Posted by Racer on April 6, 2006, at 12:47:38
In reply to Re: Effexor: permanent side effects? » iheartmuffy, posted by digger on April 6, 2006, at 11:10:38
Frankly, if your weight is hovering around 150 and you're 5'9", your weight is in a very good range for your height. 135 is underweight at your height.
Now, in terms of your question: I wouldn't expect most of the things you're describing to last much longer from Effexor withdrawal. BUT continuing to take the "diet pills" is more likely to be causing a lot of this. Even if the diet pills are only causing 10% of the problems you're having now, they're much more likely to cause long lasting damage to you.
What happens with a lot of these ADs, including Effexor, is a function of how they work. They inhibit the reuptake of specific neurotransmitters. In the case of Effexor at the lowish doses you were on, that means mostly serotonin. That reuptake inhibition changes the balance of the Big Three monoamines -- serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Serotonin, as well as being involved in mood, is highly involved in digestion -- things like bowel motility and hunger/satiety signaling, etc. Norepinephrine is somehow involved in pain, but I don't know much about that. Anyway, all this affects the expression of the receptors for these neurotransmitters, which is part of how ADs affect things like weight gain or loss, etc. Now that you're off the drugs, it's gonna take a while for your cells to find a new balance of receptors and receptor sensitivity, to normalize. It will happen.
It will happen a whole lot sooner if you stop stressing your body with diet pills, etc. By diet pills, I'm assuming you mean over the counter, since no halfway competent doctor would prescribe anything for you at the sort of weight range you're talking about.
As for ADHD and Adderall, etc, don't bet on it. First off, what you're going through is much more likely to be related to those diet pills. Besides which, if you take both OTC dieet pills and Adderall, you're putting yourself at pretty high risk of cardiac events that you really wouldn't enjoy. And you're soundling like someone with some problems in the eating disorder/distorted body image spectrum, so it would be bordering on malpractice for a doctor to prescribe a stimulant for you.
Do you see a therapist? That would be a good move to make, to help work out how much of this is related to coming off the drugs, and how much is psychosocial stressors.
Good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:629516
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060403/msgs/629664.html