Saturday, November 10th, I had to attend a wedding over 5 hours away and I was in NO MOOD to attend. That morning was pretty hard to actually leave the house because of the feeling of dread. It wasn't a depressive "dread" feeling, it was that "omg, weddings are horrible and pointless" pity party sort of feeling. I had a sick pet at home that had to tag along because she needed injections and then I, sort of, just found excuses to become later and later in leaving for the wedding. When I did finally get to the wedding, I felt like a total grump and did not want to be there. I only had one real episode of crying in my car because I was just so done with being around people. I ended up leaving. Since my separation from my husband is so fresh, my emotions didn't really confuse me in any way.
Symptoms that I was feeling that day:
- Night sweats.... I almost soaked the sheets in sweat. It was very brutal.
- Hot flashes during the entire day. I had to go outside and cool off because I would get so hot that I started to sweat.
- Lightheadedness was pretty low
- Nausea was almost gone
- Brain Zaps were not experienced at all today
Sunday, November 11th, I was still mildly grumpy from yesterday's episode and all of the travel that I'd had to do. I really just wanted to relax damn it! Still, no real emotions that I felt were out of the ordinary here. Just a lot of travel again and once I got home, I slept for the rest of the day.
Symptoms for the day include:
- Exhaustion mostly from travel and lack of sleep. I don't really credit my tiredness from the medication.
- Night Sweats... same as the night prior. So much HEAT! I could barely handle having covers on me at all during the night.
- Hot Flashes were at it again and I would say they were about the same as the day before. I had my air conditioning on in my car blowing directly into my face.
- Mood: Moderately grumpy with minor cases of sadness.
I'm just glad that my first weekend is over!
~Ash
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Friday, November 9, 2012
The First Week off of Effexor...
Monday, November 5th, I took my last dose of 150mg of Effexor and I thought to myself. Do I really want to keep going? Anti-depressants have not really done me any favors. Hell, I think they are ruining my life. Why do I want to continue to intoxicate my brain with this bullshit anymore! This was the day that I stopped cold turkey.
Tuesday, November 6th, extreme exhaustion Luckily I had the day off and just moped around the apartment all day. I took a nap during the afternoon and I felt better. Not much more here....
Wednesday, November 7th, Well hello withdraw side effects. It's funny, I didn't even realize what it was until after I went here: http://forums.webmd.com/3/anxiety-and-panic-disorders-exchange/forum/3049?pg=24#355 I was starting to experience every single one that people were talking about:
- moderate nausea
- exhaustion
- headaches (you'll laugh about this if you know me personally. I'll get into that whole can of worms later)
- Sinus pressure including a runny nose that would turn dry and bleed
- light headed
Thursday, November 8th, and here we go.... I felt more of the same from yesterday but now include:
- Vertigo
- Vivid Nightmares
- Brain Zaps
Friday, November 9th, exact same symptoms as yesterday. I believe this is how I'm going to feel until I can ride the wave out.
-The nausea is moderate and becomes more severe as the day goes on. I do fear that I'm going to probably sick up at least once by the end of this purely from the nausea. Eating food makes me feel worse even though I feel starving. The food goes down just fine if I eat early but once I've had my fill (which appears to be much less than a normal meal aka half a sandwich) I'm done. I believe that the smell of food would set me off right now. It's 5:45pm and I'm pretty sure I wont eat dinner. I think I can work on the nausea with some medication that I have left over from my anxiety because it used to make me feel like I was going to be sick every morning. I'll try and bring those with me and see if that helps.
-Exhaustion is pretty moderate, leaning towards severe. I'll need a nap when I get home. Even though I went to bed at midnight, I tried to wake up around 7:30 and it just was not happening. I stayed in bed for an extra hour before I finally pulled myself up and out of the house.
-Headaches, well, I don't really notice any major changes in my current pain. Again, I'll talk about this in greater detail in tomorrow's post. So, if I'm experiencing "headaches" as a symptom, I don't really know.
-My sinus pressure isn't so bad today. The drippy nose is gone but I still feel... "boogery"? yeah, I'm just going to call it that. Where you feel like your nose is just stuffed and gross. Not pain really, just sort of hanging about like it could turn into a sinus infection if I don't keep up with my fluids.
-Lightheadedness/ Vertigo are going to go in the same category because I'm feeling both right now. Vertigo comes and goes but it's pretty light. Mostly just feels like my world is randomly shifting if I move too fast.
-Vivid Nightmares... HOLY CRAP! I had two yesterday after a nap and damn! I woke up with my heart racing and then my next thought was I should totally make these into slasher films! I'm actually sort of excited about these because most of the time, they are lucid dreams so I don't wake up in a panic like it's real or anything. I guess I just have a whacked out imagination :-)
-Brain Zaps if you aren't aware are freaking crazy. It sort of feels like your brain just got shook up and thrown into tank of very angry electric eels. It's sort of a hazy feeling when it does occur. My vision instantly goes blurry and all thoughts are gone for a second. Some say that they hear stuff, sometimes I do in my ears like when you hear wind blowing really hard outside your window. Your hearing gets muffled as well during this time so I'm guessing that's why people hear stuff. /shrug. I don't know. I just roll with the punches.
I will continue to keep a journal of how things progress throughout this crazy time. There are loads of people out there who want off of this horrible stuff and are scared. To be quite honest, I think anti-depressants really wasn't the answer for me after all of this. Even if I was diagnosed with Severe Depression. My doctors should have told me what this was going to be doing to my body!
I will not rage about that now.... Perhaps later :-)
~Ash
The Anti-depressant Run Down
Hello, my name is Ashley and I was diagnosed with Major depression and Major anxiety roughly 2 years ago. I have been suffering with bouts of depression since I was in middle school and most never lasted more than a month tops. As time went by, the depression grew worse and worse lasting longer and longer to the point when I finally sat on my husband's lap and decided that I was tired of feeling this way and I wanted to do something about it!
As someone with depression, it's like trying to trying to shoe horn them into seeing someone for your issues. I knew something was wrong and I knew that it was depression but I just wasn't really sure of a few things:
1) Does everyone feel like this? Perhaps I'm just being a wimp because the world is a harsh place and I never really dealt with it properly.
2) So what if I have depression! I've been dealing with it since I was a little girl. I should be able to continually approve overtime on how I deal with this right? "Man Up" so to speak
3) Am I worth it to get better? This one is extremely tricky because you don't go to a doctor when you're feeling at your tip top shape right? You go when you feel at your complete worst. With depression, I felt like the bottom of a shoe. Seemed like a waste of time and energy to get better to me. Perhaps I could do it for someone else, but never for my own reasons.
4) I'm horrified at what the doctor is going to say! What do I say? "Hey Doc! I'm depressed and I want to ball up and cry a lot for no good reason... got some pills for that?" Yeah, usually not a great ice breaker huh?
There are probably a few more things but these are the things that I can recall right now. Regardless, I was a blubbering mess but I was still a very productive person in society. I'd graduated from college on my own in 4 years, and I'd been holding a steady full time job down with little to no issues prior to this. I just felt like I could be better. As one of those stupid anti-depressant commercials claim "Depression hurts!" blah blah blah well for fuck sake it sure does but damn it! I'm too stubborn to quit!
So, my husband and I had decided that it was time to seek medical help. I went into my doctor and sure enough "Major Depression and Major Anxiety" Boyah! She didn't really say much more about my medication at the time other than "Do you have any questions?". PROZAC the all mighty drug that everyone gets thrown on. She wrote me a proscription without mush of a fuss and said that I will have "side effects" going on to them.
Mind you, that was over two years ago. Prozac made me so ill that I called her back after I tortured myself for a month on it. Then we tried Cymbalta and I turned into a freaking looney toon after only a few pills of that. Next up, Lexapro. I was on Lexapro for quite a while; I think from April 2010- December 2011? I can't really remember. I gave it the old college try with upping the dose and then some more but I never really feel like I was all that less depressed on Lexapro. Hell, I was starting to miss work from side effects and just an overall feeling of dread and hopelessness. It was terrible. She added Buspar to the mix to liven things up a bit! Why the hell not I say! Nothing else was working. Let's throw in the kitchen sink too while we're at it bitch.
Around the holiday season in 2011, I started having massive panic attacks and stopped being able to drive to work let alone do much more. I was at a family gathering when my most severe one occurred I thought I was going to die! I started vomiting so much that I couldn't breath, my heart was beating so hard that I thought I was having a heart attack, and I felt like I saw death's shadow standing over me when I was gasping for air begging to die. That's when I decided, enough was enough of Lexepro. Let's try something else. My sister had been on Effexor before but it was purely for anxiety reasons. Which, prior to being on any sort of anti-depressant, I'd never once had any sort of episode. Now, I'm a fucking mess!
I stopped going to my regular family doctor for this sort of thing and started seeking more "focused" advice with a psychiatrist. He put me on the Effexor and put me on these drugs that would get me over my major anxiety situations. I really have no clue what they were called but OMG I was on a Cotton Candy Cloud for a week. The only thing that I could do was go outside and pull weeds and sit in front of a TV. I guess they worked for that time being because I was never anxious... well, I really didn't have feelings during that time either. Perhaps that doesn't really matter does it ;-)
I've been on 150mg of Effexor for over almost year now and lately, I've been experiencing massively elevated heart rates for no particular reason but it just wont stop! It's been happening for almost 3 months solid. Every time someone took my pulse, they asked me if I was all right. I was like, sure? The only reason I noticed it was this bad was because I went to my local church's blood drive to donate and I couldn't because my heart rate wouldn't come down to a normal level. If I could get it below 90bpm I was happy. I finally went to go see my psychiatrist again and he told me that this side effect could occur from Effexor. I thought perhaps I'd been having an anxiety episode for 3 months straight and I was just too stubborn to let go. Told me that I should get off of it and switch to something else; That something else is Viibryd. He told me that I'd need to stop down my dose on Effexor first in order to switch over to the new stuff...
He wrote me a prescription for a lower dose of Effexor and wrote me a script for Viibryd. "I want to see you back in a little over a month to see how your heart rate is doing" he says. So I walked out of the office pretty frustrated. Another anti-depressant, more side effects. I'm overjoyed >.>
...... This is where my new journey begins.....
As someone with depression, it's like trying to trying to shoe horn them into seeing someone for your issues. I knew something was wrong and I knew that it was depression but I just wasn't really sure of a few things:
1) Does everyone feel like this? Perhaps I'm just being a wimp because the world is a harsh place and I never really dealt with it properly.
2) So what if I have depression! I've been dealing with it since I was a little girl. I should be able to continually approve overtime on how I deal with this right? "Man Up" so to speak
3) Am I worth it to get better? This one is extremely tricky because you don't go to a doctor when you're feeling at your tip top shape right? You go when you feel at your complete worst. With depression, I felt like the bottom of a shoe. Seemed like a waste of time and energy to get better to me. Perhaps I could do it for someone else, but never for my own reasons.
4) I'm horrified at what the doctor is going to say! What do I say? "Hey Doc! I'm depressed and I want to ball up and cry a lot for no good reason... got some pills for that?" Yeah, usually not a great ice breaker huh?
There are probably a few more things but these are the things that I can recall right now. Regardless, I was a blubbering mess but I was still a very productive person in society. I'd graduated from college on my own in 4 years, and I'd been holding a steady full time job down with little to no issues prior to this. I just felt like I could be better. As one of those stupid anti-depressant commercials claim "Depression hurts!" blah blah blah well for fuck sake it sure does but damn it! I'm too stubborn to quit!
So, my husband and I had decided that it was time to seek medical help. I went into my doctor and sure enough "Major Depression and Major Anxiety" Boyah! She didn't really say much more about my medication at the time other than "Do you have any questions?". PROZAC the all mighty drug that everyone gets thrown on. She wrote me a proscription without mush of a fuss and said that I will have "side effects" going on to them.
Mind you, that was over two years ago. Prozac made me so ill that I called her back after I tortured myself for a month on it. Then we tried Cymbalta and I turned into a freaking looney toon after only a few pills of that. Next up, Lexapro. I was on Lexapro for quite a while; I think from April 2010- December 2011? I can't really remember. I gave it the old college try with upping the dose and then some more but I never really feel like I was all that less depressed on Lexapro. Hell, I was starting to miss work from side effects and just an overall feeling of dread and hopelessness. It was terrible. She added Buspar to the mix to liven things up a bit! Why the hell not I say! Nothing else was working. Let's throw in the kitchen sink too while we're at it bitch.
Around the holiday season in 2011, I started having massive panic attacks and stopped being able to drive to work let alone do much more. I was at a family gathering when my most severe one occurred I thought I was going to die! I started vomiting so much that I couldn't breath, my heart was beating so hard that I thought I was having a heart attack, and I felt like I saw death's shadow standing over me when I was gasping for air begging to die. That's when I decided, enough was enough of Lexepro. Let's try something else. My sister had been on Effexor before but it was purely for anxiety reasons. Which, prior to being on any sort of anti-depressant, I'd never once had any sort of episode. Now, I'm a fucking mess!
I stopped going to my regular family doctor for this sort of thing and started seeking more "focused" advice with a psychiatrist. He put me on the Effexor and put me on these drugs that would get me over my major anxiety situations. I really have no clue what they were called but OMG I was on a Cotton Candy Cloud for a week. The only thing that I could do was go outside and pull weeds and sit in front of a TV. I guess they worked for that time being because I was never anxious... well, I really didn't have feelings during that time either. Perhaps that doesn't really matter does it ;-)
I've been on 150mg of Effexor for over almost year now and lately, I've been experiencing massively elevated heart rates for no particular reason but it just wont stop! It's been happening for almost 3 months solid. Every time someone took my pulse, they asked me if I was all right. I was like, sure? The only reason I noticed it was this bad was because I went to my local church's blood drive to donate and I couldn't because my heart rate wouldn't come down to a normal level. If I could get it below 90bpm I was happy. I finally went to go see my psychiatrist again and he told me that this side effect could occur from Effexor. I thought perhaps I'd been having an anxiety episode for 3 months straight and I was just too stubborn to let go. Told me that I should get off of it and switch to something else; That something else is Viibryd. He told me that I'd need to stop down my dose on Effexor first in order to switch over to the new stuff...
He wrote me a prescription for a lower dose of Effexor and wrote me a script for Viibryd. "I want to see you back in a little over a month to see how your heart rate is doing" he says. So I walked out of the office pretty frustrated. Another anti-depressant, more side effects. I'm overjoyed >.>
...... This is where my new journey begins.....
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