Posted by sassyjenw on June 15, 2004, at 18:21:25
In reply to Re: Effexor Discontinuation--rebound anxiety panic, posted by Buckeye Fan on June 15, 2004, at 17:45:05
Sure thing. Well, I feel horrible. In fact, I was surfing around and realized that I may have tapered too fast from 17 mg down to virutally nothing, so I opened up a pill and counted the little beads inside to determine that approximately two beads equals one milligram. So then I opened up all the pills I had left and dumped all the beads together into a bowl. I then put reduced doses back into the gel caps in amounts of 10 mg for seven days, 7.5 mg for seven days, 5 mg for seven days, and 2.5 mg for seven days. I plan to taper on this schedule and see if that helps. But so far, I've been back on 10 mg for two days, and I still feel awful. Not feeling so depressed anymore finally, but I do feel extremely nauseated, am having diarrhea, feel feverish and shaky. I just feel sick.
I had severe problems with depression after I got below 37.5 mg. I was actually suicidal, and like you, I have never had problems with depression like that in my life. It scared me. That's when I called my doctor, who advised me to open up the capsules and taper more slowly.
I felt severely depressed while tapering off for about a month, but am past that now, so it does go away. However, while I was depressed, I did not experience any symptoms of anxiety, and also did not have any physical discomfort. I have both severe anxiety and flu-like symptoms now, but I don't feel depressed, which is a blessing.
I am going to try some supplements I found online called bcalmed which consist of a mixture of things like b vitamins and such that are supposed to help with anxiety.Are you doing anything besides just waiting it out? According to what I am reading, it could take up to 7 weeks or more to get rid of these symptoms, and I just don't have that kind of time!
poster:sassyjenw
thread:356431
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040614/msgs/357016.html