Switching from Effexor to generic Venlafaxine – I feel so sick!! Help?
Hi everyone,
Ok so first I will say I have a doctors appt for tomorrow afternoon – so I am in no way going to self diagnose or switch meds by myself. I just have a question for anyone who has struggled with severe depression and anxiety – or a mild case of bi-polar.
I have been on/or at least tried most anti-depressants. Prozac worked great for years when I was age 16-21, then it seemed to stop working well.
I have tried cymbalta, zoloft and paxil. In October I found a new doctor after moving out of state. I had always been treated with the diagnosis of severe depression + anxiety. After speaking with my new doctor, she thought I may have a mild case of the bi-polar disease.
I do have manic episodes – though not anything that would hospitalize me (yet lol). And super low – lows.
She put me on Effexor.
Within 2 weeks i felt my depression begin to lift – and my anxiety seemed to almost get worse…. Then after 6 weeks or so, the anxiety was OK but not great.
Mind you, I also was a very heavy drinker. So I am not sure how well this med ever got a chance to work in the last 3 months….
Recently my insurance termed – and I switched to Venlafaxine (which is effexor generic). I did the switch to generic 12/30/08 – I just switched from effexor to the generic — as I read they are nearly identical.
I also QUIT drinking on 01/08/09 completely, and am working an AA program.
I have a healthy diet, no booze the last 10 days, and have been going to the gym for 2 weeks. HOWEVER, with all of this good stuff I am doing in my life – I have been dizzy, lightheaded, had vertigo and feel sick most of the day since about the 5th of January… I still have very bad anxiety – though the depression still seems under control.
Are all these dizzy, nauseous, vertigo feelings from going to generic you think? Or maybe they are the TRUE side effects for me, and I had blocked them from all of my drinking and cancelled out what the anti-depressant had been doing for me or to me should I say….
I am going in to see if effexor/venlafaxine is just not the right fit for me – I am not sure what my next option would be after this???
I just wanted to throw this out there, in case someone had a similiar reaction as mine to this medicine and what they ended up switching to or finding helped take the side effects away??
Thanks all!
Tagged with: Effexor • Feel • From • generic • Help • sick • Switching • Venlafaxine
Filed under: Anti Aging Diet
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You don’t say what type of doctor you are seeing. I hope it is a psychiatrist, because the sort of issues you have are not something that a typical family doctor or internist will be able to handle.
It is very important for you to know that Bipolar disorder treatment is different than the treatment for simple depression. Typically an antidepressant is not used alone but together with a mood stabilizer (such as Depakote).
You should also know that it is common for Bipolar sufferers to self-medicate with alcohol, and to find that their symptoms get much worse when they quit drinking. With less than two weeks of sobriety, though, it’s hard to tell anything. (I congratulate you on your decision to quit drinking, by the way–I quit ten years ago myself.) I urge you to work with a good psychiatrist as you work toward stable abstinence.
One more comment…I went to AA for a number of years, and I was quite disheartened by the attitude of some AA members that dually diagnosed people should not take psychiatric medications on the grounds that they “weren’t really sober” if they did so. Needless to say, this is terrible advice, and should be ignored. The best thing I learned in AA is this: “Just don’t drink, even if your ass falls off.”