Posted by Laurie S on May 7, 2004, at 9:20:31
Hello all. This is my first post to this site and not only am I gratefully thankful I survived the event I will explain, I'm equally as glad I found this support site.
For the past year or so, I have been tapering SLOWLY off Effexor XR (under super high surveillance of my wonderful psychiatrist), which I have been taking daily for the past 5 years. The highest dosage has been 150 mg, 3X/day. I no longer need the meds, for I have found that I can control my anxiety and bought with depression with talk therapy that took a long time to master, and which woks well for me). On 4/1/04 I reached the lowest dosage of Effexor XR, I have been on (75mg). Every 3rd day since 4/1, I dropped another 5 granules. Around 4/20 I started to really feel the effects of the withdrawal - nausea, migraines, unbelievable ear ringing noises, chills, etc. On 4/30, I woke up like every other morning, took a shower and decided that I couldn't take the withdrawal anymore, slit my left wrist with a razor blade, vertically, completely severing one of the 2 main arteries providing blood flow. I remember freaking out and crawling to the phone and calling 911 after I realized what I’d done. I passed out from high volume blood loss (90% of my blood was gone by the time I was admitted to trauma). This is all I remember. My parents have filled me in on the details, which due to their frightening nature, and which is unnecessary to this post, I will not write.
The action I took is completely out of my personality--life has been going well, no big problems, just bad withdrawal symptoms which I'm been able to semi-able to control will meds. Has anyone heard of such a withdrawal reaction to Effexor or similar SSRI?
Thank goodness my hometown has one of the top 3 medical centers in the country, otherwise I would never of survived my injury. I was in the trauma dept. for 16 hours while vascular surgeries clamped my artery and stabilized my extremely unstable blood pressure, and nearing undetectable pulse. I coded twice, and was given 13 units of blood over the course of the day and during surgery. I spent the next 16 hours in ICU observation.
I spent the past 4 days in a psychiatric clinic here being mentally stabilized while experiencing flashbacks of the incident, nightmare, extreme anxiety, sleepwalking and a general sense of being completely freaked out. I'm back on Effexor, 450mg/day, by the way. Besides my blood work being completely out of whack- (CBC panel is dreadful, - which is being addressed and monitored daily - pain and swelling in my wrist is hard to bear without medication and the cast I’ll have on for the next 2 weeks isn’t exactly pleasant, I’m doing OK. No suicidal thoughts---this incident was the first ever.
This is an extreme case I know, but any insight would be appreciated. BTW, I am a 29 yr old, female grad student if that makes any difference. Thanks!
poster:Laurie S
thread:344341
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040507/msgs/344341.html