Antidepressants

chsdeddijj

Dose anyone have good experience in weening themselves off efexor xl?
I've been on this for many years and it's not helping.
I've come off it with the help of a doctor a couple of times, but after feeling normal for a couple of months I started to feel worse than before I went on it.
The surgery I'm with at the moment has an overturn of doctors frequently so I can never get to know one, and when I ask for help with coming off efexor XL I'm either refused or sent to a psychiatrist where I'm not listened to an they either want to put my dose up, or ask me to come into their clinic as an inpatient. I've been on a higher dose already but I've never felt any benefit either way.
I realize now that I'm older that I should never have asked to be put on any antidepressants in the first place because I didn't need to be on any. Along with it being only my personality, a worrier, and I've been through a lot of bad times, and getting older, that it's been life and my reactions to it which would have passed with time without antidepressants.
So I've been on them for years with no help now from doctors to get off them.
Thank you for reading.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Accidentally

Not myself, thank heavens, but I've had first hand experience of this, where you're passed from doctor to doctor, to specialist, to specialist, but no one actually owns the problem. You're left feeling like a helpless idiot, who should keep taking the tablets and get yourself better.

My advice would be to go back to your GP with a friend or partner. Explain the history, how you feel, what you want, and ask them how to progress from here. Have all your questions written down in advance and visibly write down the answers.

It's not perfect, but I've found this concentrates minds and gets you treated seriously. Best of luck

wexie

It takes a good while to come off it and, unfortunately, even if you do it very gradually the discontinuation effects* can be pretty unnerving. I experienced tingling all over my body, brain zaps, odd dreams lots of different things.

This was coming down from a dose of 300mg, very gradually over the course of about 8 weeks, supported by a psychiatrist and in his words : it's nasty stuff.

I really wouldn't recommend stopping cold turkey (I tried once from 150mg) and the discontinuation effects were pretty unpleasant.

Realistically you will need the support of whoever is prescribing them as you'll need different doses every week/2 weeks or so.

(or at least that's how it was done for me)

Obviously I can't comment on whether or not you SHOULD but if you do genuinely feel they're not doing you any good (they weren't for me) then you need to put your foot down and state your case. Sounds like I had very similar discussions with my team and in the end I told them I wasn't going back on a medication I didn't feel had done me any good in the past unless they could give me a justification better than 'well eh....it's supposed to be really good' which was all I was getting from them.


** Psychiatrists explained to me that withdrawals are for alchohol and recreational drugs, medicine causes discontinuation effects

Graces7

google will have excellent articles by folk who have done this.

see

https://www.drugs.com/answers/long-effexor-withdrawal-symptoms-940317.html

( I always like to know the worst scenario)

As with all psych drugs, slow and easy does it. Very slow, very easy.

I was on all kinds of meds long ago, including anti ds. Just take it slow and be kind to you