Posted by Tommy62 on September 5, 2003, at 15:10:41
In reply to Re: Effexor withdrawls - Yuk!!! » Faheyshan, posted by LisaDiann on February 23, 2002, at 10:03:47
Friends;
I've never posted here before. I just found the site. Today is Day 9 off Effexor for me. Considering that three weeks ago I was still up to 375 mg a day of the crap, I suppose you would say I have attempted to step down too fast.
But as it is, I'm not going back. Once this evil muck is out of my system, this will be over, I pray, and however long that takes...well, my name is Tommy, and I'll be your laboratory. Next time somebody asks how long withdrawal takes when you do it too fast off too much, you can refer them to me. That's assuming I survive.
I know a lot of you may be offended at my calling this wonder drug evil crap. I don't mean to offend, but I don't take it back either. I've been through too many anti-depressants to speak very charitably about any of them anymore.
Effexor is a hostage-taker. It helped me wonderfully for about three months last year (from about July to October of 2002.) Then it stopped. Up the dosage. No better. Up it again. No better. It's like the drug just did what it felt like doing for three months and then went on strike.
And from then on it was a slavery relationship. I either took it or felt terrible in all the ways people have described - the vertigo, the "zaps", the dizziness, the nausea, the flu-like symptoms, all that and more. I've been enslaved by depression for 25 years. I don't care to be enslaved by one of its treatment drugs too.
It's Day 9. Every time I stand up it feels like when you zoom downhill on a rollercoaster and all the blood in your butt rushes to your head.
I'm not asking how long this will last. I've already scoured the website for that answer. A week to two weeks, I read. I will tell you all this, though (whoever's reading, whoever cares), once this pharaceutical sewage is out of my body, I'm never touching it again.
You feel this way and you want it to be somebody's fault. You want to wring somebody's neck. And there's nobody to sue. Heck, the doctors don't know what this stuff is going to do to us! They don't MEAN to hurt us. If Physics is "maybe it works this way", then Medicine is "let's give 'em this and write down what happens". That's all it is. And nobody suffers for that M.O. more than depressives do. Nobody.
There's no more point to this. I'll stop wasting your time. But I'll say that Doctors should wake up about drugs like Effexor. A warning like "You could potentially be enslaved by this medication." would be nice. I wouldn't call it an 'addictive' drug, like a narcotic or an opiate. That would be too high of praise. At least with those sorts of drugs, you get something for your dose every time. With Effexor, it can just stop working, but if you don't keep taking (and paying for) it, it'll hurt you bad. There's something fundamentally immoral about that.
Tommy 62
poster:Tommy62
thread:10823
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030902/msgs/257343.html