMO it a highly under appreciated and insufficiently practiced method for treating refractory depression. See my article (Parts 1 and 2) for more details.
I have had several thyroid tests in the past year and so far I have been told that it would be best to not take anything such as what you are discussing. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I am not writing all this to scare anyone taking Effexor but I do think it is important that anyone on this drug be aware of some of the potential dangerous side effects. If I had not gone to my doctor when I did I very easily might not be here today. Many people can be unaware of blood pressure problems especially if they have not had them in the past. I think anyone taking this drug should make an effort to get their blood pressure checked occasionally just to be safe. Absolutely! I’m glad that you caught it in time – else you could have had a stroke, an aneurysm, or a heart attack. Just one more opinion from someone that has been there, Bonnie Wishing you all the very best from, James
Thank you James for your helpful information. I hope you are well. Bonnie
Response:
Although we may be on two sides of a fence it sounds like we are both on the same "lovely unadvertised effects . Effexor got me 75% cured of depressions, but that last 25% was debilitating. I need better results (particularly the Effexor didn’t bring my brain or energy level up to par).
You know, Gandalf, I’ve never really like Effexor in the 3 years I’ve been on it. The getting the brain speed up to par is right there with me, too. Glad you mentioned it, because I sometimes wonder if the icked out state I’ve been in for so long is due to the severe depression not lifting (hey……why hasn’t it with 3 years of Effexor?) and a combination of "the invalid factor". I actually sometimes wonder if in some bizarre way I don’t want to get better. However, in the last month or so I have realized that i do have a set up that is incredibly inviable, and could have a very nice life without a whole lot of stress if I could just shake this mental health thing. (get the BR2 thing at a manageable level) I have a pretty nice life pension with full medical benifits. I am allowed to work in my field and earn a nice bit of money without effecting the penison. I have a profession that can be done part time. there is no real reason not to "snap out of it," And yet I just can’t seem to get across the threashold. Your comments on effexor have given me pause for thought. Way back in the olden days, 1990-ish, I went on Prozac and stayed on it for 10 years. while it was not a silver bullit, I remember feeling immediatey better when I started it. (within the first month or 2.) When they finally put me on a mood stabelizer a year and a half ago…. I felt immediately better relatively soon……and hopeful for the first time in a very long time. Now, re: the Effexor. I have never liked it and I just don’t think it’s the one for me. It’s been a constant series of taking my level down, with p-doc’s acceptance after the fact due to the hand tremor and zombie effects. It just doesn’t feel right to me! I’ve discussed this with my p-doc, but I think it’s time to sit down with her and have in indepth discussion about other antidepressant oprions. Thanks for starting this thread, Gandalf. It’s clarified my situation a lot ! Maggie
Response:
The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal.
Very well said. I was taking 300mg a day (all in the am) along with topamax (cant remember the dosage) for about 6 months. I would miss doses here and there and usually ended up with a swirling head, headache, and pins and needles in my hands. But it seemed to relieve 75% of the symptoms. About 3 months ago, I decided I had enough of pill taking. I stopped the Effexor cold turkey. what a mistake. for about 3 weeks, i had constant dizziness, headache, irritability, confusion. I feel better now… I would like a new med, but I am hesitant to retry Effexor. It was the only med that worked for me so far (tried paxil and prozac).
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Very well said. I was taking 300mg a day (all in the am) along with topamax (cant remember the dosage) for about 6 months. I would miss doses here and there and usually ended up with a swirling head, headache, and pins and needles in my hands. But it seemed to relieve 75% of the symptoms. About 3 months ago, I decided I had enough of pill taking. I stopped the Effexor cold turkey. what a mistake. for about 3 weeks, i had constant dizziness, headache, irritability, confusion. I feel better now… I would like a new med, but I am hesitant to retry Effexor. It was the only med that worked for me so far (tried paxil and prozac).
