Posted by noa on August 1, 2003, at 9:28:29
In reply to agreed..., posted by avid abulia on July 30, 2003, at 23:25:24
My experience has been that Effexor word retrieval problems are dose dependent and do go away when I lowered the dose. For me, they are noticeable at 300 mg but not at 225 mg. In fact, before I lowered the dose to 225 a few months ago, I was taking 262.5 for a long time and did not have the word retrieval problems at that dose. At 375 and 450 it was pretty bad and I felt quite inarticulate especially at work. Other people always claimed not to notice but my train of thought would always get interrupted by my hemming and hawing trying to find the word that just wouldn't come. I haven't been on those higher doses for a long time. However, I recently had 2 days of accidentally taking 300 instead of 225 and for a couple of days the word retrieval problems came back suddenly, and then went away suddenly when I discovered the dose mistake and went back to the 225--it was that abrupt. During those 2 days at 300, the word retreival problems weren't as bad as they had been at the high doses a few years ago--I got tripped up a bit, but was able to substitute other words, although I was very unsatisfied with the substitute words as being inaccurate, so then I would be explaining--"well, not exactly that, but..." etc. These two days were over a weekend, so I don't know if it would have felt much worse had I been at work and having to have professional conversations.
The substituting phenomenon is something I have noticed my father doing in recently years (he is in his 80's)--he will often say a word that is in the same semantic class as the correct word, but just slightly different, sometimes in ways that connote a signnificantly different meaning, and sometimes it is comical. He volunteers once a week at an adult day care program (despite this language problem and a few other functional declines of aging, he is quite independent and active himself), and once when I was visiting, I went to eat lunch with him there in the nursing home coffee shop. He was telling me something about services and conveniences offered to the nursing home residents (such as the coffee shop) and he referred to the residents as "inmates". OK, obviously relevant Freudian slip aside, this is the most memorable example of his substituting a semantically similar word for the correct word. A friend of mine described it this way: it is as if he has the right cabinet but the wrong drawer. That is what I experienced during those 2 days recently when I erred on my dose. The differences being 1) my father's word problems are, I assume due to permanent brain changes and my effexor word problems were obviously not permanent, 2) although there may be similarities/overlap in why and how the word pathways are disrupted, there may also be major differences since the causes are different, and 3)my father did not *seem* to notice his error, while I was painfully frustrated about my word errors (I don't know if my father has given up being frustrated about it because it happens so often, or whether he really doesn't notice the error).
Unlike my experience, some people have reported that the word retrieval problems are an initial side effect and fade with time. I don't know how long you've been on effexor. At the low dose of 37.5, I don't know what to say if it is not a transient SE because being dose dependent doesn't really help if you're at the lowest dose.
poster:noa
thread:246685
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030728/msgs/247318.html