Posted by simon levane on February 17, 2006, at 14:36:56
In reply to Re: Please be civil » simon levane, posted by dancingstar on February 17, 2006, at 11:55:26
This is not an intrusion DancingStar.. Your sharing your experience helps others to see the risks involved. My daughter had been on Effexor XL since mid March and she killed herself in May one day after her dosage had been increased from 150 mgm to 300 mgms.
I tried to control her medications, and the last time I saw her alive was the night before when I handed her the two capsules. I left early for work the next day.. She apparently had an anxiety attack the next day and had called her mother (we are divorced), but I was not aware of this.
It is not an easy story to tell. She was troubled for a long time. She had a very serious personality disorder, but I was just too close up to what was happening and coping with her behaviours... she had Borderline Personality Disorder, and I was truly ignorant of this disorder... the doctors gave a vague explanation of what it meant and I just took what they said ..... I wish I had researched it in detail, but it simply did not seem life threatening, and it was as it was, and she was my daughter alive, doing her thing.. asking for things.. interacting with us, looking after her cats, --- just our life as it was imperfect, but it was our life.
She showed signs of her illness since she was 8 or 9 years old, but at that age it looked more to be her unique personality, her high spirit, her wish for attention, and her singleminded attitude about many things.. By the time she was 12, we faced serious problems..
My point is that we were not able get the kind of responsible care for her that she needed. She fell into bad contacts, and she kept things hidden and she was not trustworthy (I anguish over that still... I WANTED to trust her, but I could not. and I realize now how distant I was from understanding what was happening in her head. What she did not need was to have access to prescription drugs such as Ritalin or to be put on a risky anti-depressant without us realizing the risk. so many doctors gave her the Ritalin on the face of her presenting herself as a credible person (her skill at acting this as a lie), when they should not have been prescribing the ritalin without checking her medical history. I think she was deeply ashamed of her drug addiction though she used every wile she could to get drugs, and I simply did not understand what was happening though I called doctors and told them.. and they were too ignorant to advise us to get her into a drug rehab program.
At end, the drugs overcame her.. and she played out her imaginations about suicide in the subway in an impulse act.. not sure..... but I hear so many ancedotal reports of people feeling suicidal on Effexor.. and the ritalin did not help..
Had the medical system been better, this should not have happened..
so many victims now.. me, her sad mother, her grandfather... we are the walking wounded and the wound will never ever heal.....
SL> Please forgive me for the intrusion, SL. I think the problem is very complex. The reports upon which the decisions to prescribe these drugs are often based on three- to six-month studies, and it is my impression after reading hundreds of hours of material, that at least the manufacturer of Effexor was aware that things changed after that period of time. The results may be very different if there were more studies published using a one- two- or three-year time frame.
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> In my own case, it wasn't until I had taken Effexor for three to four months that I began to become very, very sleepy and in outrageous pain for no reason that I could think of, and it got worse as time went on.
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> Recently, I found out that since I stopped taking Effexor, though I take excellent care of my health, my entire endocrine system is out of balance, and virtually all of my hormones are quite low, my adrenals, thyroid, etc. I never even took Effexor for depression in the first place, but originally for back pain and to give me energy!
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> After doing a lot of reading, though I am admittedly not a medical professional nor a scientist, I have come to think that the way that Effexor works is to force certain areas of the body to work harder; thereby possibly putting pressure on other areas, causing them to become depleted. After a while, for many people, again, in my opinion, it seems like the whole process stops working properly, and it can cause severe depression among other serious problems.
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> But this is just my guess, and I would like for someone with a true and honest chemical background to examine my theory more closely.
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poster:simon levane
thread:601406
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060212/msgs/610628.html