Posted by m. duchamp on September 4, 2004, at 22:34:37
"Nude Descending a Staircase"
or: Withdrawing from EffexorReaching for words: Marcel Duchamp's early 20th century painting is my metaphor depicting the most prominent symptom caused by my withdrawal from Effexor. I call it, “time cascading,” the experience of a temporal, bodily fragmentation. As if, as I get up from a chair, the body splinters into fractals, not moving in accord but rather cascading through a kind of time delay. But what I call these kinesthetic “time cascades” is but one of a lengthy list of symptoms, and, for me a not altogether unpleasant symptom. Has anyone noticed a corresponding mental cascading? The feeling that present-time thoughts also divide into fractions straddling both the past and future time? The feeling has an uncanny “again-and-not yet” quality, almost like a futuristic memory, always already having been … Later I’ll try to describe other symptoms.
Words of thanks: During the past days, these being the days without Effexor, I struggled and wept, I struggle still and expect to weep more. But had it not been for this very web site and its postings, without doubt, the fear of experiencing a psychotic break or a schizoaffective episode would have had troublesome, perhaps even irreversible consequences for me. For this I thank each and all of you! The very writing of this is helping – I for long don’t talk or write about things autobiographical anymore – depression knows to keep its silence.
How it all began: I’ve been taking 300mg of Effexor daily for one year and four months. Effexor was prescribed due to the failure of other anti-depressants.
Why it all began: The contour of my depression is an unrelenting hopelessness, suicidal ideation [and idealization,] over-sleeping [morbidly], and a world-weariness reaching back into the decades. All this has paralyzed me so that I lack the energy and imagination to hope beyond the darkness, to imagine my life as worth living. This paralysis robbed me of motivation to search for help, and paradoxically, also robbed me of the energy to move from ideation of suicide to committing my suicide …
An important factor contributing to this isolation and hopelessness is my childhood and early adult life. They were shaped by traumatizing events and, therefore, supply plenty justification for a depression everlasting, lasting, “until death do us part,” plenty reason to reckon as naïve and foolish any hope for happiness. When I say, “happiness” I mean ability to work and love, nothing more, for there is no greater ability than this!
No regrets: Effexor offered hope. And, if even a fraction of its promised benefits had come true, I should gladly have taken it until my final day.
So I can’t say that I would not do it over again, after all, Effexor might have worked… But, it did not work! Its effects were limited to increased sleepiness and perennial constipation.
Post-Effexor: It was time to move on, for there is still potential help by means of MAOs and if not these, then electro shock treatment, the path of which I have almost reconciled myself with, and overcome the famous, fear inducing myths -- anything to banish the numbness of depression… Besides, could ECT be any stranger than the experience of effexor withdrawal?
Ten days ago, I halved my dosage of 300mg to 150mg. I did experience some hours of conventional dizziness during the morning – but this passed. Having been in a different environment -- after all, the mid-western landscape is not mid-town Manhattan – perhaps was enough reason that I felt no dramatic changes. After four days on 150mg, I went off Effexor completely on the fifth day. Besides some carsickness and abdominal cramping, nothing remarkable occurred for the next two days. Then came the third day, and on that morning I knew that my dreams were too dramatically changed, the dizziness was not the conventional sort, and a host of other things were setting in with intensity and suddenness.
A parade of symptoms A feeling of the uncanny suffuses everything and within this uncanny atmosphere: lurking threats of terror; loss of confidence due to feeling overwhelmed facing the simplest of tasks, like changing the cat litter or running across the street for the paper and cigarettes; a lack of courage negotiating the staircase, the bottom of which is terrifyingly elusive; the morning shower delayed until evening due to inane distractions and detours of thought leading to nowhere; endless postponements of ordinary things while being trapped in a maze of thinking; the phantom itching jumping randomly from place to place; the almost comforting GOP – the “good old pain,” none of them too severe; bouts of nausea [I’m a real baby when it comes to nausea and vomiting;] waves of electro-like currents traveling throughout the body and, so it feels, the brain, [thankfully this is far less unpleasant than nausea and vomiting;] periods of chills alternating with sweats; red-hot rage towards things petty and inconsequential; episodes of self-indulgent weeping; skewed motor control; agitation followed by profound lethargy, which, in the end, pushes me into the most terrifying symptom of all: “To sleep, perchance to dream / And in those dreams …”
Terror without end: These vividly colored dreams range from the uncanny and spooky to documentary realism. These dreams are so very relentless, – tireless and determined. Every time I succumb to sleep, whether during the day or the night, I feel there is no sleep at all. Sleep had always been an escape from the despair of my depression but now no longer. It seems every millisecond of each hour of sleep is full with dream – dreams narrating surprisingly cohesive, yet fantastic tales. Woven into complex, absurd and at once rational plots, these dreams are seductive and persuasive. Despite my wretchedness, I often am wanting for yet more sleep; wanting to revisit this ghoulish dreamscape. And there a sequel of the former dream waits, or else the next chapter is ready to unfold. Within these dreams, there is an eternal damnation of turning corners and descending staircases into yet a deeper, more twisted hell of undoing. Most of my life I had the classic kind of nightmares and night terrors, from which my own screams would deliver me, putting an end to the dream, although an end with terror. Now no more: instead of an end with terror, there is terror without end …Responses welcome in English or German!
poster:m. duchamp
thread:386524
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040904/msgs/386524.html