Encouragement for those Blue Days

I'm going to use the words we because I know that I'm not the only person on the face of the planet that has these kinds of days. 

I think we all have days when we feel like the world is ganging up on us or we can't seem to do anything right.  It feels like you could fall off the planet and no one would really notice or care, but down deep in your heart, you know that's just not true.  We let how people respond to us or interact with us, affect us negatively.   We interpret their responses to us depending on what the nature of the issue is, like we are inferior to them or we don't know what we're doing, or that we can't do anything right.  Well, that's just not true.  The way we are feeling in that given day is what makes us internalize those negative feelings about ourselves. 

The truth is, we are very intelligent people with complicated thought processes.  We think too much at times and not always about true and positive things. Look back over life and you will probably find that you've accomplished a lot of really good things.  Good positive outcomes.  You have helped a lot of people that you may never hear a thank you from, but have helped just the same. Held your tongue when you wanted to rip someone's head off, and find out later that they are having a bad time. Blogging like this is therapeutic to you even if no one ever reads it. Those rambling thoughts circulating in your mind now have a place to go so you can move on to something else and something more productive and positive.

You are smarter than people give you credit for.  You can do more than people give you credit for.  You are more than the position you come into work for every day.  You have so much more potential than anyone can even realize, especially you.  When you stop and think about yourself, what you do, what you love, who you love and who loves you, it makes all this other non-sense seem like exactly that, non-sense. In the big huge picture of life, you have to stop and take stock in who you are. Put life in a better perspective and read Psalm 139, God knew you were important and have a purpose.

100 mgs and counting down to 0

     I have hit my first goal of being down to 100 mgs. as of Sat. Oct 2nd.  I'm down 50 mgs and will continue to lower my dosage until I'm at zero.  I think that is pretty good for having started this process at the beginning of Sept.  If I can get down another 50 mgs by the end of October, I will be happy with that.  I had to go down to this last dosage a little slower than at the beginning.
     I only went from 110 to 105 and then from there to 100.  I will stay here at this level 2 weeks unless I feel like I'm doing real well, then I may take it down 10 mgs.  I felt a little "bubble headed" yesterday which is only 2 days after lowering the dosage.  I have noticed an increase in the appetite for sweets or chips or stuff I really need to stay away from if I want to lose any weight.  I don't really care for the airy head feeling, so we'll see how that goes.  I noticed today that I was a little irritable, but it seems to correlate with my old cycle as well, so it's really hard to tell since those symptoms are the same as the withdrawal symptoms.
     I feel I have made great progress thus far and will continue the voyage down ward until I can be free of this medication.  One thing that has improved somewhat, is the horrible sweating.  It doesn't seem to be as frequent as it was and my energy level has been pretty good. The next update will be when I decrease the dosage again.  

Down to 105 mgs and counting.

Since I started using the generic brand of Effexor it has been much easier to count the little granules to get the right amount in each pill.  I only went to 105 this week because I felt like the 10 mgs, may cause more problems.  When it gets close to a monthly cycle I notice more fluctuation in eating habits, headaches and mood.  The weepiness has been a little more noticeable with these lower dosages but it's hard to know if it's cyclic or from the medication, because they display the same symptoms and so does menopause.  I think I will stay at 105 mgs for at least one week and go down to 100 mgs next Sat. if all goes well.  I was hoping to be at 100 mgs by now but I know I can't rush this process because of the side effects and I can't let it disrupt my work.  So far going down on the weekends has been working well for me because if I feel tired, I can sleep if I need to.  I have noticed some odd headaches but I can seem to get rid of them with excedrine or my migraine meds if it seems to be going in that direction.  I have noticed better energy.  When I get tired, I'm really tired.  The only other thing I have noticed is some nausea in the mornings of the first 3 days or so when I lower the dosage.  I usually wake up hungry though.  I feel like I'm making great progress with this and plan to continue lowering my dosage until I can quit taking it comfortably all together. With God's help, anything is possible.

