I have spent hours searching online for some worthwhile advice about these extremely frustrating feelings that are going on in my body right now, but I am not finding the answers that are all that helpful. I am just learning more descriptions for what I am feeling and that does me no good.
I am a female andI have been on
antidepressants for over seven years ( 25 years old),
Effexor XR for about four or five of those. Two years ago I fell into a huge slump and had to drop out of college, live with my family and go to an outpatient program for some intense therapy to help find ways to live day to day with the evil spell of
depression. After much support and a serious self evaluation I am now healthy and have a positive outlook on life. I am in the best place right now to try and live my life without relying on medication to feel well. I am constantly surrounded by people who care about me. I have a healthy lifestyle (exercise, diet, positive outlook) and I am on track with accomplishing my goals.
I first found out about the
Effexor withdrawls when I accidentally skipped a day or two taking my pills several years ago. Basically I just felt out of it and easily agitated, but also easily confused, slower to respond and my mind felt like it was having an out of body experience. I call this being “mind F*#&ed”. This was scary at first because I assumed I was falling into a serious
depression, but after reading about it I was relieved to find this was a rather common problem. I was also slightly disturbed by the fact that a drug that is supposed to make you feel better has such an effect on your body. After my first experience with this withdrawal feeling I swore to myself I would work on getting better and get off this freaky drug. Well, life doesn’t always go as planned and I ended up having to increase my dosage by a pretty significant amount before making to where I am today. But, alas…here I am.
I have been working slowly for the past five months or so decreasing my intake of
Effexor XR. I wanted to a) not have this funky withdrawal and b) make sure my mind and body was healthy enough to make it without the drug in me. Every time I have made an adjustment (capsules and reducing amount in them) I feel funky for about a week and then my body adjusts. The funk is really not too bad and I am able to perfectly function without a problem. Several days ago I made my second to last adjustment before being fully free of
Effexor. Basically I am only taking a few little seed like pieces of the medication a day. Just having enough of the medicine in my body to not be totally rid of it. The withdrawal is much stronger than I hoped. Similar to the feelings I would get when I would stop cold turkey accidentally.
I have expected some sort of this feeling, but I was really hoping it wouldn’t be this bad. The people I work and live with are aware of what I am doing and how it may be feeling, but this is a bit frustrating for me. I am NOT feeling depressed, emotional or sad. I am just feeling very “messed up”. My job is not too demanding so I am able to function at work, but it is bothering me. Does anyone know how long this should last? I am hoping about a week, since ever time I have decreased the strength the funkiness goes away after about that long. The withdrawal side effects just aren’t usually this intense, and I wonder how much of it I can really take before my daily actions are going to be severely disturbed. I really do not want to go back to taking this medicine because the withdrawal side effects are too much to handle. That would be very disappointing.
ANY ADVICE OR WORDS OF WISDOME??
