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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by flyingdreams on January 26, 2004, at 13:40:16
Hi Everyone! On day 13 with no medications. Still have horrible nausea. How long does this withdrawal symptom last???????? I find gatorade helps some. Mint tea sometimes helps. But nausea medication I just threw up. Everytime I eat it gets worse. I also have a ringing in the ear that started up yesterday. I fainted the other day from trying to exercise! How horrible is that!!!! Exercised again a few days later and was ok, but since then have an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. I'm so tired, not just sleepy, but exhausted! Still have insomnia, irritable, short tempered, headache, etc. Thankfully the diaharea and throwing up has ended so I could get out of the house! Very little shaking and sweating left also. That was really horrible, really made me feel like a drug addict! I say we get together and sue the drug company or at the very least write dateline and 20/20 about our experiences. let the public know, imagine how many people would get off this drug and how many wouldn't even start if we got the word out there! Here's an email address:
Email them! Get the story out there. Let's take some $money$ away from the drug companies that push this stuff like candy!
Safe Hugs,
Wendy
Posted by Chairman_MAO on January 26, 2004, at 18:04:55
In reply to Effexor withdrawl nausea - how long does it last?, posted by flyingdreams on January 26, 2004, at 13:40:16
SSRI withdrawl is qualitatively similar to opiate withdrawl (shakes, nausea, body temperature fluctuations, diarrhea, etc.) except it seems to last LONGER for most people (acute opiate withdrawl is usually 4-7 days)! Make no mistake about it: drug companies are interested in your money, not your health. Controlled substances are controlled, by and large, not because they are any more dangerous than those non-controlled, but because a "high taxpayer" is an oxymoron.
As for "feeling like a drug addict": how is taking Effexor for psychic distress any different than taking Heroin? Only popular culture says it is. Moreover, I feel for all of those who have been duped into thinking that simply because a drug is incapable of inducing euphoria that it must not produce a severe withdrawl syndrome. I took 60mg of ritalin a day for 4 years and had far fewer withdrawl symptoms from that than when I tried to quit Effexor or Lexapro.
The solution to this mess is not more litigation or media frenzy or banning of antidepressant, but rather the repeal of all drug laws so that Effexor and the like would have to compete with heroin, amphetamine, marijuana (and there are plenty of reasons why a rational being would prefer Effexor over the more euphoric agents, so please refrain from calling me a drug pusher), et. al, not to mention a whole host of superior, non-US, novel antidepressant treatments that we'll never see on the US market because they're either off-patent or the manufacturer can't afford FDA approval.
Lesson to everyone: "What goes up, must come down". Assume that EVERY drug has a withdrawl syndrome until you're shown hard, credible evidence to the contrary.
Posted by flyingdreams on January 27, 2004, at 15:25:32
In reply to Re: Effexor withdrawl nausea - how long does it last?, posted by Chairman_MAO on January 26, 2004, at 18:04:55
I can NOT believe you stated that informing the public wouldn't help. Because I would not have gone thru great pain or been on these stupid antidepressants for 14 yrs if the media had informed me! I have tried several times to get off antidepressants without success because I was NOT informed there were withdrawals and once I experienced them I ran back to taking the drug since I was NOT informed what was happening and it frightened me! Let the truth set you free!!! But without the truth you cannot be set free! So information is POWER!
Posted by Chairman_MAO on January 27, 2004, at 17:23:56
In reply to Re: informing the public of withdrawals DOES help!, posted by flyingdreams on January 27, 2004, at 15:25:32
> I can NOT believe you stated that informing the public wouldn't help. Because I would not have gone thru great pain or been on these stupid antidepressants for 14 yrs if the media had informed me!
I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. The media is not the ideal forum for promulgating the effects--including withdrawl effects--of drugs. The ideal forum is the MONOGRAPH and PATIENT INFORMATION that should be distributed with every drug as well as the PRESCRIBING PHYSICIAN! If you made your physician aware of how you were feeling upon discontinuing the drugs, and he/she did not see that you were experiencing a withdrawl reaction, he/she was acting in BAD FAITH. Think about it: if antidepressants take 4-6 weeks to work, it's quite obvious that some adaptive changes are occuring in the brain. Is it reasonable to assume that one's brain should function optimally immediately upon cessation of the drug? It may be reasonable for a patient to believe this, as they're not supposed to be familiar with BASIC FUNDAMENTALS of the drugs they're taking (although I personally like to know as much as possible about the chemicals I put in my bloodstream)--but the physicians are!
This whole antidepressant withdrawl fiasco seems disturbingly analogous to the benzodiazepine dependency fiasco of decades past. Researchers "in the know" speculated and quickly figured out (in the late 60s, I believe) that benzodiazepines, due to their EFFECTS ALONE (not even the mechanism of action, because, afaik, that wasnt even known at all until decades after they were employed in clinical practive), would have a rather severe withdrawl syndrome. That doctors could maintain that a drug which was capable of HALTING A GRAND MAL SEIZURE IN AN EMERGENCY SETTING would not have a withdrawl syndrome amounts to ill-willed hubris.
The media would do far better in chastizing the FDA (Why was Strattera approved and Edronax denied ... I doubt it was efficacy ...), DEA (who considers marijuana more dangerous than haldol), and medical establishment (who pushes these drugs) than it would reporting about drugs--after all, the drugs are just chemicals. The people are the ones that use them.
-cm
This is the end of the thread.
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