About five years back, I was going through a pretty hellish time. I was working shift work, my dad was admitted for a heart attack with no sign of going home any time soon, and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. All that, on top of my normal, day-to-day life, raising a child with a disability on my own.

I started to have panic attacks. They freaked me out. I would lie in bed thinking I was having a heart attack with the way my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. That, of course, made the symptoms so much worse. I went to my doctor and told him what was going on. I was diagnosed with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), and sent home with a prescription for Effexor. If I had known then what I know now, I would have asked for something else.

Effexor is a drug that comes from the SNRI family. It is used to treat GAD, as well as some depression disorders. I was prescribed 75mg daily, but you have to ease your way onto that much. You start with a week’s worth of 37.5mg pills and a week’s of the 75mg. Going on them should have been my first clue as to how this would be, but I did not know anyone that was on them for any length of time.

For three weeks, I felt like garbage. I was run down, headachy and nauseous. SO nauseous. Getting any type of food in me was a battle because my stomach would just turn. Once that initial three weeks was over, I was ok. The attacks started to subside shortly there after, and they no longer consumed me.

I took my pill like clockwork, every night at about 11 pm. Or I tried to. About six months in, I seemingly forgot one. I had not even thought about it until the next afternoon. I was sitting down waiting for supper to be ready when I realized the room was spinning. That’s right, just like when you have had too much to drink and you get the spins. Only that old trick of planting your foot on the floor doesn’t work with these spins. They just keep going.

I had called a friend that was on it, and asked if this could have something to do with the meds. He knew right away. “You forgot a pill last night didn’t you?” Um. Maybe? I don’t remember. I was so tired. Ugh. Maybe I did. It was at that point I realized my body was now addicted and I really had to be on the ball.

Over the years, I became meticulous about these pills. I started keeping one in my purse because without it there, there was no way I could crash at a friend’s after a late night. I did not ever want to risk having to deal with the spins.

I noticed about a year back my memory slipping. Trying to monitor my pills is how I noticed first. Did I take it? I would sit on my bed and count out the amount of pills in the bottle versus the day I filled it. Sure enough, I had taken it. I would blame it on being tired.

More and more, I was forgetting things. I would try so hard to remember a bag of stuff I would have with me at a friend’s house, that I would forget my purse there. I was having full out conversations about things with the boyfriend that I would have no recollection of having at all. None. I had a suspicion it was the pills. I went to the doctor and he agreed. It was time to come off.

Now came the time I dreaded since realizing just how dependent my body was on these pills. A six week wean. That will mean six weeks of feeling like crap. Here goes nothing.

The wean is three, two week down doses. Weeks one and two, alternate between 75mg and 37.5 mg daily. Weeks three and four, 37.5mg daily. Finally, weeks five and six, alternate between 37.5mg and nothing daily.

Weeks 1 and 2: The first two days were good. I thought maybe this whole ordeal wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. But when day three hit, I knew. That is when the headache started. A headache that lasted about a week. A dull, pounding ache. From there, the nausea set in. I was coming home from work tired, nauseous, and headachy, and wanting nothing but my bed and a mouthful of Tylenol. Closing in on week two, the symptoms were only happening on the lower dose days and were starting to not be as bad.

Weeks 3 and 4: For the first two to three days of this round, I had a headache and then it just disappeared. I was feeling good. There was no fluctuation, so my body was happy. I even went on a mini vacation up north and was able to enjoy my time with my family. It seems this was the calm before the storm.

Weeks 5 and 6: The days I took a pill were good. It was the days in between, when I didn’t take one, that were hell. The dizzy spells would hit about noon, and by evening I would get mild shocks throughout my body. This was constant for the entire two weeks.

Thursday, March 31st, I took my last pill at 11 pm. Saturday afternoon the dizzy spells started again, followed by the shocks. The shocks got progressively worse over the next couple days. They were so bad on Monday night that it actually was hard to sleep. They would keep me awake, or just when I was dozing off finally, one big one would hit, and it would startle me awake because it almost felt as though something or someone was touching me. That night seemed to have been the plateau. After that, I still got the shocks for about a week but they were getting less and less frequent as the days went on.

It has been a few weeks now that I have been off them. I feel good. The shocks have stopped. I am noticing that I’m not as tired as I was before, and that my libido has increased. I get up in the morning feeling rested, and not like I need to go back to bed for another three hours. Weekend naps have decreased from hours to an hour. It is amazing how quickly we forget what normal was.

I know this is one heck of a long post, but it is stuff I wish I had known before I went on these pills. The horrible withdrawal symptoms are not really out there. No one really knows how bad it is until they actually have to go through it themselves. I thought it might help someone out there to air out what really happens.