Symptoms From Antidepressant Withdrawal Can Be Reduced By Tapering

Where does your 78% number come from?

I got it from a scientific article on paxilporgress.org It is a searchable site you may find it if you look search under the something % of withdrawal actually that is a bad idea as it will give you every post with withdrawal in it. Maybe % and search only titles. Maybe you can think of a better term but it is there.

Thanks. I'll have a look.

OK Got it: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/f...

7 of 9 subjects on effexor had problems 3 days after withdrawal. 2 of 9 on the placebo had problems.

Too small a study to tell you anything. And note that nearly a quarter of the subjects thought they had withdrawal effects from a placebo!

Thanks btdt.

Petitions don't mean much. With massively over-prescribed drugs like anti-depressants, the numbers are huge. A million signatures would be a drop in a bucket. Add to that the fact that people often don't really understand their experience or its causes (eg. people giving up placebos thinking they're experiencing withdrawal), and it makes it unreliable.

What's needed, of course, is good studies with large numbers of participants. That's not easy of course, as Docs and researchers generally don't want their patients coming off antidepressants.

I see no data at present to indicate anything near 78% experience bad discontinuation effects. Hopefully we'll know for sure one day.

Far more than 78% of those posting in Topix's many Effexor withdrawal threads have stated they had bad withdrawal from it and other SSRI/SNRI meds.

Topazia wrote:

<quoted text>
Actually, it does. It says so right in the article:
-- Elliott Richelson, M.D., Psychiatry and Pharmacology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Fla.
Doesn't change my opinion of it, however. I'll stay with what I know from personal experience.

I mean sources for supposed individual facts on percentages of people suffering withdrawal, etc. Perhaps it's setting the bar a bit high to always expect forum comments to source facts (though they're more persuasive if they do), but I think we can expect it of a supposedly authoritative answer from a medico.

As for trusting personal experience. Sure, but bear in mind that (a) people often get their own experience wrong (eg. in the above study 1/4 of people thought they suffered withdrawal effects from placebos), and (b) there are many situations where personal experience doesn't provide any information. For example, for me, considering taking venlafaxine for the first time, I can only take into account the relevant research,'cause I don't have any experience to go by yet ...

btdt wrote:

... because an antidepressant withdrawal article was emeshed with the hemroid article which to me shows gross indiference to the question....

LOL! Well, maybe the writer was just trying to write an article that covered the human body from one end to the other. Call it "comprehensive".

Hey folks this is quite a little chat going on here. There is a link with the 78% post maybe if you went to the link you would find a reference or is that you expect to spoon fed everything? Not that I care cause I don't. As far as experience of people taking the drug I would take that any day over the big pharma/doctor advice sorry that is just me but think about it what is the MOTIVE???
Docs get you out of the office feeling like they did their job drug companies well I cannot even go there with a straight face they have been proven so dirty in relation to these drugs countless time I don't have to even say it everybody knows.( if you don't google it.
People are listening to the crackpots online who have taken these drugs they are also listening to the FDA Blackbox Warning their family freinds who have taken it word is getting out. And the word is the big bucks pharma made off these drugs and other anguish those are coming to an end. Writing is on the wall.

noisy wrote:

Thanks btdt.
Petitions don't mean much. With massively over-prescribed drugs like anti-depressants, the numbers are huge. A million signatures would be a drop in a bucket. Add to that the fact that people often don't really understand their experience or its causes (eg. people giving up placebos thinking they're experiencing withdrawal), and it makes it unreliable.
What's needed, of course, is good studies with large numbers of participants. That's not easy of course, as Docs and researchers generally don't want their patients coming off antidepressants.
I see no data at present to indicate anything near 78% experience bad discontinuation effects. Hopefully we'll know for sure one day.

All you have said here also put the drug testing the drug companies do in a very bad light considering they suffer from all these issues then on top of that disort and corrupt the bad data they already got to make the drug look better and sell it to an unsuspectin public.
Buyer beware. The some day you speak of will come fast if people demand it petitions are a start. Some day should have been the day BEFORE the drug came to market they are too fast to sell the drugs lets test them for 30 years first and at least the people who knowingly sign up to be guiny pigs for pharma know they ar putting thier lives at risk they have some idea it is dangerous unlike the unsuspecting public who had faith in docotors and the FDA an agency which is a bigger joke every day.

btdt: I really don't give a stuff about the morality of drug companies. Having worked inside several corporations in positions where I could observe what was going on at board room level, I simply assume that they are machines for promoting sociopaths to positions of power, and do whatever they feel they need to make money. They'll stop at nothing, lawbreaking is rife, and, frankly, if a regime offered slave labour like the WWI Nazis did, I don't think there's a corporation on the planet that wouldn't take them up on it. I'm not interested in what any corporation ever says about anything, end of story. They are irredeemably corrupt.

