Venlafaxine Withdrawal Relief

Posted by mrwakefield @mrwakefield, Jul 30 10:58am

I have been travelling for the last three days and accidentally forgot to take my medication for that amount of time. I woke up this morning very disoriented and dizzy. I took my pills as soon as I realized what was going on. Does anyone have any advice? I'm not trying to stop taking my medication, so many of the other threads don't apply to me. I have felt feverish all morning (checked temp, its 99) and I've been drinking a lot of water and have tried eating when I can. Is this a "just wait it out" scenario?

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dfb | @dfb | Jul 31 2:17pm

You should be okay shortly.

Venlafaxine has a very short half-life, about six hours. Within 24 hours, all that's left in your system is about 6% of the initial dose, hence the quick onset of discontinuation effects.

I don't know how long you've been on this medication or the dose you are taking, but I was on 450mg a day for fifteen years. The effects on cognition destroyed my life, and the side effects led to all kinds of health problems, causing my doctors to prescribe more and more medications.

I have been titrating this medication under my provider's supervision for a year and still have to take 112.5 mg daily to avoid discontinuation effects. I expect it will take another year to get off of it, as I will be decreasing it to only 5mg at a time in the future. I needed a compounding pharmacy to make the pills.

The only reason the dosing is the way it is—minimum 37.5mg—is profit. Pharmaceutical companies can not make money if they do it more accurately. I'm not making this up; it is the only reason. They know that suffering could be reduced by having more dosing options; it's just not profitable.

They also knew about the discontinuation effects from the get-go but buried them with the help of AMA, yeah, for real.

The science is clear: The overwhelming benefit of this medication is the placebo effect, which is real. The remainder is due to its emotional blunting; one is not less depressed; we just feel less overall. That, in and of itself, can sometimes be a blessing.

Nonetheless, this is part of a class of medicine science that proved ineffective over a decade ago. It typically takes 17 years before the medical establishment embraces new information, and you can blame Big Pharma for that.

You should be feeling better by the time you read this.

Good luck with whatever trauma you are dealing with that necessitated the prescription of this poison.

I hope you live in peace and good health.