Withdrawal sucks
I haven’t written anything lately because I have been ridiculously busy lately. I was up till 7AM one morning last week and then again till 5AM the next night. One of my clients had their development server meltdown while we were in the middle of a big rollout, and I had to stay up crazy hours recovering data that should have been backed up. I also got a new version of CHOW launched and I also scored a great new client, so I am relatively happy about all of those things even though I didn’t really have time to do much of anything besides work.
What I am not happy about is how bad the third week of my taper off of Effexor has been going. The amount of stress I’ve been under is nigh-on ridiculous. As such it may not have been the best time to go off of the meds, but I just think it was something I had to do. It was weird — the moment I put the brain shocks and the Effexor together I immediately knew that I had to go off the Effexor. There was no question in my mind.
I dropped from 75mg to 37.5mg three weeks ago and one week ago dropped again to 18.75mg. The two weeks on the 37.5mg were not bad at all. In fact, I really didn’t notice a difference from my original 75mg dosage. However, the drop to 18.75mg was steep. I have been in an awful depression for the past week and for some reason it got significantly worse today. I am hoping against hope that everything I am experiencing is a result of the withdrawal and is not the depression that these drugs were meant to treat in the first place, but I don’t know. I haven’t felt this depressed in a long, long, long time. It’s not fun.
I’m going to tough out the withdrawal, though. I only have one more week to go, and then probably another two weeks of attenuation to “normal” brain chemistry. Then we shall see. I can always go back on them.
In the mean time, this really sucks.
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Are you keeping your psychiatrist informed about the onset of depression? He or she may be able to make it more bearable through a slower tapering off the drug, or perhaps switch you to something with a completely different mechanism like remeron or even lightly treat you with the good ol’ benzos like xanax.
They might also suggest cognitive behavioral therapy or psychoanalysis (in increasing order of time commitment/cost), neither of which requires you to abstain from drinking like the meds do. Ha! As if you ever abstained from drinking.
Depression sucks. check out my website above – not exactly for you – but the film is pretty interesting (3 mins)
try also this website http://www.nnt.nhs.uk/mh/leaflets/depressio(1).pdf#
again not entirely directly useful – but some helpful tips.
Talking therapy is a really useful thing – CBT – cognitve behavioural therapy. go check it out if you can
Otherwise – give yourself a break. If now is not the right time to be coming off your anti-depressants – dont force yourself. Your under a lot of stress. If your resolved to come off them – maybe it would be better to choose a time when your not so stressed out.
Beating depression without drugs takes a lot of work. Focus on the positive things on your life right now. (it seems to me there are deffinately quite a few) question any negative thoughts.
hope this helps.
PS the one most effective thing i have found is writing things down. (there is even a large body of supporting scientific literature)
By placing your thoughts (whatever they are) down on a piece on paper can often help you to stop ruminating on particular issues. Its funny how simply knowing that it is down on a piece of paper will in time allow you to stop thinging about those negative thoughts. freeing up your mind.
pps – if this all sounds a bit odd coming from a stranger, i apologise. I’m a psychologist who has dealt with his own period of depression. I know what it feels like