Posted by Mr Cushing on November 27, 2002, at 12:00:40
In reply to Re: Effexor Withdrawal (Horrible Nightmares) » Mr Cushing, posted by NikkiT2 on November 27, 2002, at 10:58:16
Hey, I'm not from the UK, Canada up in here... What do the American's call a spliff then? When is a spliff not a spliff??? lol...I'm not that pissed at SSRI's and honestly, I'm not that pissed at Effexor either. It worked really well while I was on it. It's just coming off of it that is soooooo painful. If only the people that made it could figure out what causes the withdrawal to be so bad and fix that, then Effexor would be like a miracle drug.
My PDoc, when I talked to her yesterday about the withdrawal, completely agreed with me... Effexor, she said, is probably the hardest prescription drug to come off of. She just recommended that I try to sleep a lot, don't do anything too strenuous (like she said if I just wanted to lie around and watch TV for a few days, don't feel guilty about it), and to take a reasonable amount of Clonazepam (Klonopin) during the day and night. She told me in the past that I shouldn't have to go over 1.5mg ever during a day, but yesterday she basically said, forget about that, just use as much as you need as long as you're not giving yourself an overdose.
The days are really rough, but man, it's the nights that are the worst I find. Stephen King couldn't do the dreams that i've had over the past 2 days justice. I've been off of Effexor now since Saturday night, and I'll admit to probably forcing myself off of it faster than most people (but not cold turkey) and God, the dreams that I had on Monday night I actually woke myself up by screaming.
I don't notice any of these "electrical shocks" though I'm not sure what to look for in those. Everything else though... I sound drunk when I try to speak, I have a constant headache, I go from either being boiling hot and sweating to freezing cold, I'm not sick to my stomach but it is tied in knots (if you eat enough I find that settles it down), extremely blurred vision, oh, and the shakes like crazy. The way my brother put it, I look like a crackhead since I'm shaking so much.
Anyways, I'm not done with SSRI's, I just want to see what Mood Stabilizers would be best for me, which one would keep me most stable, and I didn't think I would be giving it a fair trial while I still had Effexor in my system. But as for being DX'd with both Bi-Polar I with mixed states and Panic Disorder, Effexor did manage to keep me stable at a point where I was so off the wall that I was not only scaring everybody around me, but I was terrifying myself.
K, I'm done ranting for now....
poster:Mr Cushing
thread:129529
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021127/msgs/129586.html