Withdrawing from Cymbalta really messed me up, got the room-spins every time I moved my eyeballs. I had to taper it literally by delaying my dose an hour each day (24 hours, then 25 hours, then 26 hours). I couldn’t divide it because it was a capsule but I guess the pharm/MD could have helped me out there if I’d had sense to ask.
Also Zoloft made my wiener stop working. That was disturbing. Lost a girlfriend over that (obviously not the most serious relationship ever, but it still sucked).
Yes, doctors often prescribe smaller pills for tapering down. Cymbalta made me incredibly nauseated
Sexual effects are one of the biggest issues with SSRIs. I don’t remember if I’ve taken Zoloft, but Paxil was the worst for me. Not impotence, but problems finishing and lowered interest.
I get a very upset stomach if I take Vicodin or Percoset. I have no issues with Dilaudid, even when I take it on an empty stomach.
I had abdominal surgery for cancer and while I’m pretty much fine, I have trouble with hard-to-digest things. Quinoa, more than a very small serving of raw vegetables, lentils. I always find out the hard way: When I get horrible abdominal cramping. One such thing was coconut. Usually, I tough it out and everything’s fine after about twelve hours, but the coconut pain wasn’t going away and I was vomiting. I was told to go to the ER if I had this pain with vomiting because it could be a bowel obstruction. We went to the ER where they gave me morphine via IV. I threw up violently, then slowly started to pass out. I felt so terrible the world was receding. I really thought I was dying. I woke up a few seconds later (so I was told) and was fine with no pain (pretty freaked, though!) Apparently, that’s a pretty common side effect of morphine. I’d been given eight units of however they measure it. I went to the ER once after that for the same thing and they offered morphine. I said I’d had a bad reaction to the eight units, but it did help the pain. I had two units and the world wavered a little a minute, but otherwise, I was fine. Two units a half-hour later did the same thing. So I can have morphine in multiple small doses, thank goodness.
I had a bad reaction to Reglan, an anti-nausea medication. I was paranoid and extremely anxious. I paced the house nervously for a couple of hours.
Indocin: I had been ok with previous NSAIDS but this time I asked my doctor to try something else cuz I thought they were ok but maybe try a better NSAID which I suggested Indocin. Big mistake . After 3 doses, I woke up in middle of night with pounding splitting rebound headache and tinnitus/swooshing in my ears. We had to go to ER because I was so worried there was further damage.
Bactrim: My spell was taking several doses and then getting wiped out with severe diarrhea. It not only got rid of the bad bacteria but my gut flora good bacteria , I had no idea I was supposed to take yogurt cultures to replace them!
Now: Sulfasalazine. Doing well after a month or so of doses. Then started getting dizzy/room spinning around where I was holding myself up against the wall to walk. My last dose, I was sweating so badly , got chills, and threw up the dose.
I had my second heart attack six month ago. Since my first attack in 2012, I have carried Nitrostat on my key chain in case of another attack. The attack six months ago was minor, and I caught the signs sooner. I did not take the Nitrostat on the way to the hospital. In the ER, they decided I needed one. Less than a minute after they put that pill under my tongue my heart rate went down to 20, and my blood pressure went down to 60 Just before I passed out, they gave me some Atropene to bring my numbers back up…
I’ve used florastor to good effect to replace gut flora damaged by antibiotics.
About twenty years ago I told my (new) doctor I was having depression issues and felt like it had been a problem since I was about eleven. We talked a little and he gave me a 30 day trial of Prozac. Almost immediately I had the weird sexual side effects but to an (I thought) extreme degree. TMI warning
I was aroused and erect pretty much 24/7. I was unfortunately completely unable to achieve completion/orgasm/relief despite intense efforts.
I endured it but by the end of the 30 days I had zero lessening of the depression. I went on to try 3 other (Wellbutrin, Effexor and one I’m not remembering) 30 day trials of anti-depressants which had similar side effects, to a lesser degree.
That was the end of my foray into anti-depressants.
More recently (4/2017) I had a mysterious heart related crisis, (possibly a virus) that landed me in the hospital for a week after I damn near died. I have Level 1 CHF, and they put me on several drugs, and immediately I had, TMI Warning
Severe diarrhea issues. It was life altering to be honest. One by one they let me stop taking some of the medications, each time I hoped that was the one causing the issues, but no luck. Until… most recently they said I could stop taking Spironolactone (sp?) That seems to have done the trick. More or less back to normal now.
