Don't go cold turkey - KTVI

Don't go cold turkey - KTVI

DON'T GO COLD TURKEY!!!

Feeling Good

So I picked up my LAST prescription of Effexor. I took a good 2 hours and finished making all my capsules ready for the coming weeks. I have decided to drop by increments of 5mg from after 80mg. So for this week, I will start taking 80mg on Monday and then 75mg the next week, 70mg, and so on. I decided to do that basically because my withdrawals have been very bad lately. I am not sure if this has to do with an accumulation effect of all the lowered doses, the going under 100mg or what. But I will say it again that I am not in a race and my mind + body are healing so going slow will not hurt. My sick stomach has gotten a lot better and I am eating normally. I still have the electric shock feelings but they seem to be subsiding also. I can't wait to be free of Effexor. It will be a nice feeling to never see those capsules and beads ever again. I found a really good way of counting the beads though. I basically dump everything out onto a bright red towel so I can see the white beads better. I take an empty capsule to pick up the beads and transfer them into little 20mg piles. Then I count out the piles and organize them into the correct milligram of capsule. I used to use a method of folding a sheet of paper and dumping the beads onto the crack so that they roll into the capsule after I count them. I found it was a lot harder to count and keep track. I also like the fact that I know how many piles there are. I am a little OCD about the beads because I have read even 1mg change in the daily doses can produce effects to certain people. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that hardly have withdrawal symptoms from dropping at even larger doses than 10mg a week. Those people are the lucky ones! For me though, I am happy I took the time out to count those little bugger beads. I ended up having a bunch of little craft bags that I wrote "70mg, 75mg, etc" on with 7 capsules each in them for each week. Oh and here is a link to the capsules I purchased to fill with the beads:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AHCPEC/ref=oss_product

They have worked out just perfectly. They are a great size and not of cheap quality. The price was pretty great too for a quantity of 500!

Good luck to all those fellow bead counters out there and goodnight =) Onto 80mg tomorrow morning!!

The week from hell

I will try to make this short as it is almost 4am and I really should get some sleep. I haven't had the best week in my life. I am actually still on 90mg, I haven't dropped to 80mg as I was supposed to because I didn't think I could handle it this week. Monday was a terrible day for me. Sunday night I felt just fine until I woke up around 6am, feeling very strange. I ended up vomiting and passing out. I thought I had food poisoning. The rest of the day I tried sleeping, calming down and keeping fluids down but nothing was helping. I felt like I couldn't breathe, I kept throwing up and I was so weak I was trembling. I think I was having extreme anxiety also. Anyway, I ended up going to the emergency room still thinking I had food poisoning. They said it couldn't be food poisoning because it was past the amount of time, I must have something else wrong with me. So sitting there, very anxious, the nurse gives me an IV and takes my blood. Right after that I passed out, started shaking and woke up by vomiting. Pretty picture huh? The nurse said I had a seizure. My husband told the nurse about my Effexor withdrawal and he said that was what was wrong with me. I still thought it was so strange thought that my dosing has been going fine and I haven't been feeling horrible except for a some normal withdrawal symptoms. Eventually after waiting a painful 6 hours in the emergency room the doctor told me I didn't have a seizure, that I just passed out and my limbs were shaking because my muscles were tense and weak. He said I had a stomach virus and the Effexor withdrawal probably has nothing to do with it. They gave me some fluids, nausea pills and I went on my way. Since then I have had two bad days of eating, feeling sick and dizzy. Today was my first good day until the night time. Around the time I was suppose to sleep I felt anxious and dizzy, and that is why I am still up at 4am researching Effexor withdrawal. So I am wondering, do you think that my experience in the ER was directly related to the withdrawal? Or was the doctor right in saying it had no coorelation? Maybe even the withdrawal has made my immune system get lower so I had a bad reaction to a normal stomach virus sickness? I guess I will never know, but I am hoping that the vomiting, passing out thing never happens again!! I will be dropping to 80mg on Monday since I have been feeling better, but lets see how the weekend treats me first.

I am definitely going to sleep now! Typing has made me tired =)

Effexor-Splitting Capsules Method - ABC Homeopathy Forum

I found something interesting and want to share. I have had a difficult week, I will write more about it tomorrow. I will try and get to sleep before it gets later.

Effexor-Splitting Capsules Method - ABC Homeopathy Forum

"The real question is:

Was today better or worse than yeterday?

If today was worse, then I'd take 3 or 4 days of 5mg. I know that sounds silly, but adding another week to getting off succesfully is worth it. There are many posts in the 85page main effexor discussion which complain of the same thing. Once you get to zero for good, there will STILL be some issues, sometimes for months. You just need them to be tolerable. So, imagine your symptoms gradually disappearing over the course of 45 days. Can you make it? If not, you should try and get your life back by dosing for a while at 5mg. Your goal is to accept the withdral as inevitable in the end. (it does go away, with time) If the withdrawl is too much for that, then go back and taper down some more. "

It's 2am

Well it is 2 am and I am not sleeping. I have always been a night owl so it's not too terrible. I do however have very bad asthma tonight. I have been having an increasing amount of asthma the last week or so. I have also been waking up to my nose running everywhere and my lips bleeding. I have found that "carmex" works wonders for my poor swollen lips. I wonder if one day I won't have these constant lip, sinus and asthma problems as bad as I have had. I searched google for asthma being a side effect of Effexor withdrawal and guess what? It is! Of course it is...everything is a side effect of withdrawal from Effexor. This is a drug made in hell.

Today is my first day of 90mg and it went well enough. I was very fatigued and around 8pm I started feeling extremely strange, anxious and unreal. I felt one big tremor in my head which I think is the "brain shocks" that people speak of. I ended up taking a xanax to calm my anxiety. It worked very well. I don't like taking xanax, it makes me feel very lethargic, but this time it was worth it. Hopefully tomorrow I won't have such bad symptoms. If I do I will handle it though because I have to keep telling myself that this is not a race and my brain is healing. Healing is painful sometimes.

I'm going to go lay down and try to sleep. I think my asthma seems to be getting better, thank God!

Argh.

I haven't posted in a while. I have been meaning to but I haven't gotten around to it. Currently I am on 100mg and I can feel it. Here is my current list of withdrawal symptoms:

- Nausea (this is usually accompanied with an anxiety attack)
- Anxiety (I find if I don't eat dinner early enough I start to get very anxious because of the dizziness, nausea and weird feelings)
- Rash (Little tiny dots all over my body which get really itchy at night, they are similar to the rash I had when I first started taking it)
- Lips Swollen (My lips are SO painful!!! They are swollen, cracked and dry. Every time I eat it hurts worse, sometimes feels like they are going to explode)
- Stuffy Nose (non-stop stuffy nose, so bad that I can't smell anything and I sleep with my mouth open which makes it dry and makes my lip worse, vicious cycle!)
- Irritability (I think this is mostly from my general feeling of crappiness, but I get really irritated and don't want to do anything)
- Fatigue (Tired all day, lack of concentration)
- Insomnia (I can't sleep when I want to sleep and it makes me really tired in the morning)

I think that is about it. I think I felt a "electric shock" for the first time the other day. It was like a warm lightening feeling in my head, went away very quickly but it was still unpleasant.

It is amazing what doctors are allowed to prescribe. This stuff is poison.