I was on 150mg a day (worked up to that from a low dosage).
After awhile, I was getting these insane headaches, like stabbed in the brain with a rusty knife type headache. Those lasted a few weeks.
And then came the brain shivers. Moving my eyes, or rapidly turning my head, would cause an electric shock sensation that, from what I've read, was similar to what people having a stroke experience. Like lightning in your head. It wasn't painful like the headaches, but it was well beyond annoying, if not completely frightening. I'd sometimes lose my balance and fall over.
I then made the mistake of quitting cold turkey. This was my first AD and my psychiatrist hadn't informed me of how bad an idea that was, and I was stupid for not reading the insert when taking it. After a few days of hell, I went back on it and tapered off.
I understand if it is effective for a lot of people, but I certainly know I'm not alone in my experiences with it.
Zoloft was much softer, but really didn't do much for me.
As I like to say, cold turkey is for turkeys, but you self corrected quickly enough, and if you restarted at a lower dose then those two days of pain were not wasted. I'll sometimes trade off more pain for faster withdrawal in some stages when I wean myself off my benzodiazepam.
But there's no grand insight into your experience with Effexor, besides confirming that this isn't cookie cutter science/medicine, you try different drugs out until you find the best balance between side effects and desired action. And try to keep you shit together with what turn out to be bad choices, e.g. (generic) Paxil made me hypomanic.
After awhile, I was getting these insane headaches, like stabbed in the brain with a rusty knife type headache. Those lasted a few weeks.
And then came the brain shivers. Moving my eyes, or rapidly turning my head, would cause an electric shock sensation that, from what I've read, was similar to what people having a stroke experience. Like lightning in your head. It wasn't painful like the headaches, but it was well beyond annoying, if not completely frightening. I'd sometimes lose my balance and fall over.
I then made the mistake of quitting cold turkey. This was my first AD and my psychiatrist hadn't informed me of how bad an idea that was, and I was stupid for not reading the insert when taking it. After a few days of hell, I went back on it and tapered off.
I understand if it is effective for a lot of people, but I certainly know I'm not alone in my experiences with it.
Zoloft was much softer, but really didn't do much for me.