Posted by zinya on September 11, 2003, at 14:17:13
In reply to Re: Effexor and my Foggy Brain » Mattsit, posted by KimberlyDi on September 11, 2003, at 11:37:47
Hi Kim,
long time no write... How ARE you? From this post, it sounds like things are still 'cooking' for you on Eff, which is great...
I reached a decision that i had to quit and started tapering down a week ago... Three main reasons plus hopefully finding an alternative...
First, they say on the pharm. blurb that 2% of Effexor users quit due to sweating. Well, of all the reasons, that's tied for top reason so i guess i'm one of those 2%... I started having sweating excesses way back in June at just 37.5 (when i went up from 19 mg) ... and i kept hoping it would phase out like other SE's but alas, no... Just got stronger by 150 mg, and I literally could not go outside in the shade to prune a few branches for 5-10 minutes without becoming clammy, sweaty, having to rip off clothes and take a shower again and it often obliged me to miss a social outing cuz i was so sweaty and body temp so overheated that i couldn't stand getting dressed... I've never been a sweat-er my whole life and this came as a really out-of-control intolerable SE after 2 months of it or more... Oh, also waking up in the middle of the night with nightshirt and sheets somewhere between damp and sopping wet ... just crazy... not every night but too many nights...
Second, and it took me longer to come to terms with and face the reality of this one: Gardening is not supposed to be an aerobic exercise. But my weekly gardening -- about 1-1/2 to 2 hours, enough to fill usually about 3 huge bags worth and thus fill a municipal refuse container for pickup each week. By the time i stopped that amount of gardening - and sometimes long before finishing, i would sit down with a heart pounding like crazy - just from reaching, pulling, cutting, pruning, etc. And then getting in the shower afterwards -- with of course my clothes from the nonstop sweating being so wet head to toe you could wring them out and getting "winded" even while shampooing ... It took a while before i realized just what a bad sign it was... And realized i actually was afraid to try real exercise like swimming or much walking -- the kind of thing that <i>would</i> normally have my heart beating -- cuz i might have a heart attack... I had to postpone my last md. appt cuz my car was broken and so i didn't get my BP measured, but i didn't need to in order to know this combo was just too much.
The third factor was that even after about 5 wks at 150, there was never any sustained energy that should have started kicking in from the norepinephrine effects ... And the thought of an md. saying "Go higher" given the SE's i was already having seemed crazy...
With all that, suddenly out of the blue came the news 2 weeks ago of the new study showing that Omega-3 (1 gram / day) had significantly improved depression in people who had found no help from Prozac, etc... AND the study found that the reason was Omega-3 plays a direct role on serotonin. Well, that was enough to make me head for my Trader Joe's and buy a bottle of 500 mg pills ... I've been a fish eater, but it has to be salmon or a few other specific things and getting 1 gram a day every day seemed preposterous so got the capsules... The first one had an unexpected effect - TOTALLY clearing out my Effexor-aggravated problem with constipation, so much so that its aftermath felt more like a little queasy ... And that was only on 500 mg Omega-3, thinking i'd take one at night with Effexor and another in the a.m. (At that point, i wasn't yet thinking of quitting the Effexor)
Then i laid off the Omega for a couple days just thinking i should give my system a rest from the GI clearout, and resumed the Omega at just 500 mg per night again, and by a week later, suddenly i was feeling sustained energy levels that were like going from about a '1' on a scale of 0-10 up to about '5' almost on a dime... And it persisted ... Such that i think i've been at about a '6' or so on energy level and doing things i hadn't been able to do for a year energy-wise...
So that added to my conviction that the Effexor and its SE's just had to go... I started tapering down to 100 mg (2 capsules of 150 split into 3 roughly equal granule portions) a week ago - tonight will be the last of 9 such nights and then i plan to go down to 75 ... I've been so far (knock on wood) pleased to have quite tolerable withdrawal effects... A bit woozy or something the first day or two -- weird head feeling ... but then that passed and wasn't serious anyway. ALREADY though the sweating has diminished considerably and my heart didn't beat like crazy after this week's gardening for the first time in months... since June (having started Eff. in late May) ...
SO, that's my update... I'm tapering off... and planning to double my Omega-3 up to 1 gram at some point ... Plus another person also grieving a parent now swears by Spirulina for both energy and depression which i bought to try too but am waiting til off Effexor and not wanting to only change one thing at a time...
our e-mail group has been on overdrive of late which has been consuming all my cybertime and i haven't made it back here -- mostly to say Hi to you and Willie (is she still posting?) -- but i will keep periodically checking in...
with best wishes!
zinya
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030907/msgs/259105.html