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Re: Going through Effexor Withdrawl now

Posted by Blissful_Girl_NOT on December 31, 2003, at 15:46:48

In reply to Re: Going through Effexor Withdrawl now, posted by Bones3456 on December 31, 2003, at 15:21:20

Sorry to hear that you'll have to go through it all again. I made sure that I had absolutely no Effexor in the house when it was time for me to finish. I probably would have done the same thing you did if I'd had any. That's one of the sort of "addictive" qualities of this medication...a person will take more just to get the withdrawals to stop which just starts the whole cycle again.

You'll notice on this board that there is a pretty even split between people who think going cold turkey is best and people who think tapering is best. I personally think both methods work, although reading the historical posts on here, the tapering method seems to draw out the overall ill effects of the withdrawal symptoms although tapering seems to make those symptoms less severe. Cold turkey seems to cause pretty major withdrawal symptoms for approximately 3 or 4 days beginning about 3 days after stopping. I've also noticed that people who've gone cold turkey seem to start feeling better much sooner than those who taper off...but again, those who taper off seem to have less severe withdrawal symptoms.

How you get off of this drug ultimately lies with what you can tolerate. To give you an example, I tried for over ten years to quit smoking by tapering off of cigarettes...it was easier but I never did manage to completely quit that way. Finally, I went cold turkey...it was hard but I have not had a cigarette since and that was over 2.5 years ago. My physiology just does not do well with tapering off...but it does respond well to cold turkey. Personally, I'd rather have a high degree of suffering for a short period of time than a medium degree of suffering for a long period of time.

If you do decide to try cold turkey, ask your doctor if you can have a single 20mg dose of Prozac to take on the third day after your last dose of Effexor. Both my pdoc & my family doc agree that this is one of the best ways to alleviate the withdrawal problems associated with going cold turkey.

Again, I wish you all the best...I know that this is going to be tough no matter what approach you take but this too shall pass!

-Bliss


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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031231/msgs/295169.html