I looked through past threads and couldn’t find one directly on point.
I am currently getting off Effexor XR, under the supervision of a physician. I’m currently taking 37.5 mg every other day (I tried going straight off after a month at 37.5, and had to restart on day 3 because I was totally nonfunctional with brain zaps, nausea, and freezing cold). The plan is to do this for a couple of weeks, then to stretch to one every three days, and then to try again to cut it out.
I’m not looking for advice on the taper so much (although I’ll certainly listen to any experiences) as any “other” stuff that helped any of you with this. I saw one anecdotal claim that ginger tea helped with the nausea - tried that yesterday, and it may have helped very slightly for about 20 min, but that won’t get me through a workday. Any other anecdotes of stuff worth trying? Deep breathing and not moving my head reduces the brain zaps, but doesn’t eliminate them.
I tried going off of it twice. The first time was hell and I ended up going back on it because our vacation was about to start. I didn’t want to ruin everyones time.
Then I tried again a few months ago (successfully) and had absolutely no side effects.
The only things that were different were that I was determined that I was finished with the stuff and probably more so the timing. Maybe the time I picked to go off was less stressful than other times or maybe my body is more forgiving certain times more than others. Hell if I know.
Switching to prozac then withdrawing from that is advice I have heard others give and receive when withdrawing from SSRIs. Due to prozac’s long half life withdrawal is alot easier than with effexor.
Here’s some great advice-it is usually a bad idea to ask for medical advice from anonymous members of a message board, even more so when said message board has a policy against such paractices.
When I’ve missed a dose of Effexor, I find that I’m an absolutely KILLER Spider Solitaire player. Not that that’s going to help your withdrawal any, but it’ll give you something to do, at least.
My shrink says I’ll be on FX0r indefinitely, and I honestly think I would go crazy if I were to get off it. There’s been times I’ve forgotten to take it, and while I don’t feel any physical effects except for maybe a slight headache, I can’t sleep that night because I’m in a continual waking dream state. No matter how tired my body might be, my brain will be buzzing at a million miles an hour subconsciously. I get the “fisheye” lens effect the next day and feel like my brain will drop out of my skull.
It’s actually kind of neat, in a self-mutilating Van Gogh sort of way, but definitely not good for me.
I’m finally off the Celexa now. Celexa has withdrawl symptoms similar to Effexor.
Brain zap/freezes/shivers: check
Pissy mood for a few days: check
Headaches: check
Excitable/high energy/jitters: check
Actually I feel pretty lucky, reading the above posts. I still have no problem going to sleep, and I could function in society perfectly well (although couldn’t concentrate on homework for a few days because of unrelenting jitteryness). What worked for me was decreasing the dosage over four weeks and then just stopping. If I hadn’t tapered off, the brain shivers alone would have made life miserable. As it is, I’m still getting them, but they are much weaker than if I had stopped without tapering. IANAD, YMMV, etc.
I halved my Effexor dosage cold turkey on my own recognizance, and was grumpy for a week. OK - I flew off the handle very easily but that was about it.
I’m starting to stagger my days now on the other half dosage. Every other day for a month says my Dr. So far so good - no ill effects.
I’m transitioning to Wellbutrin so its effects may be countering the Effexor removal some. Ramping one up while the other is going down.
I was taking 300 mg of Effexor and it was actually working against me, so my doctor and I decided it was time to bring it down. Obviously, she envisioned quite a long period of taper-off and withdrawal. We started taking it down in increments of 37.5, and I felt like crap for a whole week. All the symptoms of a high fever, without actually having the fever. I was incapacitated.
Well, I decided I wasn’t going to do that for the couple of months it would have taken me to get off the drug, so I just quit cold turkey. I felt slightly more awful than I did during the taper-down phase, but I was back to functional within a week. Another week after that and I had no symptoms at all.
As for how to manage the symptoms–take time off of work if you can. I’m a lawyer too, and I can’t imagine trying to practice while feeling like that. Ginger ale, ginger Altoids–I find that anything ginger helps with nausea. I never did find anything that would fix the dizziness or the sweating besides laying on the couch.