It is day five of my withdrawing and I am still on a relatively high dose but I like to think of anything as an accomplishment. The headache has left completely but I woke up today feeling extremely dizzy and woozy. I was also very anxious and irritable last night but got over it quickly with some relaxation. Overall it isn't too bad.
I am in no way an expert on withdrawing because I have only been using the bead method for almost a week, but I have gained a lot of great knowledge from posts and books like the Antidepressant Solution. Here is some notes that I would like to share:
• DO NOT STOP TAKING YOUR ANTIDEPRESSANT “COLD TURKEY”: Withdrawal symptoms are your brain cells regenerating themselves, though they are unpleasant, there is almost no way to get around it. Depending on your unique body chemistry, you may have better or worse withdrawal symptoms. However, no one should stop taking the dose they are on “cold turkey” no matter how strong your will might be. Doing this can cause severe problems and even life-long side effects. The side effects of withdrawing off of Effexor or any antidepressant are because your brain is literally changing and reshaping its way of functioning. Different antidepressants are designed to boost different chemical messengers. Take Effexor for example, it uptakes your serotonin and norepinephrine depending on the dose. Your brain has to adapt. This is why it takes 3 or more weeks for the effects to kick in, your brain needs time. There is no reason why your brain wouldn’t need time when you are coming off of the drug. Stopping suddenly is like running a triathlon without training your body. Your brain needs new “training” so that it can learn how to function with the diminishing dose of the antidepressant. I have noticed that people who get the severe “electric shock” sensations are usually the ones who drop the dose too suddenly or stop cold turkey. Those are brain cells and nerves firing because it wasn’t properly trained enough to handle without the dose it is used to. There is no test to find out what that electric sensation is doing and if it will cause any form of brain cell or nerve damage. This is a reason good enough to NOT stop cold turkey and take the route of slowly tapering off.
• Effexor can show its withdrawal symptoms within 1-2 days of missing a dose: Effexor has a very short half-life. A half-life is how long it takes for half of the dose to be eliminated from your body. This is why withdrawal symptoms happen from even missing one dose. I have realized that a lot of my side effects of Effexor were probably due to me taking it at different times of the day. The half-life is about 5 hours, so my body was constantly in limbo. This is why you should always take it at the same exact time of the day. Same thing for tapering off. Also drink a lot of water to help eliminate faster. This way your withdrawal symptoms will peak and subside so that you can start your next lower dose without a worsening of symptoms.
• If your withdrawal symptoms are severe, wait for them to subside: As I mentioned about drinking water to help eliminate faster, you shouldn’t allow the withdrawal symptoms to fall into the next dose. Once again your brain needs time to re-adjust itself. Once the withdrawal symptoms peak (usually 1-2 days) you should pay attention to how you feel. If your withdrawal symptoms are not bad and tolerable, then feel free to move onto the next lower dose. If the symptoms are so severe that you cannot function the same, you need to slow down and give it another week on the same dose. This is the only way to prevent a worsening of the overall withdrawal.
My rant of the day:
Doctors prescribe antidepressants because of the belief that a person has a faulty neurotransmitter activity in the brain which is not allowing enough of the “good chemicals” (serotonin, etc) to get in. Prescribing an antidepressant is supposed to delay the neurotransmitter to function which in turn will increase the levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, etc. This is supposed to elevate your mood because serotonin reuptake receptor was not working correctly and you had a chemical imbalance in your brain. All of us with the diagnosis of manic depressants or bipolar have heard it before. This is what gets me. When you were described the antidepressant for your “chemical imbalance,” what test was done to see that you truly had this imbalance they speak of? In most cases the doctor talks to you for half an hour and makes a blatant assumption that your brain isn’t working correctly. Once, while in a psych ward, I asked the doctor how he knew that I had a chemical imbalance and he told me I was being difficult. I agree that I there are people who do have imbalances, but to this day there is no test to tell us where or what that imbalance is. So why is it so easy to prescribe something that will change your brain and nervous system’s entire way of functioning? This is something that won’t be soon changed because of the high price of antidepressants and the vast majority of lobbyists, but it needs to be addressed sooner than later. Until then, we just have to fight for our rights, speak what we believe and remember to not trust every word we hear. Do your own research and come to a conclusion through questions, self-examination and persistence. Don’t trust someone simply because of their authority position. That is truly the only way out of this over-medicated hole we have dug ourselves into.
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