If the med worked for you why are you hesitant to take it? c – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –
Response:
{{{{Gandalf}}}} I’m sorry that you’ve had such a hard time with your med change. I sincerely hope that it all works out for you. BTW – I took Effexor for one day and it made me hallucinate wildly. It was not the drug for me <g -Hilaire typed: – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes. Specifically what I’m been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday Radically increasing Seraquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Just finished researching Effexor withdrawal on the newsgroups and on the Internet, and once again the most accurate cutting edge information is in these newsgroups (the drug companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the recent admission that there is such a thing as antidepressant withdrawal). While the experience is still debilitating me I figure this is a good time to describe my personal experience, strength and hope about this. The first time that I went off Effexor I worked carefully with my doctor and tapered VERY slowly off the antidepressant. I had no symptoms whatsoever going off of it. This second time is EXTREMELY different for me. I was on Lithium both times, using various sleep medications both times. Only real different is that this time we’ve been tapering upwards on the Wellbutrin simultaneous to the taper down on the Effexor. Two very similar scenarios, two *very* different experiences. This time on Effexor, if I forgot a dose that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep. If I missed a dose, the next day I would begin to experience extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms by midmorning, painful enough that I would definitely remember to take it that morning (I never skipped 2 days in a row). I joked with my pdoc that I believed that this was a built-in characteristic of Effexor, put into the pharmaceutical nature of Effexor by the drug company so that people would stay hooked to the drug. My doctor was literally in stitches for 5 minutes. Ha, ha. [Now at $75 for a 15 minute appointment that means he owes me...] The withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the ones that I am experiencing now, listed below. Then (after taking 225 mg one day and 0 mg the next) the withdrawal symptoms were more severe than they are at the moment. But they went away completely about 3-4 hours after I took my next 225 mg dose. Now, after reading the anecdotal experience that I compendium-ed in the last post, I know that it may be 3 weeks before Alice can walk through the looking glass back into her living room. I must note that I did not get these dose-skipping withdrawal symptoms the first time I took Effexor. Also, there is really only two differences in the two Effexor regimens – (1) my 188 mg last time was divided into 2 doses (upon awakening and at 1pm), and (2) This time we increased it up to 225 before deciding to try a different AD. One change that I will definitely implement if I ever take Effexor again is to divide it into two daily doses like I did the first time. My pdoc didn’t believe that that would make any difference, and I now am suspicious. The posting that I just made aptly describes the Effexor withdrawal symptoms, sometimes in humorous terms. I’ll try to describe this delight in my own words. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very unpleasant] and (2) someone applying a [pulsing, it isn't steady] electric shock to your skin and 2 inches inward. It is a very "crazy-making" symptom. You have this pulsing-vibrating-nasty shock sensation on various random parts of your anatomy (you never know which part, but for me it is most often extremities: hands/fingers, lips, face, feet, inside my head, and then that wonderful full-body zap. * YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well. * FORGET THINKING. BETTER FORGET DRIVING TOO. Next in ugliness is *considerable* memory loss and a marginalized ability to do any higher order cognitive processes. Total lack of forest, only this tree, then that tree, and the next tree, and … remind me, what is a tree and why am I looking at it? You would not believe the mistakes that I have been making, and the things I’ve been forgetting. It has been not only embarrassing and aggravating it for me has been very expensive. Just say that a padded room where they serve you 3 squares a day and you can occasionally scream your head off at the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry, and at whatever moron you used to be that started taking this god-forsaken drug. * GASTROINTESTINAL DISTRESS. Diarrhea, lack of appetite, and all-around weirdness and uncertainty. * GUILT AND ANGER. "I must be imagining this." "It can’t be this bad, it wasn’t last time." "But I did everything right, and everything the pdoc told me to do. It must somehow be my fault." I wanted to document what this particular case study was like. This is very stressful and most of all very VERY bizarre. Also, this is what day… Thursday – Sunday = how many days? After I stopped taking the Effexor, and the symptoms haven’t even slowed down. THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Yea sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned. -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
Response:
I am not writing all this to scare anyone taking Effexor but I do think it is important that anyone on this drug be aware of some of the potential dangerous side effects. If I had not gone to my doctor when I did I very easily might not be here today. Many people can be unaware of blood pressure problems especially if they have not had them in the past. I think anyone taking this drug should make an effort to get their blood pressure checked occasionally just to be safe. Just one more opinion from someone that has been there, Bonnie
Bonnie: Sorry to hear that the one anti-depressant that started to help had to be eliminated for you. That’s one of the most frustrating things about this better living through chemistry search. I have to echo you comments about the Effexor can raise your blood pressure thing. it was once of the things my p-doc stressed with me. It din’t raise my blood pressure, but it is one of the known dangers of the med. Best wishes. Maggie
Response:
Hello Gandalf, I can certainly relate to what you describe here about Effexor. I was on Effexor XR for several months last year. I tend to be antidepressant-resistant and have always had trouble finding one that would help me at all. The Effexor was starting to help – I could hardly believe it. However at about the same time I began having more and more trouble with my high blood pressure. I have taken blood pressure meds for years and had no trouble maintaining a safe blood pressure until now. I had read that Effexor could cause blood pressure problems in some individuals. (always a *very* small minority – right?) Well, in my case it came close to pushing me into heart attack range. I didn’t notice it at first but day by day I began feeling worse and got to the point that I had a hard time making it up a flight of stairs. I went to my regular physician and he immediately sent me out for a range of heart tests. It was not unusual for my blood pressure to be 198/102 and sometimes higher. I went back to my pdoc with all this and he had me do a very fast tapering off of the Effexor. Lucky me, I was one of the minority that could not take this drug and this was the drug that was finally helping my depression. Now I had to deal with the withdrawal plus the high blood pressure. I am not writing all this to scare anyone taking Effexor but I do think it is important that anyone on this drug be aware of some of the potential dangerous side effects. If I had not gone to my doctor when I did I very easily might not be here today. Many people can be unaware of blood pressure problems especially if they have not had them in the past. I think anyone taking this drug should make an effort to get their blood pressure checked occasionally just to be safe. Just one more opinion from someone that has been there, Bonnie —
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes. Specifically what I’m been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday Radically increasing Seraquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal.
