delight: girl with parakeet (serious consultation)
primum non nocere sans documentum ([personal profile] delight) wrote2016-02-18 09:40 pm

(no subject)

Dear readers, people who clicked on my name on network, etc,

Today my neurologist decided she really wanted to be able to make triptans accessible to me because of concerns about my abortive therapy availability. This means she has proposed switching from escitalopram, the 6th in a series of antidepressants I've taken for a long time and failed, to effexor, which ... I only trialed for three weeks and then got switched and was about sixteen at the time.

Because it's not an SSRI it's apparently triptan-friendly.

I'm confident I'd stay on Wellbutrin because I need that for executive functioning things too, the escitalopram is largely there just to counter the anxiety that the Wellbutrin makes worse, but --

But, I know quite a few people who read my DW at times take venlafaxine, so please tell me what you think of it, what the onset period was like, how it works in comparison to other things, &c? Much appreciated in advance!
recessional: four capsules, all with winking or smiling faces (personal; HAPPY PILLS)

[personal profile] recessional 2016-02-19 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah no the closest I know of to that is that for the vast majority of people it is a shitty one to taper off of later. But I even know someone who had no discontinuiation problems with it even though she did it in the Unapproved Way, so.

Its weird quirk is that it functions the same as an ssri at lower doses, then at medium/standard doses inhibits reuptake of both serotonin and norepinephrine, and then at high doses adds dopamine.

It's possible that a higher dose is the answer for me, but I'm at the point where my GP isn't comfortable going higher and I'm not interested in fucking around with meds anymore without having a psychiatrist monitoring it so I'm waiting for my referral to go through. Sigh.

Also it's one of those pain in the ass things where it is shown by studies to both significantly decrease migraines . . . in some people, and trigger more of them in others. Which, like: in the people that it TREATS migraines in, it does as well as a lot of the actual designated treatments! But I'm concerned that it may be increasing mine. *headdesk*
Edited (I will stop editing this now I swear.) 2016-02-19 03:29 (UTC)