Posted by dancingstar on January 25, 2005, at 3:13:56
In reply to Re: Effexor XL, long term side effects » jclint, posted by annon_lady on January 21, 2005, at 12:02:33
Yep. After taking it for about six months, I got really tired, and began to need to sleep for about 16 to 18 hours a day. My arthritis/bursitis for which it was originally prescribed morphed into fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue. Somehow I developed low thyroid. I developed TMJ, badly. I gained about 15 pounds.
Three years after I started taking it I stopped taking it on a whim, innocently one day. Got sick three days later, and then so sick I thought that I would die. I was kind of amazed when I didn't. There is nothing redeeming about the withdrawal when it is bad. I never got high from the drug; so it wasn't even worth it on the front end. It was a horrible, terrible, excruciatingly painful, unexpected ripoff; some bad joke that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals neglected to mention when I paid them for the privilege of being made sick by taking their drug every month for three long years.
I found this board and stayed here, first because it helped me, and then because other people needed help. And also because I don't want one -- not one single person to have to accidentally go through what I went through. If you choose to go through it, that is one thing, but to take Effexor innocently and not know that it can cause you so much pain, that is truly unfair.
Anyway, I lost the weight, don't have chronic fatigue nor fibromyalgia, but I do have some nerve damage and colitis type thing now. I'm currently in physical therapy to try to mend some of the damage done from the withdrawal. (I am seeng a different doc. than the family practice dude that originally prescribed the poison -- oops, my bias is showing -- and my internist is pretty upset cause he had no idea that I would get so sick when I stopped taking Effexor, no idea at all. Freaked him out, it did. He was so pleased to hear that I stopped taking it.
I've been doing research on this ever since. The psych docs. have known about it since 1995. If you follow my links, really since Septemeber, you will be able to read for yourself about the side effects. Information is power. Then you can make an informed decision. It isn't cotton candy that you are taking, my friend. While the drug may not affect you badly, how do you know how it will affect your particular system? The reactions are slow and insidious. They don't seem to really get too many of us right away. Even Wyeth now admits that the longer you take E and the higher the dose, the more likely you are to have problems with "discontinuation syndrome." England has placed tight restrictions on dispensing and seems to be trying to tighten them further. Why or why are we so slow to do the same thing? Can it have anything to do with stock prices?
There are a couple of people here that are trying to get me to stop telling you this stuff, but I cannot for the life of me imagine why? Do they want you to take this drug and find out later what is capable of happening, like has happened to so many of us?
This way, if you decide you need to take it, that's okay. You know what you are getting into. And remember, the side effects do not happen to everyone. But they do happen to a lot of people, just read this board by way of example, or read my links to see that the percentages are much higher than reported by Wyeth.
But hey, rumour has it that Effexor will take you out of the deepest of depressions, at least for a while. That may for you be worth the price of admission.
One woman's point of view....
Wishing you excellent health!
poster:dancingstar
thread:423005
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050124/msgs/447220.html