My Experience with Effexor

Having been diagnosed as Bipolar when I was a teen, I have suffered from depression and generalized anxiety for as long as I can recall. I have always sort of chalked this up to my sensitive and artistic nature, and haven't always been keen on accepting that diagnosis. My holistic side rallied against prescribed medicine. Consequently, I have cycled on and off medication for years. The medication that seemed to aide me the most has been Effexor. When on it, I feel balanced and gathered. I have been taking it for the past several years.

About a year ago, I was quite content and rooted, stable, creative and productive. I came to the dubious conviction that I didn't want to be governed by medication for the rest of my life. It was a matter of pride, and self will, I had thought...a desperate, misplaced urge for self-preservation. I weaned myself off gradually, diminishing my dose by half, in weekly increments. I rapidly began to de compensate.

Funny the perspective hindsight lends. In the time period that I had gone off the drug, I rapidly slipped into a breakdown. I walked off on a job I truly enjoyed. I simply left a note on my boss's desk. It ran "life is too short to be this miserable, I'm leaving." This felt extremely liberating for a day or so, until I realized I just rendered myself an indigent! I also alienated a very close friend to such a degree, that we stopped speaking.

This felt like a divorce. My coping skills had simply waned. Small annoyances took on the gravity of epic crisis. I demonized anyone who rubbed me the wrong way. I also began to experience compulsions. I laundered the comforter thrown across my futon 4 times in a given week, fearing dust mites. I checked my pets obsessively for fleas. My dog and two cats endured all too frequent baths. I have always been an avid reader. In this period I found myself unable to make it through a paragraph without second-guessing the authors intent. In the rare instance that I made it through a whole chapter I found myself going back to the beginning, as I doubted my own perspective.

This was truly harrowing, as now I lacked even that simple pleasure of respite and escape. I lost interest in all my hobbies and creative work. I even became sensitive to light. I barely ventured out of my apartment, save for the time it took to walk my dog around the corner. All this reached crisis mode when I found myself sleeping at my parents house, nested on their couch at least 4 nights a week. If it were not for their undying support, I am certain I would have been in a mental institution crafting paper dolls. I realized I sorely needed to return to the Psychiatrist.

Much to my dismay the doctor informed me that Effexor is extremely dangerous to withdraw from. He informed me that if I continued the cycle of going on and off it, I could render myself untreatable. Withdrawal can also lead to convulsions, mania and potentially death, if the process is not carefully supervised. This alarmed me, and gave me the impetus to accept that I had a condition that wasn't going to go away. It was not a matter of will or Karma. If I had Diabetes, I'd need Insulin. The ramifications are the same, if not organically different. I began treatment with Effexor again.

For the first several days I actually felt worse, but one morning I awoke with a sense of calm and levity I hadn't felt in over a year. This wasn't a heightened experience. I felt calm and balanced, well gathered. My interests began to return. I felt blessedly released. I began to view things as they were, not riddled with complexity and mystery. I could read again without the neurotic fits and starts. There do seem to be a few side effects I have noticed. Effexor seems to cause the prostate to swell. I need not go into the biological details, but suffice it to say, I am taking Saw Palmetto to counteract that.

I also noticed a mild change in my eyesight. I will have to get a new prescription for glasses. All this is well worth the relief though. From time to time I ponder the nature of withdraw. If a drug causes such intense symptoms when diminished, then what are the long-term consequences? That remains to be seen. I choose to cloister this thought, and simply accept my chemically altered state. I need medication to feel normal apparently. The process of reaching this realization was a cathartic and painful one.