Depression

Over two weeks since I stopped taking Effexor.

I'm not having any headaches, but I feel so, so down. Like it's never going to get better.

I don't know if it's related to my brain adjusting to not being on the drug anymore, or if this is just my natural state.

I'm sleeping some 16 hours a day most days, and I wish everything else would just go away. I can't take it.

Update

I guess I haven't updated in about a week.

I took my last Effexor capsule over a week ago, and I never got the bad week that I expected to receive.

I do feel depressed again, however, when I hadn't been feeling so "down" without reason in a while.

I hope it is just a temporary valley.

So far, so good.

Updates:

- I'm still doing well. Well enough that I let myself have some caffeinated tea, when I had been avoiding caffeine for over a week because it accentuated the crazy.

- Due to a whole lot of combined reasons, my sleep schedule is all thrown off. Lately, I've been sleeping some 12-16 hours a day, and then I'm feeling overactive at night. I can't really blame this on withdrawal; I've been over-sleepy for years, and it was one of the main reasons I went onto antidepressants in the first place.

- I saw a sleep doctor yesterday. She was upset the first time I saw her, about two months ago, when she learned that I was taking Effexor, since the drug obscures diagnoses for the sleep study I was about to take. She was glad that I was aiming to get off of it. She has written my psychiatrist that in her opinion a mood stabilizer (like Lamictal) or a stimulant patch (Daytrana) would be better things to try for my sleepiness problems than something with the ups and downs that Effexor tends to give.

- I am very thankful to be on the sertraline. It seems to be what has made this withdrawal very bareable. :)

Cold Turkey(ish)

Whether it was a good idea or not, I haven't had any Effexor at all in about 36 hours.

My psychiatrist suggested tapering it down much more slowly than that, over a period of months actually. And I was discouraged, because then I'd be feeling cruddy over a period of months.

It's still Spring Break now; I'd rather feel hellish now and get it over with instead of consistently bad over an even longer period of time.

And has it been hellish? No, not yet. I'm having a horrible headache right now, and I can't sleep at all (which is, again, very strange for me), but no mood swings. Again, I think the Zoloft helps.

If it gets too horrible, I'll consider taking one of the 37.5mg capsules. I guess I'll know in a day or two whether I can handle this or not.

Wyeth's "Dialogues" website

In a sample pack of Effexor XR that my doctor gave me, there was a website "http://www.mytime2talk.com/" given as a resource that led to a WebMD site:

Dialogues: Time to Talk

I signed up for it today, and it's really corny.

Notes about this site:
* Every single page has a long list of warnings at the bottom, including the warnings about prescribing to adolescents and the warnings about mood swings when upping or lowering the dose. Only the official Wyeth page seems to mention brain shocks/zaps, however.
* There is a "Commit to Success" contract, which is incredibly cheesy.
It states:

I will
* Educate myself about depression and the ways it can be treated
* Take my medication as prescribed by my doctor
* Consult with a health care professional when I have questions about any aspect of my treatment
- [your name here]

#2 of that list makes me a little uneasy, since it is a corporate-affiliated site that does stand to make a lot of money if you don't question taking your medication.
* They'll apparently be sending me things in the mail. It was unclear what they'll be sending. Hoping they are honest about keeping my information secure, though.
* Except for the list of psychology-related addresses and the links that go directly to the Wyeth site, the text on these pages is on a really low level.

I wouldn't really recommend it.

How many beads are in a capsule?

Day 7 : Kind of dizzy. A bit of a headache. No major problems.

I thought it would be a good resource to count the number of "beads" in a capsule of Effexor XR so that if I were to taper down to less than 37.5mg I could know how many beads to mix into food/drink.

I counted all the beads in one 150mg capsule, a 75mg capsule, and a 37.5mg capsule, and got this:

150mg Effexor XR capsule : 486 beads
75mg Effexor XR capsule : 228 beads
37.5mg Effexor XR capsule : 124 beads

The size of the beads varies by a little bit, and I counted all conjoined-twin beads as one bead.

So, from this:
Half of a 37.5mg capsule : about 60 beads
One quarter of a 37.5mg capsule : about 30 beads
...And so on.

If I had an accurate scale here, I'd compare the contents by mass as well.

Day 6

Day 6: Not horrible today. Kind of moody in the morning.

Staying off of caffeine really helps avoid bad mood swings, although that isn't a terribly fun option for someone like me who often takes in a lot of coffee, tea, and caffeinated diet sodas.

But I'm still more wakeful than usual, for some reason.