Posted by nevergiveup1962 on March 15, 2002, at 17:29:53
In reply to 2+ years on Effexor...., posted by ladylight on March 7, 2002, at 19:37:42
Your post resonated!! I have been on anti-depressants for 10 years, and am now accepting enough that I can pop my pills every morning without even thinking about it. But I still occasionally have a major grief reaction and do stupido things - like last week I unilaterally decided to drop my Effexor SR from 300 to 225. Duh. I'm back up this week!
I finally decided to take my grief and anger at having this beast on my back seriously, so I bought a bunch of books that relate to coping with grief when you have a serious illness, or a chronic disability, or death or divorce.
I also found an article that suggests that psychiatrists and doctors quit kidding us "lifers" and start to treat us as patients with a chronic disease rather than with an acute illness that can be cured if only they find the right combo of meds (I got pissed off at the endless tinkering with combinations and milligrams)
Doing grief reading helped me re-frame my experience not just for myself, but also for my therapist and for my psychiatrist (who manages my meds). Depression is such a closeted illness; try not to buy into viewing it through a narrow lens that assumes cure. We have a massive, activity-limiting, life-threatening chronic disease.
If we lost a limb we'd get lots of support, and referral to grief groups, etc. I strongly recommend acknowledging grief as part of your life - just naming it can help put the anger into perspective. GRIEF. I HAVE LOST PART OF MY BODY AND IT WILL NEVER WORK RIGHT AGAIN WITHOUT DRUGS...BUT IT CAN WORK RIGHT AGAIN WITH DRUGS.
I feel grief, too, that nobody in the medical or scientific community finds it worthwhile to study the long-term effects. Tons of research is done establishing the safety and effectiveness of the drug on 47 patients who take it for 4 weeks...but after that, no one seems to care. Is it because permanent medication feels like a failure to a doctor? I am on the faculty at a medical school and have done a massive literature search on long-term effects. There is literally NOTHING on us lifers. Then I checked into NIH clinical trials of drugs to see if I was eligible - but if you have multiple diagnoses or complicating factors that may have contributed to the depression - you're not eligible!!
Maybe we should start a "Union Of Complicated Lifetime Depressants" and demand our rights!
poster:nevergiveup1962
thread:96941
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020313/msgs/98196.html