help

[Existential_Blues]

I have started tapering off Effexor.  I'm was taking three 75 mg pills a night and am now down to one.  I've had alot of the problems others have listed.  What is really bothering me though, is how it seems hard to even form coherent thoughts and especially my lack of emotion.  I read how some people are feeling like their brains aren't functioning right, but has anybody else felt that they have lost their emotions?  All I can feel is frustration.  I'm usually emotional and creative and all over the place.  Now I can't feel anything.  I don't feel alive.  I hate this.  Medications have made me feel like this before, and I went off of them as soon as I could because I could not stand not to feel.  It was like they killed my soul.  I'm down to that one 75 mg pill now, and any feeling, except frustration, has dried up.  I thought it would have gotten better, not worse.  Even my sex drive is dead.  I hate this.  Has anybody else experienced this?  Is this going to go away or what?  What is wrong with me???  I don't want to be stuck a robot.  

[amanda77rainbow]

I recently tapered off of Zoloft after being on various types of medications, including Effexor and others, for the last two years. I didn't realize how dead I felt until I was medication free. I'm able again to think past the immediate--to think through things rather than react to them. I relate to that all-encompassing feeling of frustration. I was used to being able to intellectualize things and examine them. On medication I think I lost my ability to wrap my mind around stuff. I felt like negative experiences washed over me and positive ones couldn't touch me. I felt unable to sort of step over something and look back at it. I was just constantly in the middle. I got my creativity and reasoning abilities back and I think you will, too. I think Effexor takes a while to get out of your system.

Good luck.

[Existential_Blues]

That is why I figured the emotions would be stronger with LESS medication in my system.  But it has been the opposite.  That is what has worried me.  One Effexor pill is all that I am taking.  I have felt more emotion before when I was on five different kinds of medications.  I should have no trouble living when off the meds.  My parents saw problems that were never there, sent me off to lots of psychiatrists and psychologists, and would literally try to force down the pills if I refused to take them.  No drugs nor doctors worked for me over these eight years, and I have realized there was never anything wrong with me except bad side effects from pills.  

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

What you describe is actually quite common, and it will go away in time. By taking this mediations you have chemically effected brain cells related to emotional response, and your natural system will have to take over again.  It will come back. It's what I have been talking about for years in this forum...these medications dampen the emotion but they don't solve the underlying issues of living that cause the emotion. for that, you have to be conscious and practice the skills of living.