<moderator snipped quoted material – please refer G.’s original post – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Yea sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned. -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
Response:
<Posted and Mailed Hello Gandalf, I can certainly relate to what you describe here about Effexor. I was on Effexor XR for several months last year. I tend to be antidepressant-resistant and have always had trouble finding one that would help me at all. The Effexor was starting to help – I could hardly believe it.
Probably you (like I) are deficient in the norepinephrine neurotransmitter. However at about the same time I began having more and more trouble with my high blood pressure. I have taken blood pressure meds for years and had no trouble maintaining a safe blood pressure until now.
Are you taking an ACE inhibitor? Hopefully NOT a beta blocker – since they are well known to cause depression! I had read that Effexor could cause blood pressure problems in some individuals. (Always a *very* small minority – right?) Well, in my case it came close to pushing me into heart attack range. I didn’t notice it at first but day by day I began feeling worse and got to the point that I had a hard time making it up a flight of stairs. I went to my regular physician and he immediately sent me out for a range of heart tests. It was not unusual for my blood pressure to be 198/102 and sometimes higher.
Blood pressure elevation is a well-known adverse side effect of Effexor. The amount varies from individual-to-individual. Your pdoc should have warned you to be monitoring your pressure. Of course the higher the dose of Effexor, the greater the effect on blood pressure. I went back to my pdoc with all this and he had me do a very fast tapering off of the Effexor. Lucky me, I was one of the minority that could not take this drug and this was the drug that was finally helping my depression. Now I had to deal with the withdrawal plus the high blood pressure.
Bonnie, if you were taking lithium to stabilize manic episodes – there would have been a potential alternative for you. That’s assuming that your pdoc is not old-fashioned. There are anti-hypertensive meds called Calcium Channel Blockers (CCBs) that also have anti-manic properties. The most commonly prescribed is verapamil. It would have likely lowered your blood pressure while possibly allowing you to be weaned from lithium. For more information about CCBs please see my article on 25 mood-stabilizing meds. There is another alternative or adjunct to antidepressants. It is called Thyroid Augmentation Therapy. IMO it a highly under appreciated and insufficiently practiced method for treating refractory depression. See my article (Parts 1 and 2) for more details. I am not writing all this to scare anyone taking Effexor but I do think it is important that anyone on this drug be aware of some of the potential dangerous side effects. If I had not gone to my doctor when I did I very easily might not be here today. Many people can be unaware of blood pressure problems especially if they have not had them in the past. I think anyone taking this drug should make an effort to get their blood pressure checked occasionally just to be safe.
Absolutely! I’m glad that you caught it in time – else you could have had a stroke, an aneurysm, or a heart attack. Just one more opinion from someone that has been there, Bonnie
Wishing you all the very best from, James
Response:
* YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well.
This happens with Lexapro withdrawal too. It’s really unpleasant. Molly — There was a young monk of Dundee Who complained that it hurt him to pee, He said, "Pax vobiscum, Now why won’t the piss come? I’m afraid I’ve the c-l-a-p."
