Okay, so this is day 2 on the step down program from the doctor on getting off of the Effexor. Holy CRAP!!
I had experienced before when I was late for a dose of what people are referring to as "Brain Snaps". I called it drunk brain. If I was late with a dose, I would get ringing in my ears and if I moved my head or even just my eyes too quickly, it took a few seconds for the brain to catch up and everything ended up in a stop and go pattern until my brain caught up to my head or my eyes. That has happened the few times I was drunk, hence I call it drunk brain.
Apparently, this is the major side effect of coming down off Effexor. Effexor is one of the most prescribed anti-depressants in North America, but none of the literature speaks about this!
Effexor has a 4 hour "half-life", which means if you are late or miss a dose, you start experiencing withdrawl symptoms in as little as 4 hours from when your body expected that last hit.
Wow!!
Scary! And they regularly prescribe this shit to people!
So, The dr. cut my drug in half for 1 week, then go to every other day for a week then nothing.
I have had a headache for all of yesterday and today and last night at bed time it was brutal! My jaw was aching and I had serious muscle twitching, runny nose, etc. Fearing the flu, but remembering what the pharmacist had said - "people tend to feel flu-like symtoms for a few days when decreasing this medication" I decided to do some research on reducing Effexor.
HOLY CRAP!! Don't even start it folks!! Stay far, far away!!
The muscle twitches, nasal drip, headache and drunk brain are all common side effects/withdrawl symptoms for 90% of the people who commented on boards, webMD.com, etc. NONE of it is mentioned in the literature!!!
The scary thing for me is that many of these people are saying that even without the drug in them for a month or more, they are still experiencing the dizzy spells, headaches, etc!! There seems to be a permanent brain wave change.
Not cool.
I wanted to post this so that if there was anyone out there who read this blog and were thinking about an anti-depressant, or have had their doctor recommend going on it, think twice and do loads of research of what you feel like going on and off the drug!!
3 comments:
Wow...that's tough!!!! Especially right now when your just getting everything up and running......
It's too bad you didn't know it sooner you could have timed it better on the going off stage.....
The few times I was on anti-depression meds it was just the light temporary stuff.....easy to go on and off of.......
I'm a little surprised they aren't having you step down more gradually and over a longer period of time. That's usually how they do it for these types of meds.
I'd recommend keeping a journal of how you feel and what your physical/mental/emotional symptoms are as you go along. This way you can look back and see how you've reacted and don't rely on memory. Then you can really evaluate how you are doing at your current step with how you were at whatever previous step without relying on memory.
John, that's a great idea! Journalling it would be better than by memory.
Bons - I wish that it were that simple!
The true downside to it all is that I'm unsure if the past two days were true flu (vomiting, diahreah, the whole thing) when they said that most people feel flu-like symptoms or not!
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