Posted by lunameow on February 24, 2006, at 17:01:50
In reply to Anyone had success on Effexor XR? , posted by jp on October 24, 1999, at 14:59:14
I went on it as a last resort. My doc had been putting me on antidepressants, which were okay, but I felt that anxiety was a much bigger issue for me, and things like Lexapro and Wellbutrin just weren't working for that. I needed something specifically for GAD. And so we tried Effexor. It worked. I didn't really feel anxious anymore. It also helped with my anger management issues. And I didn't feel depressed, either. But I also didn't feel happy, didn't feel energetic, didn't feel even remotely like having sex with my fiance... in short, I just didn't FEEL. At all. I used to draw, paint, write, and so forth. I've always been an extremely creative person. I had just bought new paints when I first went on medication however many years ago that was... they're still sitting on the shelf, unopened. I stopped being me, and became what society thinks I'm supposed to be. I'd say I hated every second of it, but I didn't. I couldn't have felt an emotion that strong at the time.
Then my job had massive layoffs, resulting in my no longer having insurance. Effexor is extremely expensive without insurance, so I talked to my doctor about this, and about the fact that I didn't like being on it anyway. And so he took me off of it. His advice was to go from 150mg/day to 150mg every other day for two weeks, then stop. I'd already been taking it that way (to conserve pills, since I was losing insurance), so he told me to go ahead and stop taking it.
That was Tuesday, today is Friday. The last two days have consisted of nothing but sleeping and crying. When I'm awake, I twitch and shiver. I stumble around the apartment bumping into walls and doorways. When I start to feel too much like I'm about to freak out, I go back to bed to avoid picking up every bottle of leftover medication I have and taking it all at once. I hate this. The only thing that keeps me going at all is knowing that this is temporary, and I'll feel better soon.
The only thing I can really say I gained from taking it in the first place is that I now know that I don't ever want to be on any sort of psychotropic drug ever again. Nothing. Ever.
I've had anxiety problems for as far back as I can remember, and I've dealt with them for my entire life. I'd rather go back to that than to ever go through this again. I'm sure it's great for people who don't mind living like that. For a lot of people, even without medication, that's just how their life is. But I'm the type of person who is very passionate about life and living, and Effexor (and the other drugs as well) took that away from me. It wasn't worth the trade-off.
poster:lunameow
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060219/msgs/612873.html