Response:
<Posted and Emailed
I SEE THAT THE MODERATION SOFTWARE HAS ONCE AGAIN FOULED UP ONE OF MY LENGTHY POSTS!!! APPARENTLY THERE MUST BE A 200-LINE LIMIT BEFORE IT GOES NUTS! <SIGH! So I will try to repeat the corrupted final portion. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very unpleasant] and (2) someone applying a [pulsing, it isn't steady] electric shock to your skin and 2 inches inward. It is a very "crazy-making" symptom. You have this pulsing-vibrating-nasty shock sensation on various random parts of your anatomy (you never know which part, but for me it is most often extremities: hands/fingers, lips, face, feet, inside my head, and then that wonderful full-body zap. * YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well. * FORGET THINKING. BETTER FORGET DRIVING TOO. Next in ugliness is *considerable* memory loss and a marginalized ability to do any higher order cognitive processes. Total lack of forest, only this tree, then that tree, and the next tree, and … remind me, what is a tree and why am I looking at it? You would not believe the mistakes that I have been making, and the things I’ve been forgetting. It has been not only embarrassing and aggravating it for me has been very expensive. Just say that a padded room where they serve you 3 squares a day and you can occasionally scream your head off at the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry, and at whatever moron you used to be that started taking this god-forsaken drug. * GASTROINTESTINAL DISTRESS. Diarrhea, lack of appetite, and all-around weirdness and uncertainty.
All these foregoing symptoms are mentioned as possible discontinuation effects of Effexor XR. See pp. 32-33 of the above cited reference. * GUILT AND ANGER. "I must be imagining this." "It can’t be this bad, it wasn’t last time." "But I did everything right, and everything the pdoc told me to do. It must somehow be my fault."
No, it was HIS fault by telling you take it once per day and telling you to take too much! Your only mistake was skipping a dose. I strongly suggest you use a 7-day see-through pill container to prevent that from reoccurring. I wanted to document what this particular case study was like. This is very stressful and most of all very VERY bizarre. Also, this is what day… Thursday – Sunday = how many days? After I stopped taking the Effexor, and the symptoms haven’t even slowed down. THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.
But your reactions were extreme and I firmly believe worsened by your pdoc’s improper prescribing of Effexor XR for you. Yeah sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned.
Why pray tell would you do it over again??? -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
I do hope that you can get rid of these very disturbing effects! Here’s what you can do if they don’t … break open a capsule of Effexor XR and spread out the "tiny time pills" and divide them roughly into 5 portions. Spread one portion on some applesauce. Swallow – but do NOT chew! See if that doesn’t relieve your symptoms after about 5 hours. If not – repeat taking another portion about every 5 hours. I believe you were ramped off Effexor XR too rapidly and you are suffering the consequences – particularly if you used the standard 2-week discontinuance protocol. Please let me know how you respond and I will try to suggest a more conservative tapering schedule. Wishing you all the very best from, James D. Milton, Ph.D., Sc.D.
Response:
<Posted and Emailed I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes.
Gandalf, I emailed you a month or so ago (after my own MacroSloth problems) – but I guess you never got it. Specifically what I’m been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin
I presume this is Wellbutrin SR which is taken twice daily. For more information please see: http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_wellbutrinSR.pdf Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday
I presume this is Effexor XR which SHOULD be taken twice daily if you don’t want to run into problems! For more information please see: http://www.wyeth.com/content/ShowLabeling.asp?id=100 According to the Prescribing Information, the half-life of venlafaxline is 5 (plus or minus 2) hours and the only active metabolite ODV is 11 (plus or minus 2) hours. Consequently taking Effexor XR only once per day is insufficient from a biochemical standpoint IMO. FYI I take Effexor XR BID. Yes, I fully realize that the Prescribing Information says that you can take Effexor XR only once per day – but some patients will have all sorts of problems if they do so! They are the ones whose metabolisms are much faster than normal. Lets assume that they are 2 standard deviations faster than normal. Then the half-life of venlafaxline for them is only 1 hour and the half-life of ODV is 7 hours. Clearly these individuals should be taking Effexor at least twice per day! The advantage of Effexor XR is that it increases norepinephrine as well as serotonin. SSRIs do nothing for me (other than sending me manic). But I lack sufficient norepinephrine (adrenaline for the brain). If I take too much Effexor XR, I will get bruxism (grinding of the teeth) and tension in my leg muscles. The maximum dose of Effexor XR I can tolerate is 37.5 mg BID. It only stands to reason that it is better to take 2 smaller doses rather than one larger 75 mg dose once per day. Effexor XR is used in treating Depression, Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia). Radically increasing Seroquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg)
Surely there are sleeping meds far less potent than the powerful antipsychotic Seroquel with fewer adverse side effects??? Have you ever tried the sleeping aid Sonata? Please see: http://www.sonata.com/pdf/Physician_PI.pdf I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Just finished researching Effexor withdrawal on the newsgroups and on the Internet, and once again the most accurate cutting edge information is in these newsgroups (the drug companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the recent admission that there is such a thing as antidepressant withdrawal). While the experience is still debilitating me I figure this is a good time to describe my personal experience, strength and hope about this.
