Posted by volswagn on July 17, 2002, at 0:10:59
OK, I promised myself I'd return here if the side effects ever ended and I'd post the following:
1) A thank you for this message board
2) Encouragement for anyone else who's trying to kick EffexorI was on 75mg/day for about a year when I ditched my doc (not wise, I know) and cut over the course of a month or so down to half that. At that point I had slowly come off Wellbutrin as well, and only had the remaining Effexor to go...
I'm not usually that sensitive to medications, but I've never gone through anything like this. Anytime I turned my head too fast, I felt like I was falling off a tall building. Driving was near impossible. I was barely functional, and the dizziness was just too much. Over the course of two more weeks, I took less and less until I only had a few granules in each capsule each day.
I noticed a lot of the posts on this messageboard said stuff like "five days and I'm still having massive side-effects..." After people posted six, seven days it looked like I never saw any posts after that saying, "I did it," so I figured maybe I'd have to deal with it for a week or two, and then hopefully people were getting better & just going about their lives again.
Well, in my case the worst seemed to be over after about two weeks, but I still definitely had the vertigo effects (and, um major intestinal trouble)... It's been about six weeks now and I don't think I've noticed any of these symptoms for the past week or two.
I really hope this helps someone out there who's going through the worst of it, or thinking it's not going to end. I know everyone's different, but in my case, the torture ended and I think I'm headed toward anti-anxiety meds this time instead of anti-depressants? I dunno... Time to find a new doctor because being off meds isn't the answer I don't think, but being off Effexor definitely is...
Good luck...
vols.
poster:volswagn
thread:112610
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020709/msgs/112610.html