On Friday, July 14th I offically cut my my Effexor XR dosage of 150mg daily down to 75mg daily. This has been a major step for me to take and already it’s showing its ugly side. Venlafaxine has a very severe discontinuation syndrome associated with it.
Discontinuation effects may include irritability, hostility, headache, nausea, fatigue, dysphoria and the fairly-unique “brain shivers”. Rarer withdrawal symptoms include shaking legs, tremor, vertigo, dizziness and paresthesia. Other non-specific mental symptoms may include impaired concentration, bizarre dreams, agitation and suicidal thoughts.
Out of those I’ve so far have had the hostility, irritability, headache, nausea (I always have that though), restlessness and malaise. The tremor is there but has been for awhile anyway but have noticed it getting worse past few days, also got some paresthesia showing up. Fortunately the brain shivers haven’t presented yet, and having experienced them before I hope I am fortunate enough to avoid them this time.
Also worth noting is:
Antidepressant withdrawal effects do not indicate addiction, but are rather the results of the brain attempting to reach neurochemical stability after an abrupt change. These can be minimized or avoided by tapering off of the medication over a period of weeks.
The distinction between “withdrawal” effects and addiction may be nothing less than semantics to make a distinction between a prescribed anti-depressant and illicit drugs, as addicts also suffer withdrawal effects when trying to stop taking an illicit drug. This is in the vein of the use of the term “self-medicating” to feel good as a euphemism for addiction. People reading about a drug like Effexor should be aware of these choices of words to minimize the actual reality of withdrawal “effects”.
Studies by Wyeth-Ayerst and others have reported occasional cases of withdrawal symptoms severe enough to require permanent use. In some of these cases, successful discontinuation was eventually achieved by the addition of fluoxetine, which was later discontinued itself without difficulty.
I have to say I’m not in the least bit depressed, I am worried that these symptoms could get worse and a dependency is made but I doubt it will happen.
I had originally intended to go down 37.5 a week from 150 instead of from 150->75->37.5 but once I reach the 37.5 I will do that for a week or so then every other day and eventually none. The anxiety from this is killing me and the doctor didn’t seem too inclined to offer anything to help ease everything while trying to get off this stuff.
I’m also applying for Patient Care Technician at the hospital and hoping I can finally get endo tech and possibly work my way into Dr. Sullivan’s office. I received a check from the hospital I was in during my surgery for $716.96 also on Friday which was a nice suprise. It’ll help with some of these bills I think and might drag me out of the pit of debt I’m in.
The Venlafaxine discontinuation syndrome of doom by Bradley Noe, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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