Posted by sjb on March 23, 2004, at 9:52:00
In reply to Afraid of Effexor Xr, posted by Jeano on March 23, 2004, at 0:01:03
First, you have to be careful drawing conclusions soley based on experiences your read online. It's the nature of the beast that you'll hear more negative comments than postive ones on ANY drug on forums such as this one. There are exceptions, of course. For myself, I've found that I frequent this board more frequently when I'm on a backslide, want to vent, etc. When I doing well, I tend to not come hear as often.
Second, yes those shocks are a little weird but that wouldn't be my biggest concern. Third, withdrawal is not a problem until you get up to the higher dosages, something like 150mg per day or more. EffexorXR has been one of the best drugs for me, but it pooped out. I have been off and on it a few times at dosages ranging from the starter dose of 37.5 to 450mg per day. Coming off of 450mg was not a walk in the park, let me tell you, but I had no trouble coming off of 75mg and even 150mg cold turkey. Not that I recommend doing this without Dr's advice, esp. from 150mg!!! (A lot of people have had trouble coming off of 150mg even with a conservative taper). I just think that if you went up to 75mg and decided it wasn't the drug for you, tapering to 37.5 for a while, just to be safe, would not cause you much withdrawal problems. One thing to be on the lookout for is an elevation of BP. You may want to monitor your BP (easily done for free at most drug stores) for a while before you make a decision on Effexor. Good luck.
a backslide.
poster:sjb
thread:327262
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040319/msgs/327344.html