Posted by Jen2 on January 23, 2005, at 19:25:43
In reply to Re: Anyone had success on Effexor XR?, posted by Bug on January 19, 2005, at 21:41:20
Hi all,
Thought I'd add my two cents. I just posted the same stuff to the newbies group, so it'll be a duplicate if you read it there first.
I've been reading psycho-babble and the newbies group for the past week after I started taking Effexor, and these boards have been a great help to me. Thanks for the insight and advice and facts - they sure helped during a bad time. I've decided to post for the first time to let you know some of my story and maybe hear back from you.
Two years ago I moved to a very large new city - halfway across the country, where I knew exactly one person (aside from my partner with whom I moved - and with whom I have a difficult relationship). I had 4 months of misery, then worked for a while (which was also miserable - almost intolerable) and then returned to school to do a masters degree. And that's been kind of miserable too.
In November I had a bit of a, you might say, nervous breakdown. I was suffering from school /performance anxiety and intense pressures from relationships (too much and too difficult to go into now), although I think the fact that I'm a workaholic and that I've been working for the past 10 years in extraordinarily stressful jobs (in politics) didn't help matters. It was the worst three weeks of my life. I was extraordinarily anxious, paranoid, incredibly depressed, not quite delusional but almost, heart palpitations constantly the whole time. It was like something snapped in my brain that then affected my whole system. I felt like I was going to die.
I went to my doctor, who initially prescribed Lorazepam. It made me feel dead inside so she prescribed Effexor instead, but I was afraid of taking an antidepressant so decided I would just coast through Christmas and see how I felt afterwards. Well, Christmas was depressing, I felt a bit better but not great, and then after returning to school for two weeks I thought again that I was going to die. So I started taking the meds. I had to do something.
Well, here's where it gets interesting. The first couple of days were fine - I didn't feel anything at all. Days three through five, however, were a living nightmare. Nervous, anxious, sweaty, horribly depressed, couldn't focus my eyes (which also happened throughout my anxiety), felt disconnected from myself, crying jags, horrible horrible horrible. Spent three days on the couch watching bad TV and could barely cope with that. Days six and seven were tolerable, but day eight was a return to the pit of despair and physical terror. So I had a week of hell - I was white knuckling it through my days.
Day nine was OK, but on day ten the clouds parted and the sun came out. I'm on day twelve now, and I'm feeling more content and able to cope than I have in months if not years. (I am, however, feeling no anxiety at all, which isn't good because I have very little motivation to get my work done. But right now, it's better than the anxiety and depression so I'm not going to sweat it for a while.)
The nasty part of this is that, while the doctor prescribed the starter 37.5mg dose - which I thought I was taking - the pharmacist actually dispensed the 75mg dose. I didn't figure that out until day ten - who would think, especially in the depths of despair, to examine your pills to ensure the pharmacist gave you the right dosage? Not me. So I have been taking double the dose that I should have. No wonder I felt like I was going to die. I thought it was just my anxiety and depression, but it was actually the meds. I'm so angry about this. I couldn't cope for an entire week - I lost a week out of school and out of my life and it's the damn pharmacist's fault.
So not only am I angry about having been prescribed a drug that, I now find out thanks to all of you on these boards, has such serious side effects and the potential for horrible withdrawal, I'm also angry that my pharmacist screwed up and made my already hellish life more hellish for a week.
So thanks for letting me get this off my chest. I hope that I will continue to do well, although I know now to take my good days when I find them. I'm also getting psychotherapy and that's helping a bit. And I know enough now to start planning to manage the withdrawal when the time comes.
Best to all,
Jen
poster:Jen2
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050119/msgs/446453.html