Medication Issues

I'm sorry you are having such an awful time with the side effects of your medications! I know nothing about depression but I do react severely to the side effects of many medications that have been prescribed in the past to the point I quit taking them like you. What I did in place of the medications was research to find what foods might help with my situation. I did a Google search for "What foods help depression?" The search turned up many foods that help depression; more than I can list here. You might look up that search and see what foods you like that may help you. Also note what vitamins are in the foods that help you and possibly start taking those vitamins. I have personally discovered that plain yogurt and Gatorade help me a lot. I also take a lot of vitamins and iron.

Prayer also helps immensely! Just tell God your problems and ask for help. It will come. Have faith. I will say a prayer for you also.
God bless you!
PML

Have you explored nonmedication treatment for depression? I looked into it when my mom said she couldn’t take antidepressants. I don’t recall the details but I think it’s called TMS.

I don’t have an answer, I am going through the same thing. I want to get off Effexor but my doctor said I should give it the full 8 weeks. I have given it 6 weeks and I feel worse. I don’t know what to do either.

I started on a new antidepressant called Mirtazapine also known as Remeron. I read that it’s helpful for sleep at low doses, i.e. 7.5 mg. I have been on them for about six weeks and I never felt so bad, in fact I barely sleep at all, the only thing it did was increase my appetite but that’s all. As always I have to wait for a while to speak to the doctor so I’m left with managing my own side effects. Also due to lack of sleep I have been sick twice with chest infections and having copd with asthma it’s been a nightmare. I wanted to wean off the drug but it isn’t easy to do so, again I need a doctor’ help to do this.

I am pretty sensitive to a lot of medicines. My wonderful pharmacist suggested that I have a genetic test to see how I metabolize medicines and what medicines I should and should not take. You might check in to that. Best wishes.

Thank you for your comment. I did have the test and three of the four meds I was taking were negative for me to take. The current one Remeron was okay on the test. My doctor said she did not rely on the tests too much.

You are very brave to continue the meds for 6 weeks even though you feel so awful. I did try Sertraline for 4 months and was miserable. I finally said enough was enough and found a new doctor.

I also suffer from depression and have for 26 years. It took years to finally find the med that works for me. Please understand that these types of med involve a few weeks of "onboarding" before feeling any results.
I eventually landed on Rexulti with awesome results ; depression is now manageable and I've gotten back to some semblance of "normalcy". Good luck on your journey and Keep Trying!!!

Anita B.

I posted a comment here about my struggle with mirtazapan and how bad it’s making me feel. As I previously mentioned I can’t sleep from it and that’s just part of the problem. I had very bad dreams in the first few weeks and I think I may have had a seizure because my jaw is misaligned and causing me trouble with chewing my food, I keep biting my tongue and inside of my cheek, leg cramps and I can’t yawn. I want to stop them now and not wait another month to speak to the prescribing doctor but I don’t know how to do it, I tried every other day and it just got worse, I’m thinking of reducing it to a lower dose but am worried that I will feel worse than I already do. I tried to find info online but it keeps saying I have to do it with the doctor’s help. I’m hoping that someone else has gone through this with this drug and how they stopped, seriously I can’t go on like this much longer.

I was just thinking about my recent post and realized that I’m wrong to ask for help with my medication, I realize it’s not appropriate to ask this from the people here, I’m sorry for forgetting myself about how things work here so please disregard my question, thank you.