Posted by Elizabeth on December 10, 2001, at 10:55:16
In reply to Re: high-dose Effexor - anyone? » Elizabeth, posted by Cam W. on December 9, 2001, at 22:14:57
Cam --
Thanks for posting about your response to various doses of Effexor. That was pretty encouraging to read, overall -- sounds like there were some problems but you worked them out, which is the best that I generally feel I can hope for. (Things that don't have side effects don't seem to have much effect at all, in my experience!)
Lethargy wasn't a side effect I ran into on SSRIs or Effexor, although having more trouble getting out of bed in the morning would be a problem for me. I often wake up early and am completely unable to sleep, but getting up for me is almost always a major effort (butt dragging, as you say) -- MAOIs helped with that, which I liked.
Believe it or not, I've rarely had sexual problems from ADs -- I seem to be in the minority here. I did try Effexor XR once before (got up to 225 mg, backed down to 187.5 when I started getting overly wired/possibly hypomanic, then had an episode of ?serotonin syndrome? which scared me away, now hoping to fend off any serious reactions) and didn't have this problem on it.
Re emotional lability: are you bipolar or anything like that? I haven't had this problem from ADs at all that I can think of, although it has been a withdrawal symptom. (It also happened when Nardil pooped out, but I sort of conceptualize what happened there as withdrawal. Have you ever heard of people getting better on MAOIs at first, then getting very dysphoric after a while? My doctor thought it might have been a mixed (hypo)mania, but anticonvulsants didn't help.)
I'm thinking that Effexor + a stimulant might work for me too, but I'm currently stuck living in a place where I may have trouble convincing a pdoc to prescribe even something fairly common like Dexedrine. This move is taking some major adjusting for me. I'm used to pdocs who listen to my ideas and don't just view me as a passive object for them to manipulate. I've also found the pdocs I've encountered here to be very inflexible, which is very bad for me because I need somebody who's willing to continue prescribing the buprenorphine that I've been taking for a year (and of course, I have tried most of the conventional things and need some room to experiment). I'm just having trouble figuring out how to talk to the pdocs here -- you know?
> I hope that this is what you were looking for, Liz.
Very helpful, as usual! Thanks!
(But for future reference: I prefer "Elizabeth." :-) )
-e
poster:Elizabeth
thread:86308
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011202/msgs/86452.html