Posted by PanickingJake on July 28, 2004, at 16:45:12
In reply to Re: Severe Panic and Anxiety disorder anyone like me?, posted by Glydin on July 28, 2004, at 8:51:12
I'll try to find you a link with a better explanation, but for now: What has happened to me, when going up on Effexor (serotonin, norepi, dopamine) is that the first 2 weeks, not much happenned. The 3rd and 4th weeks I had very noticable increase in anxiety. However, once the 5th week was there, the extra anxiety from the Effexor went away, and I could seemingly take more Buspar afterwards. What happened is that the 3rd week, Effexor was doing its job on Norepiniphrine by making more available for the receptors - more adrenaline, more anxiety. Then, because of the the "downregulation" that happens because of the extra Norepiniphrine, the 5th week was better and sixth the best. Your brain says, "Hey, there's too much of this stuff around, so I'm going to close some of the gates for reuptake of Norepiniphrine." Because of the overall effect, I will probably be upping Remeron (serotonin, Norepinephrine) in the future. Both medications also deal with serotonin, but it didn't seem to have the effect that I have if I just raise seretonin levels alone. The two bad weeks are tough to get through but worth it.
Moral of the story, if your screwin with Norepinephrine and really want to give it a shot, don't give up right away if your anxiety is worse. Everybody is different though. This is my experience and it happened every time I upped Effexor after about 150mg (I upped by 37.5 to make the two bad weeks as "bearable" as possible).
When going down off it very slowly (because I've been off it and on it again), I had the same types of problems with increased anxiety and sleepiness (which don't really work together nicely). But after the withdrawal 2 weeks, the extra anxiety was gone.
That may not all be technically correct to the word, but is how I think of it. I got a second opinion from someone in Chicago that said that what I felt, made sense with the downregulation and all. He is pushing the norep. route because just serotonin just aint workin.
poster:PanickingJake
thread:371426
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040724/msgs/371748.html