Effexor will Fix Her!

I'm trying to change several aspects of my life, one of them is to regain custody of my mind and body.  The first step was to remove the IUD I've had in place for over two years.  I recently had my first real menses since the "knock up" and it felt reeeeally good.  Never thought I'd say that about my time of month.  As far as birth control goes, it did what it was meant to do but for over two years I have had a rainbow of discharge, a buffet if you will, every fucking day.  Talk about feeling not-so-fresh.  One day it was pink, the next it was yellowish.  Then a tint of green would enter the picture followed by some brown or red and whiter than white. A Monet of sorts. Now, as a woman you are told that these colors mean something like, infection?  Yeast?  Bacteria?  Every time I thought I was diseased I checked out clean with the doc.  "The string tends to irritate the cervix of some women".  Mine was flat out irate.  Gone were the days of going commando.  Gone were the days of going down.  So, the foreign object is now out of my invaded uterus and other than the mild latex irritation I've had to once again embrace, I couldn't be happier.

IUD out. Check.

The next thing on my list was to begin weaning myself off of the anti-depressant Effexor XR.  The XR stands for extended release?  Anyone that has ever been on this drug, or one in the same family knows that if you go more than twenty four hours sans pill poppin' your brain begins to pop.  For those of you who aren't familiar, allow me to try to give you the best description.

Wow, this is harder than I thought.  I can't think of a similarity.  Ummmm.  "They" call them brain zaps.  Everything will be completely normal and all of the sudden you look to your left then straight ahead again and it's as though the earth couldn't keep up with your vision.  Your peripheral vision wobbles, so to speak, and is about a millisecond behind the shift of your eyesight.  It's almost like an instant replay in your head?  I'd be driving down the freeway and glance at a billboard than back to the road in front of me and for a second that visual pattern I had just created would coming swinging back.  It's very odd.  You also get a brain flush feeling.  When you take effexor daily, you only get a hint of this if you forget to take it and the meds "half life" expires.  Weaning, on the other hand is hell.  You get only small breaks between these zaps/shifts/flushes because you are decreasing your dose slowly which shortens the half life of the dose you take and it's a dangerously aggressive cycle of staying on top of those horrible sensations with taking as little dose as possible at a time so that eventually you are barely taking any effexor to make it all go away.  Keep in mind, the medical world..the Brain docs..claim that these meds are not addictive or habit forming?  There should be no withdrawal.  Look up effexor on Wikipedia and you'll read this "Venlafaxine hydrochloride is in the phenethylamine class of modern chemicals, which includes amphetamine, methylendioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and methamphetamine".  Pardon me?  Meth?  HUH?  And it apparently is a sister to Tramadol, which is a pain pill often used by Veterinarians.  Hmph.  No withdrawals eh? 

Fuckers. 

 Weaning is not for the weak.  I imagine it sends most people over the edge and right back on the shit.  Weaning causes depression and anxiety.  The drop you feel when you cut the dose down, even gradually, is horrific.  I've done it before, when I first found out I was pregnant.  It didn't seem as difficult, probably because I was in Mazatlan and was so emotional anyway from all the other nonsense going on in my life (see my intro post) that I didn't realize the craziness the weaning was causing.  After about a month or more of weening, I think I'm finally effexor free.  I'm still getting the pops or zaps but it's very mild and I can ride it out now.  I no longer have this ravenous pull to take a nibble off of a pill so that I can make the withdrawals go away.  It makes me wonder about that Wilson-Philips girl that just got out of rehab for anxiety.  Was she there to withdrawal?  Maybe she couldn't handle it and needed to be put in a coma until the drug was entirely gone from her neurons.  If that's the case, I'm jealous.  Cause it sucks. 

Effexor out.  Check.