Posted by zinya on July 14, 2003, at 14:46:29
In reply to Re: drinking on Effexor » zinya, posted by mercedes on July 13, 2003, at 20:47:21
hi mercedes!
thanks so much for your response about how you handle this... I'm not sure if/when i'll ever "experiment" with having a drink again while on Effexor but decided to ask you while you'd mentioned it... I think it's more the idea of not wanting to think i've had the last drink i'd ever have, although obviously if Effexor proves to be as beneficial as I'm still hoping, anything will be worth it... I've been someone who could go through phases of drinking daily, as I was again last fall after my mom died, having a drink nearly every night, but I also have often just stopped on a dime and gone long stretches with none, so it's not as if this is something unprecedented. Plus i think the depression itself (or whatever is going on in me) had caused me to start having weird reactions to a wine or a beer the last few times i had one. Seemed my liver or something was in protest and not making it the pleasant addition it had always been.
I'm like you in having no appetite in the morning. That's been true of me for eons. My metabolism or something has always (or at least since my 20's) been slow enough that i just could never adapt to breakfast beyond coffee and toast or at most a soft-boiled egg. Anything more, literally anything more, and I just get loagie - logey? (sp?) -- the rest of the day. So it seemed to be not enough (plus being with coffee) to be a wise time to take the Effexor, not enough food in my stomach. So far it works to take it at night after dinner.
But i found it curious that you too have the wake-with-no-appetite syndrome, and i wonder how true that might be for others of us -- although probably just a coincidence...
thanks for your 'pats on the back' :)) ... I'm a long way from making a road trip like you did. While i haven't had anxiety about driving or making a road trip, at least in the sense of anxiety i usually think of, what i have had is an enormous lethargy, such that even an appt. across town in 40 min. of traffic feels just too daunting and i wind up not doing such things more often than not. Clear back at Christmas, i had planned to drive up to SF to spend days with a friend, first Christmas without mom and all, and a trip i always used to love to make up the coast, but i literally absolutely couldn't even fathom such a trip. Just too much energy -- whether it was anxiety too or not, i don't know.
This whole process of finally coming to terms with this having been indeed 'clinical - or major - depression' that i've been struggling with for possibly 15 years and maybe even in a way since childhood, since a horrible car accident when i was 6 essentially took my parents away from my daily life for nearly a year as they recovered, i know from therapy over the years that it changed me significantly and i think i became overnight a child dealing with abandonment and depression -- issues all too common for many kids for many reasons and, especially in those days, never addressed or even considered by doctors who checked me out at the time for injuries (i'd been in the back seat) and gave me a "clean bill of health' and i was farmed out to relatives while my parents were hospitalized and then with full-time nursing at home...
Things in adulthood made it become much more of an impact on me but i think in retrospect i'd spent most of my life just sweeping under the carpet... And then esp. in last 15 years, and i think with mom's loss, my last immediate family, the "center would not hold" anymore and i just sunk each month more into this thing i finally decided wasn't "just" grieving but also depression. And what i started all this to say was that i've only gradually come to realize just how much of this thing i'm generally calling depression really was anxiety. Learning to recognize it seems to be an important step--and to try to separate it from 'depression' cuz maybe it's more helpful to realize something is anxiety that one can address more one by one, more concretely, as part of the path out.
The first week on Effexor, the first positive sign i noticed was a sense of reduced anxiety, but then since then it's been mostly a feeling that the depression has lifted but there's still a battle with anxiety that gets triggered as well as what for me is the most overwhelming thing, absolute lack of energy.
anyway, i'm babbling, but with a spirit of reciprocating the warmth and sharing from your post and sending good vibes in return in your own 'patting on the back' paths :))
zinya
>
> Congratulations on doing some trimming on the deck. I'm so happy to hear that you are getting some work done. I know it takes alot to come up with the energy to do something like that. Just remember to pat yourself on the back when you do that. And here's my pat on the back to you. Pat...pat. You've been more productive than me today. The weather where you are sounds like the weather here where I am. I live in a small town near Fresno, CA. hot but a bit breezy.
> Wishing good things for you...and keep on writing.
> Mercedes
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030714/msgs/241790.html