Posted by JM-in-OZ on December 28, 2003, at 22:57:51
I've found reading this group to be pretty depressing, and thought I should add something slightly positive.
I was on Effexor (75 mg/d) for over six years. For the past several years, I have wanted to get off it, but was scared by what I had read on the web about withdrawal, confirmed by my own experiences after missing the odd tablet. For various reasons, I finally decided it was time to bitet he bullet and get off the stuff. I took about six weeks to taper down from 75 mg/d to 1/4 of a 37.5 mg tablet. During the process, I experienced some minor dizziness and slight 'electric shock' sensations, but nothing too bad.
After this tapering period, I reckoned that I couldn't possibly suffer withdrawal from the less than 10 mg/d that I was taking, so I went cold turkey. Day 1 was OK, some slight sensations. The following couple of days were not great: dizzy, electric shocks, nausea, extreme irritability etc.: I was not a happy chappy. I tried to manage the withdrawal symptoms with panadol, about all I have access to, short of going back to Effexor, but I don't think it helped much.
After about a week, the symptoms began to diminish. Now, four weeks after stopping, I feel pretty reasonable, and have for a couple of weeks. (I wanted to be sure things were OK before I posted anything.) I will say that over the past month I've been pretty irritable and have experienced some depressive thoughts (which was VERY rare while I was on Effexor). However, I'm feeling pretty good now and I'm hoping that things will stay that way.
So, I just wanted to point out that not everyone's experience in coming off Effexor will be as bad as those discussed in this group. I certainly don't mean to deny that lots of Effexor users have pretty horrible experiences getting off the stuff, but would say that people with less negative experiences are probably under-represented in this group. I consider myself lucky to have had an easy go of it (and I'll think long and hard before I go back onto Effexor).
I hope this has been of some encouragement to people contemplating stopping their Effexor.
JM-in-OZ
poster:JM-in-OZ
thread:294200
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031225/msgs/294200.html