Posted by Beastress on March 3, 2003, at 1:26:24
Hi all,
I am a long-time reader that finally had to ask...I was on Effexor for less than a year before the side-effects became too many and too severe to continue. I am pretty medication-sensitive---I found out the hard way. I tapered VERY slowly (4 months to taper off 75 mg.) During the last couple of weeks of the taper I noticed knots in my neck and back and a recurrence of TMJ that I hadn't had since I was 13 (I'm almost forty).It has been 7 months since my last dose of Effexor and I'm in constant muscle pain, I tire very rapidly, have lost a great deal of muscle strength, my memory is shot and I notice something I have seen others mention here called "brain fog." With the exception of the TMJ, these are all new things for me and things that I have found to be most commonly associated with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and/or Fibromyalgia. Accupuncture has helped with the muscle knots, but they never go entirely away, they just feel somewhat better or somewhat worse. I was hoping that these symptoms would eventually go away as my CNS readjusted back to its pre-effexor state but I'm starting to worry that I'm just stuck in this state permanently.
Is it possible that CFS/FM resides in the body for years before it manifests? Can SSRIs/atypicals create a sort of neuro or immune "short circuit" that makes it active? Most importantly, is there a more effective way to deal with the pain and fatigue? I tried 200mg of SAM-e with a noticeable improvement for a while, but with added brain fog. When I bumped up the dose to 400mg, I immediately broke out and became almost terminally cranky. The increase didn't help the pain or fatigue so I went back down to 200mg, and it stopped working altogether. I'm considering Enada NADH (?). Any suggestions, comments, anecdotes and even non-sequiturs are deeply appreciated.
poster:Beastress
thread:205441
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030301/msgs/205441.html