Antidepressant download to 110 mgs.

When I last wrote, it was 2 weeks ago and I had progressed down to 110 mgs. from 150.  I have had a good response so far.  I have noticed a better energy level than I usually have.  Typically I have a drop in energy at about 3:30 - 4:00 pm every day that is so bad I can hardly keep my eyes open. I haven't had that lately but when 9 pm or so comes around, I'm ready for bed.  I have noticed a little of the weepiness but not too bad.  Last week I was going to go down to 100 mgs and noticed a vicious headache coming on so I did bump the dose back to 110 and decided to stay there one more week.  I was coming down 10 mgs at a time and felt like I was having great success.  Getting to 110 feels like success to me. 

120 mgs and down

     Ok so last week, I went through the capsules and counted each one for the week down to 120 mgs. and I've been doing great.  My energy level has been good and I haven't had any issues with it.  Tomorrow I will go down to the 110 mgs and see how that goes for the next week.  I feel like I'm having good success with this process so far.  I will be happy to get to 100 mgs because that will mean I am getting closer to the goal.  They do say, however, that you can experience withdrawal symptoms for up to a year after you have discontinued the medication.  Hopefully this won't happen.  I do hope that if there is anyone else out there trying to get off this stuff that this helps.  I felt a little disappointed that my doctor didn't feel that he could help me with this process because he wasn't familiar enough with the medication.  I'm grateful to Dr. Glenmullen for putting out a book that has a step by step process even though I haven't gotten that far in his book, it was still a helpful piece of information to me.

130 mgs and counting down.

     It was really a pain to take the capsules apart and count all those little beads, but I'm determined to get off this medication so I sat down with the new bottle with the generic pills in it.  I was not looking forward to the task but to my surprise, when I pulled open the capsule, more uniform sized beads fell into the bowl and there were fewer.  When I counted them, thank God, there were exactly 150.  This makes getting off this stuff much better. I could count the beads down to 130 and know that I was down 20 mgs. for sure. So with the generic brand Venlafaxine, I was at 130 mgs. and was doing good.  I wasn't having too much fatigue and I felt good. The other key to this for me, is that I stopped taking the dose on a Friday and switched to the lower dose on Saturday.  That gives me Saturday and Sunday to feel crappy if it happens and it hasn't yet, but it gives me time to adjust if it feels like I have gone too low too soon.

The Journey has begun

     After seeing the doctor, I kind of went on as usual until I received my new refill.  Now there was a generic version and instead of burgundy colored capsules, I now had bright orange capsules.  I was a little concerned that the generic version would be as good as the original, but so far it has been fine.
     Before I saw the doctor, I had decided that I needed to get off this medication.  I found a book called, The Antidepressant Solution by Joseph Glenmullen on Amazon.com. The book is excellent but don't just take my word for it, http://books.google.com/books?sitesec=reviews&id=Ue9iav5FZmIC  reviews by others. This book gave me even more information about why a person needs to taper off these types of medications slowly and bigger reason as to why I knew I needed to get off this medication.  The stories in the beginning of the book were perfect examples of withdrawal symptoms I was afraid of.  I made the mistake of running out of this medication once.  I had headache, nausea, spacey head and had to go home from work because I had missed one whole day of this medication because it was coming in the mail.  On day two, I suffered from those nasty symptoms, so I knew better than to just quit.
     I finally took the plunge and sat down on a Sunday morning, August 22nd with my pill bottle and proceeded to take the capsules apart.  Tiny little beads came flowing out.  The original effexor had multiple sizes of these tiny little beads, so I painstakenly counted 300 of these tiny little beads and made sure that each capsule for the week had this many in it. So my first week I had cut down the dosage but I wasn't sure just how much because there weren't exactly 150 little beads in the capsules. The first week went well.  I felt good, no noticeable withdrawal side effects, but everyone is different.  I had begun this journey and felt good about it.