Posted by sick kitty on March 22, 2008, at 22:50:42
In reply to Effexor withdrawal symptoms!, posted by Becky on October 2, 1999, at 22:03:30
I just went through the effexor w/d's. I have some advice. I'm actually going around to different boards and putting up with annoying registration procedures just to tell people about this, because effexor w/d sucks so badly, and I hope that this will help at least a few people.
a) fantasize about suing the company (well, ok, it doesn't work that well, but try it anyway)
b) Get yourself a custom taper pack. Here's how:
Find a compounding pharmacy near you. Chain pharmacies don't usually compound, but most surviving independents do, otherwise they'd be out of business. Ask your chain pharmacist; s/he will know where to find the local pharmacy that will compound for you.
Have your doctor write a prescription and send it to the compounding pharmacy instructing them to take apart your own effexor capsules and make them into a new set of capsules for you. The prescription should look like this:
37 mg for 3 days
19 mg for 3 days
10 mg for 3 days
5 mg for 3 days
3 mg for 3 days
2 mg for 3 days
Change the starting dose to whatever you are taking currently. The idea is to keep cutting the dose in half each time and round up. Note that you can actually pull the capsules apart yourself and do this, but the compounding pharmacy will do a more accurate job than you will, and they have extra capsules and handy labels. And face it, if you're in effexor w/d, you can use all the help you can get.Make sure that you get in touch by phone with the pharmacy so they know what they are doing for you and why, and get some of your effexor to to save money. Also, they will probably tell you that they can't promise that the doses will be that accurate. Just tell them that it's fine with you as long as they do a better job than you could do yourself. :)
You will get back a bunch of little bottles, one for each dosage, labeled. Put them in a row in order in your medicine cabinet. Take them as directed. When the 2mg capsules run out, you will have the w/d symptoms which will be almost as bad, but I pulled out of them in about five days and am now effexor-free.
More information: when I made up my own tapering prescription for my doctor to call in, I added one day per each dosage, so it looked like this instead:
37 mg for 3 days
19 mg for 4 days
10 mg for 5 days
5 mg for 6 days
3 mg for 7 days
2 mg for 8 daysAfter trying it, I'm pretty sure that three days for each dose is gentle enough for most people. Also, you pay by the pill for this, and most pharmacies don't take insurance for compounding. My taper pack cost me $104.00 US, and if you can get away with paying less money, so much the better.
You could also take one more step and go down to 1 mg, but my pharmacy didn't think the could be that accurate, so I didn't bother
Keep in mind that the pharmacy will be mildly confused by the prescription, which is why the phone calls are so important. Also, you will have to spoon-feed instructions for writing the prescripton to your doctor, who is probably very busy. If you can communicate with your doctor by fax, email, or in person, that will help a lot. Trying to describe the taper pack prescription to your doctor over the phone will probably not work well.
If you can get a prescription for a sedative like Klonipin, this will also help you get over the last couple of days.
If you try the custom taper pack out and it helps, please post with what dosages you used and how long on each dose to help other people figure out the best taper pack numbers.
poster:sick kitty
thread:12459
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080316/msgs/819488.html