Posted by dancingstar on December 29, 2004, at 16:43:16
In reply to Re: New UK guidelines for anti-depressants... » SadMum, posted by cubic_me on December 28, 2004, at 9:19:48
I don't mean to disagree with most of what you are saying, but I think that England has got it right. Now that I am off Effexor which was incorrectly prescribed to me by a GP, not a Pdoc, and is one of the four most prescribed drugs in the US, I can say that I feel much healthier in every way. I have more energy, my pain is gone, I am no longer depressed, I have lost weight, I am beginning to heal from the neurological problems caused by the withdrawal as if I have had a moderate stroke and I am finally starting to pick up the pieces of my life after sleeping for nearly three years straight. I feel that GPs, Gynos, internists -- are not the doctors that should be prescribing this, as my current internist says, "poison." If it is one of the four most prescribed drugs, I can pretty safely say that most of us do not need to be taking it.
Only since I have stopped taking EffexorXR do I realize that my body has been caused neurological damage, that that is, in fact, the way Effexor works in the first place. Because it works on the central nervous system, it is possible that many people may be affected in a way similar to the way that I was affected by the drug, and from what I have read so far, the long-term affects of Effexor on depression aren't as good as they are in the first few months. The withdrawal problems, weight gain problems, stomach problems, fatigue problems...all highly under-reported. Trying to rebuild my neural pathways and to decrease the level of anxiety to live my life calmly after I stopped taking Effexor was sheer hell. I imagine that the 2 percent rate reported is more like 20 percent to 65 percent, but at this point we don't really know the statistics because of the more recent increase in the number of people taking Effexor that haven't any idea of the havoc it is wreaking on their bodies. When you stop taking it, it leaves huge gaps in the body and mind that take months to repair. It is for that reason that I feel that it is a dreadful, horrid drug. It had me thinking all kinds of things were wrong with me that weren't, and I hadn't a clue -- not even a glimmer that any of these problems were caused by Effexor until I stopped taking it, and then, through the nausea and headaches and vomiting, and colitis, shivering and pain...each one of the health problems that I had developed over the course of the three years that I had taken EffexorXR slowly began to evaporate, one by one. It's blown me away. I'm still amazed as each day I continue to regain my health.
I say Hooray for England's new therapy and exercise policy. Everyone is too quick to simply take a pill. With pages and pages of side effects that never seem to make it to the attention of our doctors, those pills are more likely to kill us than cure us.
Oh, goodness, was this yet another not civil post?
poster:dancingstar
thread:425166
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041228/msgs/435400.html