Posted by zinya on July 16, 2003, at 15:13:26
In reply to seizure-like jolt on effexor?, posted by bookgurl99 on July 16, 2003, at 8:28:27
Are you taking it on a pretty full stomach?
I find that when I am at a new level, it's usually actually days 2-4 that i notice the most side effects but then they pass so you might want to give it a week at the same level before starting to draw conclusions, unless of course you have some SE that is too frightening or intolerable.
It also could be that, while nightime is best for me, some people here have to take their Effexor in the a.m. If the jolts bother your sleep too much (but it sounds like you slept well after they passed?), then that is an option too, to shift time of day.
(By the way, you may have read my post to mercedes about migraines - i was the first one who responded to her symptoms by saying it reminded me of my own migraines in my 20's, and the 2nd one was a hemiplegic with temporary loss of verbal skills and motor too... In those days (the 70's), the only prescrips were cafergot for onset and periactin on daily basis... I used to get a clue one was coming cuz i'd start getting what we now call dyslexic (like adding numbers in my checkbook and instead of writing 19, i'd write 91, etc)... For me, in retrospect, it seems like it was hugely a factor of stress. I was in a horrible marriage (worse than I was admitting to myself as i struggled to try to make it work, and when i left after 6 years (having migraines chronically for the last 4 of the 6 yrs), i had the last migraine about a week later, after having to recount the history of my marriage to a friend of his trying to get me to return and i felt i had to make him understand (what he wound up instead was to say my story had made him realize how much he needed to change his own ways in his marriage) .. After that 5-hour talk, i had a 3-day migraine but it was the last one i ever had. I think unverbalized stress is a real 'killer" and must have been at least a factor in my own ... But of course there are genetic and other predispositions and i'm not suggesting it's all just stress or for some people may not be related to stress at all (although for each of us stress does its own damage).
One other thing: In '93, I was on Depakote and had a reaction much like Mercedes'. I only stayed on it for 5 months even cuz they swtiched pdocs on me in the middle and the new one insisted i give it longer to see his own observations, but finally after 5 months i just quit. It was making me feel logey until noon every day no matter how early in the evening i took it before bed, and it was not relieving anything i took it for. But it did not have what i would call "horrible" side effects. Like every one of these ad's, i'm sure it's totally variable by person. IF it turns out that Effexor doesn't work for you and your pdoc has some good reason to think Depakote suits your diagnosis, I wouldn't assume that its side effects would necessarily be any worse than any other. It's just so individual, that much is clear from the months of reading others on this website.
good luck!
zinya
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030714/msgs/242595.html