Many psychotropic meds have severe withdrawal symptoms – Paxil and Klonopin (clonazepam) just to name a couple. Withdrawal symptoms vary considerably from individual to individual. Just as withdrawing from nicotine addiction does. The first time that I went off Effexor, I worked carefully with my doctor and tapered VERY slowly off the antidepressant. I had no symptoms whatsoever going off of it. This second time is EXTREMELY different for me. I was on Lithium both times, using various sleep medications both times. Only real difference is that this time we’ve been tapering upwards on the Wellbutrin simultaneously to the taper down on the Effexor. Two very similar scenarios, two *very* different experiences.
Wellbutrin increases the dopamine neurotransmitter. Some people find that this aids them in quitting smoking. Were you also trying to quit? This time on Effexor if I forgot a dose, that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep.
So you were taking Effexor XR only once a day? You must have been finding the norepinephrine to have an excessively stimulating effect on you. Thus it was interfering with your sleep. Clearly you were taking too large of a dose! The doses given in the Prescribing Information are only meant for a rough guideline. A competent pdoc ALWAYS adjusts the dosages according to how his/her patient is FEELING. To blindly follow what the PDR says is the height of INCOMPETENCY! Cookbook recipes don’t work for us! In case pdocs haven’t noticed, we are not COOKIES! We are individual humans with each one of us having individualistic reactions to EVERY psychiatric med! DUH!!! – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If I missed a dose, the next day I would begin to experience extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms by midmorning, painful enough that I would definitely remember to take it that morning (I never skipped 2 days in a row). I joked with my pdoc that I believed that this was a built-in characteristic of Effexor, put into the pharmaceutical nature of Effexor by the drug company so that people would stay hooked to the drug. My doctor was literally in stitches for 5 minutes. Ha, ha. [Now at $75 for a 15 minute appointment that means he owes me...] The withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the ones that I am experiencing now, listed below. Then (after taking 225 mg one day and 0 mg the next) the withdrawal symptoms were more severe than they are at the moment. But they went away completely about 3-4 hours after I took my next 225 mg dose. Now, after reading the anecdotal experience that I compendium-ed in the last post, I know that it may be 3 weeks before Alice can walk through the looking glass back into her living room.
Your problems were compounded by: (1) Taking too large of a dose of Effexor XR for YOU. (2) Not taking a smaller total dose and dividing it up into 2 equal daily portions – so that you would not have gotten such a "spike" of norepinephrine into your system. I believe this large spike caused your system to develop a dependency for it and exacerbated your withdrawal symptoms. In essence your pdoc got you "hooked" on this stimulant. I must note that I did not get these dose-skipping withdrawal symptoms the first time I took Effexor. Also, there is really only two differences in the two Effexor regimens – (1) my 188 mg last time was divided into 2 doses (upon awakening and at 1 pm),
Why am I NOT surprised? But you really should strive for 12 hours between doses in order to keep the vanafaxline and ODV levels as nearly constant as feasible. You could take even smaller doses TID (every 8 hours) for even better results. Pharmaceutical companies know that people prefer taking meds once per day rather than twice per day. IMO that is the ONLY reason they recommend Effexor XR for once daily dosing. That would be fine for people with slow metabolisms – but it is NOT fine for those with fast metabolisms! Obviously they put marketing before patient welfare. :0( and (2) This time we increased it up to 225 before deciding to try a different AD. One change that I will definitely implement if I ever take Effexor again is to divide it into two daily doses like I did the first time. My pdoc didn’t believe that would make any difference, and I now am suspicious.
Obviously he knows NOTHING about biochemistry and the effects of short to moderate half-lifes and the effect of metabolism rates! If I were you, I would get a new pdoc. IMO only about half of them are competent to practice. They frequently do more harm than good. :0((( The posting that I just made aptly describes the Effexor withdrawal symptoms, sometimes in humorous terms. I’ll try to describe this delight in my own words. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very
XR and spread out the "tiny time pills" and divide them roughly into 5 portions. Spread one portion on some applesauce. Do NOT chew! See if that doesn't relieve your symptoms after about 5 hours. If not repeat taking another portion about every 5 hours. I believe you were ramped off Effexor XR too rapidly and you are suffering the consequences - particularly if you used the standard 2-week discontinuance schedule. Let me know how you respond and I will try to come up with a more conservative tapering schedule. Wishing you all the very best from, James D. Milton, Ph.D., Sc.D.
