Effected

I came off of the drug Effexor. I came off of it while visiting my uncle in the Pacific Islands. My uncle hadn't seen me in many years and the people I was staying with had little to no experience with prescription drug's malfeasance. I didn't do it on purpose. I first ran out of supply, then my second supply got destroyed in a record flood that hit Guam. Next up I was completely insane - totally gone - arguing to myself that I didn't need it and unable to access any internet or phone calls back home to people who would know how to help in this really shitty situation. The ensuing bad behavior that resulted from my initially accidental withdrawal was interpreted by the people around me as reflecting my character - which became all the more confusing to them since I had presented myself as a really, really nice guy initially. How can you think that one guy is a really nice, generous person while also possibly a sociopath or worse? The problem with Effexor, which makes its withdrawal so absolutely horrific, is dissociation and depersonalization. I think that I had this while using the drug as well as during its withdrawal, but of course the withdrawal was far worse. When things happened to me or around me, it was as if I were watching it in a movie. I'm on a very, very small doseage of Celexa now and am feeling like that horrifying state of mind is finally fleeing but it's still very disturbing. Putting it very bluntly, a psychiatrist said that it was great I didn't kill myself while coming off Effexor, even accidentally. Whatever this drug does to the brain, that apparently is the risk when the brain stops using it. For a great example, here is Charmaine Dragun, an Australian newsreader who performed a particularly brutal form of suicide after coming off Effexor after ten years of use:

CHANNEL Ten newsreader Charmaine Dragun leaped to her death three weeks after changing her depression medication to a combination of drugs known to influence suicidal thoughts, an inquest has heard. Ms Dragun, 29, was considered a rising star in the Ten newsroom when she took own her own life in November 2007. She had moved to Sydney from Perth, where she read the WA nightly news bulletin from the network's Pyrmont studios alongside Tim Webster, and occasionally read the national news. But while it seemed like she had the world at her feet, an inquest into her death has heard she battled depression and anxiety since her teens. Counsel assisting the Coroner, David Hirsch, told Glebe Coroner's Court Ms Dragun had been taking a steady dose of the anti-depressant, Effexor, for 10 years and wanted to come off the drug. Mr Hirsch said she was being treated by a psychiatrist who reduced her dose of Effexor and introduced her to a replacement drug called Lexapro. End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. The new treatment plan was to be supplemented by fish oil tablets, with the aim that she eventually take up to 12 fish oil tablets per day. After a few days, she reportedly told the psychiatrist she was feeling terrible and the change wasn't working, but he sent her a text message telling her to "hang on". Mr Hirsch said the combination of the two drugs, which she began three weeks before her death, was known to influence suicidal thoughts, or contemplations of suicide. But he said it didn't necessarily follow that a person taking the drugs simultaneously would take their own life. Mr Hirsch said one of the main questions the inquest will consider is whether Ms Dragun deliberately jumped from the clifftop or whether she was in a drug-induced "psychotic state" at the time and unaware of her actions. He said the objective of the inquest was not to lay blame but to help avoid further tragedies. Ms Dragun appeared to be a happy young woman with a wide circle of friends, a supportive family and a loving partner, whom she had been in a relationship with since her teens, the court heard. "Despite that support ... she decided to go to the Gap and to the cliff and she decided to take one step forward instead of one step back," Mr Hirsch said. "Why she took that step we will never know."

Hirsch, of course, is wrong. Effexor is the daddy of all of the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), really belongin and has been implicated in some really bizarre and inexplicable behavior. Andrea Yates, by all accounts otherwise a good mother, murdered her five own children while on a very high dose of this poison. Dragun jumped off a cliff in Australia while coming off the drug. The drug is obviously meant to combat depression and anxiety but the side effects (based on the user's mental state or if they are coming off the drug) are really unacceptable. I've been a difficult person in the past but I've never really been like I was in Effexor withdrawal. I was in another dimension and wasn't able to really solve the problem because of the dissociation. Problems would be mentally registered and then just observed instead of solved, as if I were The Watcher from Marvel Comics. I imagine that Dragun entered a state very similar of her own when coming off of this poison. The press coverage, however, has credited her committing suicide with everything from anorexia to a feeling of "isolation," none of which had done her in for her previous decade of treatment. It's honestly pretty disturbing that such powerful drugs are not only readily available but given out like candy to anybody who claims to be depressed, anxious or suffering from some other temporary state of affairs. Big Pharmaceuticals are big all over the world and Australia, with its high suicide rate, is especially a critical market for the vultures of antidepressant manufacturers, so the coverage by the mainstream media in that country - just like in the United States - is unlikely to unfavorable to drug manufacturers. I'm still not just alive but kicking pretty significantly, back home and doing normal tasks while also going out and looking for work. Things are back to normal. Given all of that, however, something feels slightly cognitive different. I hit my head a few times during withdrawal, which was pretty damned unpleasant. (At the time, I blamed the people around me for having a shower in which no roof was available and I could easily slip but I'm not sure if any of this crap ever would have happened if it had not been for the Effexor factor.) I think things got knocked around a bit and the result is one that I'm not too sure about. That's not to mention the horrible sexual side effects of Effexor, which will have to be dealt with. My doctor says this all should be a cautionary tale. This will be the last that I really write about it because I would prefer for my story to not be knocked over the head of others too much. I'm lucky to have made it through this horrible antidepressant medication with little more than a few seizures and a whole lot of confusion. Antidepressants are still being prescribed very readily and the story of myself or an even worse story like Dragun or Yates should be remembered before taking these pills. There are alternatives, even if you have to seek them out and won't get advertised them during your favorite television show. Your effort will be worth it in the end. Tweet Share