Posted by nilla on November 26, 2002, at 8:14:44
hey.. first, thank you to everyone who repsonded to my earlier post... today will be day 5 of the starter kit. still at 37.5, taking it around noon. I'd like to take it later in the day but I'm afraid it'll affect my sleeping even more.
side effects include horrible dry mouth (so i'm always paranoid that I have bad breath), complete loss of appetite, complete loss of sex drive (my boyfriend is ready to break up with me), difficulty urinating, light and sound sensitivity, slightly blurry vision, irritability, mood swings, bad insomnia that even 15mg of Ambien is struggling against and, last but not least, racing heart, sweating and constant body temperature changes and my hands and feet are always freezing cold. Fortunatley I have not experience any brain tremors that I'm hearing so much about.. frankly, they scare me and make me wonder if I should get off Effexor XR now while I still can.
Oh wait, there's more. I'm having trouble putting together sentences and my short term memory is SHOT.
I've not had problems getting up in the morning nor with energy, so that's good, as one of the leading factors in the decision to get back on meds was my lethargy, fatigue and lack of motivation.
my questions are as following:
1 - when do the side effects start subsiding?
2 - how long can I stay at 37.5 mg at? My doc hopes to get me up to 150 but I'm going to see if we can max it out at 75... the posts I've been reading are way tooooo intimidating for someone who isn't in dire need of Effexor XR's help at high dosages.2 - how common are these side effects? All in All, I've felt pretty "cracked out"..
3 - is there another drug in this same category that you guys suggest I try? I was on a high dosage Serzone for several years.. i loved it and it helped in so many ways but the risk of liver failure scared me right off of it. I also tried Wellbutrin with it for the exhaustion/tiredness but that showed no effect. We gave Provigil a whirl too but I decided to not toy with it since it was such a new drug and long term side effects were less known than other drugs.
I eagerly look forward to some responses.. and hopefully there'll be some positive ones in here too.. :)
poster:nilla
thread:129374
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021122/msgs/129374.html