Response:
Although we may be on two sides of a fence it sounds like we are both on the same "lovely unadvertised effects of Effexor" fence. That is why I decided to pay the cost of moving to Wellbutrin. Effexor got me 75% cured of depressions, but that last 25% was debilitating. I need better results (particularly the Effexor didn't bring my brain or energy level up to par). There is no way this dance with the pdoc, the illness, and the medications is an easy one (and that leaves out the clueless relatives and spouses). Some people are inexplicably lucky, but it sounds like you and I are not in that group. Right at the moment because of changing 4 drugs at once it is difficult for me to keep up with which new symptom belongs to which new change in medication. Hand tremors from the temporary increase of Lithium, terrible insomnia from the Wellbutrin, Effexor withdrawal, and pea soup for brains from the Seraquel. Or is it ... I wrote this in a thread about all this on asdm: .. this is a situation where we are damned if we do and (in my case) either dead or institutionalized if you don't. Sometimes I have this sort of Star Trek Next Generation fantasy where I imagine what it will be like in the year 2500 when people look back on psychiatric treatment as it is now and laughingly compare it with the neanderthal medical practice of boring holes into people's skulls when they had a migraine. Same kind of thing, in a way. I'm certain that some quack boring a hole in your skull might take your attention both off your migraine and the high fatality rate for that procedure. All this medication hoopla takes our mind off of our suffering by giving us a new kind of suffering. ... -Gandalf (who would like to bore a few holes in pharmacy company CEO skulls to see if the evil demons come out) ...
The reason I'm taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal.
Gandalf: A report from the other side of the forrest. I was starting to cycle down after doing remarkably well. They told me to up my Effexor. In the last week or so I have felt like a Zombie. My Goldberg depression score was 65 today, up from 11 last month. I've been sleeping about 16 hours a day, usually in 3 segments. I missed my therapist appointment on Monday because I didn't realize it was Monday. I have been sitting around doing nothing. When I started this S%^t a few years ago i was so zombied out that I'd be out of cigarettes for 4-5 days and not even have the will to leave the house to go out and get more. In additon, I cut my effexor down sometime in recent memory because it gave me hand tremor so badly that my handwriting didn't look anything like it used to. I also experience more "senior moments" at a higher does.....you know.......I'm headed somewhere in the house to get or do something and can't remember why. Not thrilled. Maggie.
Response:
Gandalf, you've described my experience withdrawing from Effexor to a tee. I take 225 mg. in 3 time release capsules in the morning, roughly the same time every morning. If I forget, I'm light-headed by the next morning and getting queasy, and that's when I realize I must've forgotten them the day before. Within about an hour to 3 hrs. after taking them that second day, I'm feeling fine. A couple times I've thought I had another bottle in the cabinet, only to realize I'm indeed finishing up the third bottle--I get them in 3 month supply--and once I was without any for four days. I kept thinking I'd get better, only to find that the next day was even worse. Visual distortion is something very peculiar to add to the list; rectangular tables slowly changing into diamond-shaped tables, or maybe round, and who cares anyway because the floor is moving and the walls are waving in slow motion and I'm going to throw up. I was ready for the hospital by the time I was able to send a friend to my doctor for some samples. Then I took my 3 caps, was no better by late afternoon, and took another dose to boost my level. By that night my guts had stopped churning and the room was beginning to stay more still and I could actually lift my head without throwing up. You're right, it's hideous. My depression is too immobilizing when I'm not on them, though, and I feel good when I take them--along w/ some coffee in the morning--so I'm going to just be sure I'm never EVER without that drug! It is a wonder drug for me. Good to hear from you, Gandalf! Kathy F. p.s. would you send us a link to the site you've found concerning ad withdrawal?
- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text - I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes. Specifically what I'm been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday Radically increasing Seraquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I'm taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Just finished researching Effexor withdrawal on the newsgroups and on the Internet, and once again the most accurate cutting edge information is in these newsgroups (the drug companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the recent admission that there is such a thing as antidepressant withdrawal). While the experience is still debilitating me I figure this is a good time to describe my personal experience, strength and hope about this. The first time that I went off Effexor I worked carefully with my doctor and tapered VERY slowly off the antidepressant. I had no symptoms whatsoever going off of it. This second time is EXTREMELY different for me. I was on Lithium both times, using various sleep medications both times. Only real different is that this time we've been tapering upwards on the Wellbutrin simultaneous to the taper down on the Effexor. Two very similar scenarios, two *very* different experiences. This time on Effexor, if I forgot a dose that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep. If I missed a dose, the next day I would begin to experience extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms by midmorning, painful enough that I would definitely remember to take it that morning (I never skipped 2 days in a row). I joked with my pdoc that I believed that this was a built-in characteristic of Effexor, put into the pharmaceutical nature of Effexor by the drug company so that people would stay hooked to the drug. My doctor was literally in stitches for 5 minutes. Ha, ha. [Now at $75 for a 15 minute appointment that means he owes me...] The withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the ones that I am experiencing now, listed below. Then (after taking 225 mg one day and 0 mg the next) the withdrawal symptoms were more severe than they are at the moment. But they went away completely about 3-4 hours after I took my next 225 mg dose. Now, after reading the anecdotal experience that I compendium-ed in the last post, I know that it may be 3 weeks before Alice can walk through the looking glass back into her living room. I must note that I did not get these dose-skipping withdrawal symptoms the first time I took Effexor. Also, there is really only two differences in the two Effexor regimens – (1) my 188 mg last time was divided into 2 doses (upon awakening and at 1pm), and (2) This time we increased it up to 225 before deciding to try a different AD. One change that I will definitely implement if I ever take Effexor again is to divide it into two daily doses like I did the first time. My pdoc didn’t believe that that would make any difference, and I now am suspicious. The posting that I just made aptly describes the Effexor withdrawal symptoms, sometimes in humorous terms. I’ll try to describe this delight in my own words. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very unpleasant] and (2) someone applying a [pulsing, it isn't steady] electric shock to your skin and 2 inches inward. It is a very "crazy-making" symptom. You have this pulsing-vibrating-nasty shock sensation on various random parts of your anatomy (you never know which part, but for me it is most often extremities: hands/fingers, lips, face, feet, inside my head, and then that wonderful full-body zap. * YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well. * FORGET THINKING. BETTER FORGET DRIVING TOO. Next in ugliness is *considerable* memory loss and a marginalized ability to do any higher order cognitive processes. Total lack of forest, only this tree, then that tree, and the next tree, and … remind me, what is a tree and why am I looking at it? You would not believe the mistakes that I have been making, and the things I’ve been forgetting. It has been not only embarrassing and aggravating it for me has been very expensive. Just say that a padded room where they serve you 3 squares a day and you can occasionally scream your head off at the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry, and at whatever moron you used to be that started taking this god-forsaken drug. * GASTROINTESTINAL DISTRESS. Diarrhea, lack of appetite, and all-around weirdness and uncertainty. * GUILT AND ANGER. "I must be imagining this." "It can’t be this bad, it wasn’t last time." "But I did everything right, and everything the pdoc told me to do. It must somehow be my fault." I wanted to document what this particular case study was like. This is very stressful and most of all very VERY bizarre. Also, this is what day… Thursday – Sunday = how many days? After I stopped taking the Effexor, and the symptoms haven’t even slowed down. THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Yea sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned. -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
Response:
I have been on a brief hiatus here at asdm/m, having major computer problems (screw Microsoft), and getting swept up in medication changes. Specifically what I’m been going through: Increasing lithium to provide safe margin of error for other changes (getting my level up to 1.0 or thereabouts) Slowly coming up to 300 mg (standard therapeutic dose) Wellbutrin Tapering off Effexor, very slowly, last dose on Sunday Radically increasing Seraquel for sleep (from 6.25 mg for insomnia to 100 mg) I have been feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal. Just finished researching Effexor withdrawal on the newsgroups and on the Internet, and once again the most accurate cutting edge information is in these newsgroups (the drug companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the recent admission that there is such a thing as antidepressant withdrawal). While the experience is still debilitating me I figure this is a good time to describe my personal experience, strength and hope about this. The first time that I went off Effexor I worked carefully with my doctor and tapered VERY slowly off the antidepressant. I had no symptoms whatsoever going off of it. This second time is EXTREMELY different for me. I was on Lithium both times, using various sleep medications both times. Only real different is that this time we’ve been tapering upwards on the Wellbutrin simultaneous to the taper down on the Effexor. Two very similar scenarios, two *very* different experiences. This time on Effexor, if I forgot a dose that meant that I skipped it that day. I took it, all 225 mg of it, first thing in the morning because of the negative effect that taking it later in the day had on my sleep. If I missed a dose, the next day I would begin to experience extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms by midmorning, painful enough that I would definitely remember to take it that morning (I never skipped 2 days in a row). I joked with my pdoc that I believed that this was a built-in characteristic of Effexor, put into the pharmaceutical nature of Effexor by the drug company so that people would stay hooked to the drug. My doctor was literally in stitches for 5 minutes. Ha, ha. [Now at $75 for a 15 minute appointment that means he owes me...] The withdrawal symptoms were very similar to the ones that I am experiencing now, listed below. Then (after taking 225 mg one day and 0 mg the next) the withdrawal symptoms were more severe than they are at the moment. But they went away completely about 3-4 hours after I took my next 225 mg dose. Now, after reading the anecdotal experience that I compendium-ed in the last post, I know that it may be 3 weeks before Alice can walk through the looking glass back into her living room. I must note that I did not get these dose-skipping withdrawal symptoms the first time I took Effexor. Also, there is really only two differences in the two Effexor regimens – (1) my 188 mg last time was divided into 2 doses (upon awakening and at 1pm), and (2) This time we increased it up to 225 before deciding to try a different AD. One change that I will definitely implement if I ever take Effexor again is to divide it into two daily doses like I did the first time. My pdoc didn’t believe that that would make any difference, and I now am suspicious. The posting that I just made aptly describes the Effexor withdrawal symptoms, sometimes in humorous terms. I’ll try to describe this delight in my own words. * ELECTRIC ZAPS. The worst, by far for me, is the zap. Constant, mild to moderate tingling at the extremities and inside my head. But "tingling" is several orders of magnitude less than this experience. The sensation itself is about halfway between (1) the feeling you have in your foot/hand when it has gone to sleep and now the blood is slowly coming back into the limb [very unpleasant] and (2) someone applying a [pulsing, it isn't steady] electric shock to your skin and 2 inches inward. It is a very "crazy-making" symptom. You have this pulsing-vibrating-nasty shock sensation on various random parts of your anatomy (you never know which part, but for me it is most often extremities: hands/fingers, lips, face, feet, inside my head, and then that wonderful full-body zap. * YOUR HEAD IS A PIN-BALL GAME THAT IS ALWAYS ON TILT. Second worse for me is the tilt. Dizzy, spacey, the world-keeps-tilting-vertigo head. I have been avoiding driving, reading, deciding, walking (that makes it worse), etc. Instead I have been sitting most of the day at the computer, because it takes my mind off this sensation and distracts me more thoroughly than anything else. Watching TV gets very strange and doesn’t work as well. * FORGET THINKING. BETTER FORGET DRIVING TOO. Next in ugliness is *considerable* memory loss and a marginalized ability to do any higher order cognitive processes. Total lack of forest, only this tree, then that tree, and the next tree, and … remind me, what is a tree and why am I looking at it? You would not believe the mistakes that I have been making, and the things I’ve been forgetting. It has been not only embarrassing and aggravating it for me has been very expensive. Just say that a padded room where they serve you 3 squares a day and you can occasionally scream your head off at the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry, and at whatever moron you used to be that started taking this god-forsaken drug. * GASTROINTESTINAL DISTRESS. Diarrhea, lack of appetite, and all-around weirdness and uncertainty. * GUILT AND ANGER. "I must be imagining this." "It can’t be this bad, it wasn’t last time." "But I did everything right, and everything the pdoc told me to do. It must somehow be my fault." I wanted to document what this particular case study was like. This is very stressful and most of all very VERY bizarre. Also, this is what day… Thursday – Sunday = how many days? After I stopped taking the Effexor, and the symptoms haven’t even slowed down. THIS DRUG IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Yea sure, you might get lucky like I was the first time. But if you look around you’ll see that the odds are remarkably bad. If I had to do it over, given the knowledge that I had at the time, I would do it again even knowing that it would end with this weirdness. But if you don’t particularly do well with weirdness, be forewarned. -Gandalf (who will now go lie down until the screen stops spinning)
Response:
The reason I’m taking time to post now is to warn people about Effexor withdrawal.
Gandalf: A report from the other side of the forrest. I was starting to cycle down after doing remarkably well. They told me to up my Effexor. In the last week or so I have felt like a Zombie. My Goldberg depression score was 65 today, up from 11 last month. I’ve been sleeping about 16 hours a day, usually in 3 segments. I missed my therapist appointment on Monday because I didn’t realize it was Monday. I have been sitting around doing nothing. When I started this S%^t a few years ago i was so zombied out that I’d be out of cigarettes for 4-5 days and not even have the will to leave the house to go out and get more. In additon, I cut my effexor down sometime in recent memory because it gave me hand tremor so badly that my handwriting didn’t look anything like it used to. I also experience more "senior moments" at a higher does…..you know…….I’m headed somewhere in the house to get or do something and can’t remember why. Not thrilled. Maggie.
Response:
