Venting: Effexor Discontinuation Symptoms

I’m looking for other people to share their experiences and tips around discontinuing from Effexor. I just needed to pour these feelings out somewhere and I feel like my friends/family would just think I’m nuts if I shared how I was really feeling.

This experience has made me feel more hopeless than I have ever felt. It’s been since June 17th, that I have been going through discontinuation syndrome from tapering and stopping Effexor.

This includes: * Flu-like symptoms, such as dizziness, headache, nausea, weakness, lack of energy * Difficulty sleeping * Agitation, anxiety, or restlessness - I have been snapping on my partner and I have never done that before * Paresthesias or feelings of tingling or "pins and needles" * Tachycardia or increased heart rate - I honestly feel as if I drank 5 cups of coffee before bed. My heart could pump out of my chest. * Sweating - I wake up drenched whenever I can sleep. * Tremors or unintentional trembling or shaking - I have to constantly stretch, walk around, take hot baths and shake my limbs to try to get them to settle. Even throughout the day if I’m too still. * Nausea and vomiting - mostly in late June when I originally took my work leave for about a week. * Muscle spasms - mostly in my legs

Almost every night - when I can’t calm my heart rate, my restless legs won’t stop trying to run away from me and my brain won’t stop cycling about how awful I feel - I think of ending it.

I have no active plan but I am so desperate to feel some sort of normalcy. I am beyond sleep deprived and average 0-6 hours of sleep most days and it’s usually in the afternoon when I finally crash. I have unintentionally pulled so many all-nighters.

I have taken a series of medications in hopes of sedation, so I can sleep, like Benadryl, Gravol, ZzzQuill, Lorazepam, Ketorolac and nothing seems to work.

Turns out that diphenhydramine - is a common exaggerator of restless legs - and is the most common OTC sedative (in Benedryl and ZzQuill) What the fuck. Am I supposed to take Oxy’s to make this stop and knock me out? What do you take to cure this? I’m purely relying on my “mental strength” - or whatever is left of it, to get through this. I’m wearing so thin.

On top of usual withdrawal symptoms - I have this awful symptom, apparrently called Paresthesias. I feel like I have pins and needles all over my body, that make me feel incredibly itchy. I originally thought I was finally losing my mind, until I found medical journals that cited it as a symptom. I was searching my sheets for mites and then thinking I may be having allergies. Turns out, I’m not fully nuts and it’s the Effexor withdrawal.

I am so uncomfortable in my own skin, I can’t bare it. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

Im terrified that I will never be able to function again, or that these symptoms will drive me insane.

Im so angry with my doctor. I didn’t realize that Effexor was the hardest anti-depressant to come off of. There are hundreds of medical journals and therapy threads that I have scoured searching for answers - that support a scary truth. They all told me this can be take years to get through and sometimes it may never stop. That Effexor was never a good idea. That I should have never taken it. I can’t believe I was taking 425 mg. I can’t believe my doctor was so reckless. He kept insisting that my tolerance kept growing, and that the only way for my anxiety to settle was to increase my dose - each time. I wish I could go back in time and never take this medication.

I daydream of killing myself all day long in all sorts of ways. Trying to figure out which would be the least painful and easiest. I try so hard to pretend like everything is normal and keep up with my partner. They are struggling too.

At this point, they are also sleep deprived because of me. I wake them up seeking some sort of support or words of affirmation that will make these sensations stop or calm me down. Nothing ever works. The exhaustion has created a miserable person, who is extremely unpleasant. I speak so harshly now, even though I don’t mean to. I don’t want to be this way. I don’t know how to make it stop. I’m just sleep deprived, anxious, depressed and desperate to be anything but “this”.

I even tried to go to the hospital in the beginning (June)z They thought I was on street drugs and treated me like garbage. I finally mustered the courage to go because I couldn’t stop crying. It had been around 5 hours of crying when my partner finally insisted I go. The doctor told me he had never seen anti-depressant withdrawal like this and made me give him a blood and urine sample. He didn’t believe it was just withdrawal.To find nothing. I didn’t receive any mental health support and I was there for around 10 hours. I went home just as lost as when I arrived.

Where else do you go when the emergency department is supposed to be “the place”?

I don’t know who to go to and my own doctor has wait times that are over two weeks long. I don’t even want to talk to him because I don’t trust him. The medical system is so beyond fucked. It’s nearly impossible to get mental health support in my province.

Just writing this - I can’t stop crying. What am I supposed to do. I can’t do this for another week, let alone the rest of my life. I can’t afford to keep missing work. EI is not enough. But I don’t know how I will stay composed at work. I’m supposed to go back August 3rd and I am supposed to continue with post-secondary in September. I don’t know how I’m mentally going to do that.

I miss the “me” that was medicated. I just want my brain to be silent. I feel so disturbed thinking they way I do. I don’t truly want to die - but my brain is torturing me in ways I’ve never experienced. It’s so morbid.

I will keep looking for answers and I guess I will keep writing.