Posted by LynnPerley on July 14, 2004, at 7:23:03
In reply to Re: it does get better, posted by lorily on July 12, 2004, at 19:23:28
Today is day #2 without Effexor XR for me. I previously posted that I came down from 300mg gradually. I went down an increment (37.5.mg) at a time for a week each except I remained at 150 mg for a month and at 75 mg for a month. When I was at 75 mg and wanted to go further my psydoc said there was no sense remaining on 37.5 mg (for me). She gave me the 1 week sample strip of 37.5 mg and I took it last week.
The only really bad time I had was from 75mg to 37.5 mg - I had some annoying diarrhea for a few days and some headaches and brain zaps. Yesterday I was a lot more irritable than I had been, but I don't think it was any more irritable than a "normal" non medication state. I am using the techniques I learned from my counselor to deal with the irritability.
I mentioned before that I have some ritalin tablets from when I was on the 300mg dose. My psydoc confirmed to me over the phone that the ritalin dosage may be helping reduce any other potential discontinuation side effects. I am taking one or two 5mg ritalin tablets every morning at the smae time I used to take my effexor xr. If I am feeling a little queasy or if I feel a few weird brain feelings I take an additional dose about 5 hours later. I was unable to take prozac because I had unbearable bruxism, so taking a prozac to relieve side effects is not available to me.
poster:LynnPerley
thread:1016
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040714/msgs/365947.html