Last year’s flu shot, no problem. This year’s flu shot kicked my ass. I had it before Thanksgiving and I’m not sure I’m back to normal yet.
These happened with psych meds, so I don’t remember which ones they were, but…
One of them made it so that I couldn’t straighten up my back. I looked like Quasimodo.
Another one gave me terrible delusions. I was lying on my back, in my bedroom, and felt like I’d been tossed into a swimming pool.
My neurologist once tried putting me on gabapentin, saying it was absolutely the blandest drug on the market for my problem.
I immediately got ataxia. The effect was like being falling down drunk except that I was absolutely sober while it was happening. I found it frightening and hilarious at the same time.
This link is about ACE and ARB inhibitors.
Thiazide diuretics are also a very good choice in all populations, but especially this one.
Rhymes with “Lodi”, as in oh-dye.
Another one here with a bad Bactrim reaction. I broke out in a hot, itchy rash on every skin surface after a week on it, which is when it became obvious I am allergic.
But prior to that, I was also having extremely vivid, violent nightmares, palpitations, dizziness, shortness of breath, and vomiting (not nausea, just vomiting, which nearly resulted in a big mess because I had no warning sign I was about to puke until it was nearly too late). It was an extremely unpleasant week.
Clindamycin gave me such bad acid reflux when I forgot to take it with food that I thought my esophagus was going to rip apart. The pain was unreal.
When I was on sertraline and Geodon I had such a crazy dissociative episode I carved “sick” in to my stomach with a razor so I’d know when I was lucid I needed to get help. I wasn’t IN my body at the time so I didn’t feel any pain. I was standing behind my body, behind a glass, working the controls from a computer screen. I cut myself several times before that because the only way to feel like I was back in my body was to cause physical pain but that stopped working. The sertraline alone gave me delusions and hallucinations. I felt the ground shaking under my feet. I told my psychiatrist and instead of thinking maaaybe this wasn’t the med for me he decided I was bipolar and upped the dose plus added Geodon. When I told him about the new experiences he increased my dose of sertraline and added depakote and Ambien to help me sleep through the horrific jerking from akathisia. It took months for that to stop after I quit the meds. I finally just decided to not go back and weaned myself from the meds alone, mostly through smoking copious amounts of cannabis. I kept an online journal during most of this and reading it now I can see I was completely out of my head.
The funny thing is I just went to get help with a needle phobia. It just snowballed somehow.
I had a sinus thing once, and had a friend drive me to work. He gave me “something” that was supposed to help, and by the time we got to work, I was flat on my face puking on the floor and somewhere in the vicinity of the toilet.
Better that ‘Gangrene of the Genitals’ I guess.
After my breast surgeries, when I reported my pain level as a 4 or 5, I was offered unspecified pain medication, and refused it because I’d heard too many horror stories about this or that injectable opiate. I could tolerate it, and had some Vicodin at home, which did the job.
All these stories make me all the more grateful that I did not take any!
p.s. Some of these stories, especially the ones with psychiatric or neurology drugs, have me wondering if (generic) you were given doses too high for a treatment-naive patient. Definitely not an uncommon problem.
I had a vagal response to Ramipril - I collapsed. I was at my mother’s house but imagine if that had happened while I was driving!
My worst reaction has been bad dreams - not nightmares but not far off - from Dexamethasone. Not a problem if they’re infrequent but it was almost every night.
Nitrous Oxide causes me to have dizzy spells for weeks after I’ve had it.
Not a horrible reaction to a drug, but almost unheard of, and thus it was very hard to diagnose. It was a very frustrating time.
Following radiation treatment (which was bad enough on its own) my cancer (melanoma) treatment was interferon alpha-2b. It’s a primitive immunotherapy drug, so I was told it would feel like I had the flu.
I was more like a terrible stomach ache every waking minute, lingering nausea and constipation. I eventually got some medicine for irritable bowel syndrome to help. What that didn’t help with was it also made me a depressed, irritable asshole.
I was going to either go on disability or quit the injections, but a billing and insurance fuckup halted shipments anyway.
Don’t get cancer.
My reaction to lisinopril wasn’t so dramatic; I just coughed so much that my co-workers were ready to put a pillow over my mouth and finish me off. I couldn’t blame them. My doctor discontinued the drug and put me on something else to control my high blood pressure.
I cannot take most OTC antihistamines. Instead of making me drowsy like it would most people, it’s like drinking 2 pots of coffee. Just peel me off the ceiling.
I stick with Claritin and Allegra.