Posted by ST on January 8, 2004, at 18:30:39
In reply to Lex Flu - Why Haven't Doctors Heard of It?, posted by KathrynLex on January 7, 2004, at 12:05:08
Hi,
I've switched so many antidepressants and this has always happened to me. The doctors don't know about this nor do they really care, I think. After searching the internet and talking with dozens of other antidepressant users, these symptoms are extremely commmon when starting or ending an antidepressant. In the archives, you may want to look up "seratonin syndrome", which supposedly occurs when mixing different meds, but the symptoms are similar when going off a med as well.Not everyone goes through this, but I'd say about 80% of the people I spoke with have.(I live in a major city where almost everyone I know is on something!)
It seems to occur as a withdrawal response to weaning yourself off of or stopping a drug. Your body is responding to not receiving that dosage every day. It can also occur if you are starting a drug and do not have another one in your system, but that has only been my experience once.
There was a time when I was very broke and would fool around with my prescription strength to save money. Often, I wouldn't have any money at the end of the month to buy my AD and would have to wait a few days before I could buy it. I would start geting the symtoms within two days of not taking my AD. They got worse and worse. Then when I finally bought my prescription and took the AD, the symptoms would start dissapearing and eventually I would feel "back to normal". It took my doing this a few times before I noticed the correlation! But it's very clear now.
Whenever I would miss my daytime dose of Effexor by one or two hours, I would start feeling sick. Then when i was weaning myself off Effexor I was extremely ill every day. I believe that Effexor can be the most difficult AD to get out of your system (check out the archives!). I had to wean myself over a period of about 3 months. I got down to chipping off tiny pieces of the drug each day to stave off the withdrawal symtoms. I missed so much work during this period! It was difficult explaining why I had flu symtoms to people for almost three months!I would take my tiny bit of Effexor in the morning and by the evening I would be sick as a dog: feverish, nauseous, achy and dizzy. Then I'd grudgingly chip off another piece of the Effexor, take it and wait about two hours to feel better.
Don't let your doctor make you feel nutty for feeling this or tell you that it's a coincidence that you have the flu. Mine finally got the picture after seeing my reactions so many times!
Good luck, it'll go away!Sarah
poster:ST
thread:109458
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040105/msgs/298288.html