boojit

Over the past 6 months or so, I've been slowly moving myself off my perscription antidepressants. I quit taking them all together approximately 2 days ago.

Back in October, I was taking the maximum dose of Effexor (375mg/day--a horse killing dose). In November, I started decreasing my intake of Effexor slowly, while also starting on Remeron.

I liked the Remeron because it helped me sleep. Whether it helped me deal with decreasing my Effexor doseage, I can't tell you. I still had some pretty drastic discontinuation effects when decreasing my Effexor, but through it all my mood swings have been minimal.

I've also been using a popular non-perscription medication as of late. It's non-perscription and it's not over-the-counter, if you catch my drift. That said, it's less dangerous than alcohol (the over-consumption of which, back in October, eventually got the better of me), it doesn't have any addictive properties, and it has been more effective at treating my depression and the discontinuation effects of Effexor withdrawl than the Remeron ever was.

By early spring of this year, I had managed to wean myself down to 75mg/day of Effexor. It wasn't without some serious adverse effects. Going from 150mg/day to 75 mg/day was the most trying: in addition to the constant dizziness that lasts for maybe a week following any reduction in doseage, I also was the recipient of what crazymeds whimsically refers to as "brain shivers"--which for me, basically felt like you were getting hit repeatedly by a low-power stun gun in the head.

I quit with the Remeron about a month ago. I was originally taking 30mg/day, so I started by halving the tablets for a week, and then quitting completely. That was a walk in the park. I didn't really notice anything bad at all happen--no mood swings, nothing.

Next, I started chipping away at that last 75mg/day of Effexor. Since I only had the 75mg capsules, and I didn't want to go see my old shrink (along with quitting the drugs, I've quit the drug pushers as well), I carefully halved my capsules by pulling them apart. Here's how to do it:

1. Get yourself a small plate so that if you spill any, you can easily recover that amount.
2. Hold the capsule vertically in one hand over the plate, with the "fat" half of the capsule up.
3. Use your free hand to carefully remove the "fat" half of the capsule. It takes more pressure than you think, so be careful.
4. Hold the empty, fat capsule end in your other hand, closed end down.
5. Carefully, slowly, pour approximately half of the Effexor from the thinner capsule end to the fatter end. This is actually pretty easy to do, after a couple of tries you shouldn't have any problem
6. Carefully set down one of the capsule ends vertically, lean it against something vertical. It works best if the horizontal surface isn't "slippery" like a smooth countertop or table.
7. "Crimp" the end of the capsule end that you are still holding by carefully folding over the open end of the capsule. It doesn't need to be perfect, just so you can set the pill down without losing any of the Effexor.
8. Put the crimped capsule away for tomorrow night, and take the other end that you just set down. If you want, you can crimp that end too, so that when you take it you don't get Effexor dust all over your mouth.

This will give you approximately 37.5mg of Effexor a day, which is critical: from what I've read, you don't want to try to quit taking 75mg/day "cold turkey," unless brain shivers sound like fun to you.

When I did this, going down from 75mg/day to 37mg/day was a piece of cake. I barely even noticed any dizziness or anything, and no mood swings.

But now that I've stopped the last 37.5mg/day, my brain is complaining, and loudly. It's been 2 days now, and the dizziness is getting worse. No "brain shivers" yet, so it still isn't as bad as going from 150mg/day to 75mg/day. Hopefully the worst is almost over.

If you're looking at going off Effexor, I have two things to tell you: 1) it sucks, hard. 2) Once you've gone thru the bad part of lowering that dose, you'll be glad you did. Getting off Effexor is just a good thing, and your body will eventually thank you for it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.