Effexor warning, don't take a dose late like me

[carlossong]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I became highly anxious when I woke up late and took my Effexor 150mg too late. In turn I became suicidal for about 1 hour with extreme anxiety.

I took my 150mg Effexor dose 4 hours late. Then I started noticing extreme anxiety and was thinking of euthanasia and ending it all.

I know I have to use an alarm to wake up at 8am every morning to take my mes on time but I wasn't hearing it.

I'd prefer to die instead of living with that kind of anxiety again. That's my warning of what happens if you take Effexor too late.

Effexor has a very short half-life of 4 hours.

[saintalto]

Effexor did terrible things to me. I got very violent and attacked a family member. Scared me shitless, so I went off it cold turkey and spent around 2 weeks down with "flu". Then, they'd decided, lets try this again a few years later (why?? - but I'm a good little patient so I complied) and again, bad reaction. Not violent, though, cause I had things to stem the mania element this time. I couldn't do cold turkey again. cause I'd been on it for some time. I took a single granule out every night to slowly to ease withdrawal symptoms and weened down to none that way. I'd say it's my top least favourite drug. 

[Cerberus]

Mileage varies according to individual brain chemistry.  I have taken the maximum dose of Effexor XR for many years now and I can miss up to three days before withdrawal symptoms start to click in, always heralded by brain zaps. I've gone off cold turkey twice - neither time by choice - and no, I don't recommend that to anyone. People have equated it to coming off heroin, though having never had that experience I couldn't personally say.  There is some debate about the effectiveness of antidepressants as a class of medications for Bipolar Disorder in general.

Carlossong, you may, however, want to take a look at this article on Medscape about a 2013 study which demonstrated that Effexor was a particularly poor treatment choice for BP1 patients with comorbid anxiety conditions. You may wish to bring the study to the attention of your pdoc and discuss whether its findings may be relevant to your individual case.