However, Effexor is a kind of demon, too. Taking a dose a few hours late usually means a day filled with wooziness, blurry vision, nausea and vomiting. A missed dose of Effexor completes this misery with headache and feeling bad all over. Honestly, on the days I realized I had missed a dose, I would sometimes wish I were simply depressed for the following 24 hours.
I have read many of the fine books now available about depression: about its cultural history, and about specific individuals and their profoundly varied experiences of it. Most significant for me has been learning the day to day, sometimes moment to moment, skills that keep the noonday demon away, and allow me to feel, well, not depressed. After all these years, isn't it possible, in fact, probable, that I am not depressed now, but am actually in a state of mental health?
November 2008 became my turning point. If I am not depressed, and if I do, indeed, have good life skills for coping with traumatic events, then why must I continue to take Effexor?
Why, indeed. The side effects of withdrawing from Effexor are terrible. I tried to find information about successfully tapering Effexor dosage. This seemed to be a dead end: the medical community standard of care is to taper dose, but add Prozac at the same time. Personal accounts of trying to get off Effexor did not vary: the misery of tapering or withdrawal from the drug was intolerable. All accounts seemed to conclude with going back on the drug .
This simply did not seem right. I decided to be my own One Dog Study.
From December 2008 until now, April 2009 I have gone from a daily dose of 225 mg
to 75 mg. And I'm feelin' fine, having enjoyed a short morning walk in the forest behind my home, filled with spring birds.
But the Devil is in the details. The period of time between December and ten days ago has been
filled with the brutal side effects of very slowly withdrawing from Effexor.
Tapering the dosage has been methodical. Very slow. Every drop in dosage was followed by weeks of being physically sick. The physical experience of these weeks was like bobbing on time-slowed strong, quiet waves: a morning might be spent on the crest of a wave feeling a bit better, but then followed by 24 hours settled in the low long space between waves, feeling physically awful, not knowing, and sometimes not believing I could hold out one more day to see if I might bob to the crest of another wave. My waves were a daily ryhthm: good morning, terrible afteroon, evening, troubling sleep. But they quieted, became less dramatic over the weeks. When I would reach a period of time when it seemed like I was no longer bobbing, but resting comfortably on shore, waves no longer affecting me. Only then would I believe I could begin the tapering process again.
But first, I let my body talk to me for a few days to assure me that it had accepted this lower dose, and adjusted to having a bit less of it around.
For me, each drop in dose has taken about a month. My goal now is to be off Effexor entirely by August.
If you are also going through this transition, I would enjoying hearing from you, and learning from you.
Since this is my own blog, I feel I can add another metaphor: tapering off Effexor is like
bashing through the thick, tangled underbrush of woods, lost with not even a deer trail
underfoot, struggling past every single tree, with no sense of time or distance, no site of a horizon. Only trees ahead, behind, above, around.
The lovely part of my experience of the last five months is now letting my understanding of landscape ecology give words to my current vantage point: I believe I am through the undergrowth and tangle of trees, and am now at the edge of this particular forest. Near the edge of forests, life is richest: abundant in food, varied in lifeforms, dynamic in growth. Living at the forest edge is still perilous. But more importantly to me, living at the edge is good. I can see around me. I can venture out when I am ready. As far as I wish to go. And now I can appreciate the
Forestview
Please share your experiences.