But that doesn't make self-sampled internet anecdotes a reliable source of information. Given (1) the massive rates of overprescription of antidepressants, and (2) the tendency of people to speak out only when they feel negative about something, and (3) the fact that the internet clearly tends to bring out the most irrational, most argumentative, least intellectually careful responses from people,(4) the fact that the internet is numerically dominated by the poorest-educated and most ideological culture in the Western world (the US); given all that, I think any 'consensus' makes internet testimony as worthless as corporate marketing.

If you accepted corporate marketing as a guide to truth, we live in a Schlaraffenland where we are all beautiful yuppies driving BMWs and sipping Chardonnay. If you accepted the nutty interet forum picture, on the other hand, we're stifled by a morass of massive world conspiracies involving drug companies and alien presidents.

Intelligent understanding of peer-reviewed papers, along with insightful and unprejudiced examination of one's own experience, is really just about the best available evidence for how well or badly drugs worth. Everything else is crap.

http://www.medgrip.com/depression

Excellent post, Noisy.

Topazia: thanks, though maybe a tad over-emphatic and guilty of a bit of internet argumentativeness myself. Posted before I had my vital 1st morning coffee!

noisy wrote:

btdt: I really don't give a stuff about the morality of drug companies. Having worked inside several corporations in positions where I could observe what was going on at board room level, I simply assume that they are machines for promoting sociopaths to positions of power, and do whatever they feel they need to make money. They'll stop at nothing, lawbreaking is rife, and, frankly, if a regime offered slave labour like the WWI Nazis did, I don't think there's a corporation on the planet that wouldn't take them up on it. I'm not interested in what any corporation ever says about anything, end of story. They are irredeemably corrupt.
But that doesn't make self-sampled internet anecdotes a reliable source of information. Given (1) the massive rates of overprescription of antidepressants, and (2) the tendency of people to speak out only when they feel negative about something, and (3) the fact that the internet clearly tends to bring out the most irrational, most argumentative, least intellectually careful responses from people,(4) the fact that the internet is numerically dominated by the poorest-educated and most ideological culture in the Western world (the US); given all that, I think any 'consensus' makes internet testimony as worthless as corporate marketing.
If you accepted corporate marketing as a guide to truth, we live in a Schlaraffenland where we are all beautiful yuppies driving BMWs and sipping Chardonnay. If you accepted the nutty interet forum picture, on the other hand, we're stifled by a morass of massive world conspiracies involving drug companies and alien presidents.
Intelligent understanding of peer-reviewed papers, along with insightful and unprejudiced examination of one's own experience, is really just about the best available evidence for how well or badly drugs worth. Everything else is crap.

I also have corporate experience Noisy and completely agree with your analysis of them.

Topazia wrote:

<quoted text>
You seem to be trying to make a very good point, but your continued insults to those who merely disagree with your opinion is very tiresome, and does your argument no good. I understand your passion.

I am sorry you I forgot the quotation marks that was not something I said about the whores ect that was a quote from the site I was linking I am guilty of quoting him :) my bad. Thought may spike some interest as you say it has passion but it isnt' mine if you had checked the link you would know that. As for the insults and you your idea that my posts are tiresome you are entitled to you opinion as I am to mine carry on. I am a live and let live type person and quite tolerant of others or that is how I see myself you opinion may differ and hey that is ok too.

If you are thinking of taking effexor or venlafaxine please go to the official perscribing page and take a look.
I just did this recently and found about every medical problem I had on the list. These are not small issues I am talking about gastro bleeding ( a lot of blood 2 pints at least in one sesseion) vaginal bleeding treated with a drug I just recently learned was for hemophelias ( was made too stupid by effexor to look it up before just trusted a doc he gave it too me after he took out my ovary because of cysts the suspected source of the bleeding he was wrong as the bleeding didn't stop. Ovarian cysts are on the list too btw as are the countless other disorders on my list. If you do take it check the list when you get sick.

I suffered from Paxil withdrawal, did I ever! When my psyc. suggested changing from Zoloft to Cymbalta I tapered off slowly on my own, he had no clue! I also went to an endocronologist and added T-3 to my T-4 thyroid medication. I now take 30 mg. of Cymbalta along with thyroid meds and I am as well as can be! Everyone has to be their own advocate. Also, remeber success stories don't aoften make it to the forums, when feeling better again it is easy to forget the misery we experienced.

To Noisy,

Of course there isn't a "scientific" study about the discontinuation syndrome from Effexor! Way too lucrative a business to start advertising the many toxic effects of that medication, or how impossibly difficult it is to get off of it!
I have personally talked to a Wyeth rep for health care professional, and despite assuring me that they would send me data and filling an adverse reaction form, they only thing they sent me were samples!

It is your life, and you have the choice to start taking this poison or not, but do think twice...
and please do take the time to watch this video:
(well, follow the 10 parts on you tube, otherwise you would have to order the video)
here is the link to the first video of the 10 part series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

As for (non documented at this time) other research results, know that therapy + physical activity + diet changes have a much higher % of success in treating depression than any antidepressant.

but please, believe me or not, just watch the videos before you make your decision.

Jumanjji

sorry, I gave you the link for part 2.
part one is here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch...