Posted by howard laporte on April 30, 2004, at 17:16:18
In reply to Re: Does it ever end? When? » seeknsolace, posted by TanyaJean on April 30, 2004, at 13:55:36
I have been off of this med since October of last year. I had a daily dosage of 300mg and tapered it down to 50mg a day for the last two weeks before finally going off of it completely. The side effects even on this low of a dosage were devastating to me.
Yes, it took a long time for the effects to dissipate to where I could live with myself again (about 6 weeks). I had only been on the drug for a total of 6 months and it seemed to take forever for the brain zaps to go away. I have subsequently lost the weight and I have been off of all SSRI's since October. I have been through a little depression since then but nothing compared to the symptoms of which effexor put me through. During the withdrawals from effexor I was constantly nauseated, all my extremities hurt (like I had just been stretched on a rack!), but it was my head that hurt the most. It was hard to hold a thought long enough to act on it (except suicide).
Loratab helped me quite a bit during the 1st week (I would take 1-2 a day), benadryl didn't do squat for me. Cocaine works wonders, but its effects (addiction) can be just as scary as those of effexor, and I really wonder if I should advocate its use here except to say that in moderation, it worked for me.
It took a long time before I could even say to myself that I was feeling better. Effexor left my body very slowly and it seemed that just one day I woke-up and all was cool. There were many times that I almost started back on the drug just to forego the effects of withdrawal. I am glad to say that I finally won the battle against it and I feel healthier now than ever. I can still remember how it was on the drug and wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. I hope that this helps somewhat. This is the first post that I have put in here. I just found some documentation from this site in my desk draw and thought I would see if there were still people suffering from this shit out there.
poster:howard laporte
thread:1016
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040429/msgs/341917.html