[RaceAgainstMyself]

So b/c this requires some backstory, I'm going to start at the end then back track...this is going to be about the following (non-exhaustive) ongoing concerns:

• arrhythmia/tachydardia, chronic and with or without stimulants in my system;
• dizziness/lightheadedness, basically every time I stand up;
• shortness of breath, same as above (and both of these worse in the morning into afternoon, improve into night --> early before sunrise, i.e. my 'natural' bedtime);
• the past 2-3 weeks, a faint back/flank pain -- definitely not like the kidney infection I had (further described later in post); also worse when I'm hot/sweaty/not lying down;
• disorientation, like I wake up and have to reorient myself "what's today? what's the date? what was I doing yesterday? what happened last night...?"
  
• short-term memory loss; except I strangely seem to be able to remember pointless facts, statistics, numbers...sometimes I even remember a string of numbers like a phone number and can't remember whose it is! LOL!
• total apathy, no "fight-or-flight" response..."passively suicidal"? ex., "oh you can have adrenal gland tumours? and they can be cancerous? Huh, so I might be dying... oh well. what can ya do" or "'bout time I guess. My body's been taking too long anyway!" or "well at least if I have a heart attack a doctor might listen to me for a change... pretty hard to give yourself a heart attack because of something that 'all in your head'..."
• pleasure and sadness both foreign concepts; I find little to no enjoyment in eating, even with the high(ly annoying!) appetite and regardless of how close to fainting from low blood sugar I may be; little to no enjoyment sexually, despite the moderate to high(ly annoying!) sex drive. Both of the above are more like chores to me than a "desire" or "want"...plus maybe if I stopped being hungry I'd lose enough weight for something serious enough to happen a doctor (or parent) would take me seriously... lol there it is again...
• dreaming is infrequent, dreams that I do have are dull - but so are my real-life memories, so I often confuse small pieces of the two that pop in and out of memory...;
  
• lack of like 90% of normal emotion, except for anger, which seems to get very intense; that combined with the whole "you can have a libido, but that's where it ends, no fun for you! " game my mind seems to be playing on me, is why I've decided pursuing any type of relationship, even if it was a meaningless physical one, is yet another waste of energy I do not have in the first place;
  
• apathy, lack of concern for others, almost like a sociopath (like I'll often see someone suffering, or some graphically violent TV show, or offend someone inadvertently, and have no empathy whatsoever);
• stubborn sleep patterns that have remained nocturnal for most of the past 4 years +, and seem impossible to alter (i.e., I can stay up for 24 hours straight or more -- something I've tried many times -- and my brain has no concept of a clock 'reset'; of course I've also tried simply not sleeping enough, or shifting my schedule more towards normal..by the following night, that means nothing);
• hypoglycemia if I don't eat right before I go to sleep or (since I often sleep 10-12 hours or longer) at least once during the..uh.."night" lol);
• weight loss despite high caloric intake and an almost constant appetite if I don't have something like a 1000-calorie meal/dessert...);
• pretty much constant sweating; sometimes if I'm lying down it'll go away, and then I'll stand up and walk to another room and be crazy sweaty;
• and despite the multitude of somatic symptoms, and my long history of anxiety/panic attacks, I pretty much consistently feel mentally dead, or at the very least numb and foggy;
• parents and doctors don't seem to think any of this is a problem, at least not one they can address directly, but rather some kind of psychological issue of mine; I'm pretty sure it's almost entirely all traceable back to my having been on Effexor XR for basically the past decade (including 2 separate unsuccessful withdrawal attempts.)
  

People say I'm cynical with a tone implying accusation, like one day I just decided to be cynical to annoy everyone for the fun of it, or because that's just how deranged I am, that my mind just works the wrong way. But the more doctors, parents, politicans, and any other authority lets me realize that if there's anyone you can trust, it's probably only yourself (though that's questionable)... everyone's just reinforcing those beliefs in the end.

I mean first off, the fact I was put on antidepressants at 8 years old by a school shrink (worked with a social worker my parents started sending me to in like 1st grade because one of my teachers said I seemed to be 'daydreaming' or 'preoccupied' or some other total BS; funny, in high school I had to put up a fight and get called a drug-seeker/addictive peprsonality/speed freak to get my parents to help me find a doctor who would prescribe adhd meds! Intriguing!) --stuff happens, ER, untreated phobias, misdiagnoses, blabblabla, and from age 12 to 22 I have been on effexor XR. Add in about one year for total withdrawal period time between the two attempts (one at 14, one at 19...I think the second one wouldve been more like 'protracted'--lasted about 6 months?) Now last spring I started therapy for panic disorder and emetophobia....funny, both can usually be treated within a matter of months..or even weeks. Which makes me wonder what my life could've been like if things were addressed properly before the zoloft deal, when I told the social worker I was 'terrified of vomiting' one day.


Well last year right around this time, after I finished the semester, my doc said to go off concerta for the summer. In Sept. I asked him for vyvanse - that's what I first took in high school and the concerta completely killed my appetite. Like most days around 5-6am I'd crave ice cream or a milkshake, and often also get very thirsty, but that would be it for the entire 24 hours. Sometimes I'd force myself to take a few bites of something with my other meds to avoid the nausea (and frequently, the subsequent panicky anxiety.) Ever since then, and I'm not sure if this is b/c of the med switch, the therapy, the eliminated nausea, or both -- I've become like... whatever the polar opposite is to a panic attack. LOL. I'm always very lethargic, sluggisih, etc. I take Vyvanse every morning, and drink some form of caffeine daily...this past year, to be able to wake up for classes, it wasn't uncommon I'd have Vyvanse and coffee, or Rockstar, just so I can get up in the morning. Basically Vyvanse is just to get my out of bed (at least increase my likelihood of doing so... stimulants never necessarily prevented me from sleeping though, or missing my alarm...), and coffee to not fall over during a lecture. But since concerta tended to give me anxiety, my caffeine tolerance was lower. With Vyvanse, it became ridiculous!! Last time I was off effexor, I went off cold turkey...from 150mg, half what I take now...yeah, pretty much had caffeine INtolerance then! Granted, it was cold turkey, but the near-constant panicking and severe anxiety, having to avoid almost all caffeine or limit to half a can of soda's worth (now that's virtually 0, as far as getting an effect/feeling alive generaly LOL), and..oh, the limitless libido despite the fact the awful sexual side effect I've always had never went away! (to clarify, the side effect is basically an orgasm-less orgasm...which apparently does exist -- "orgasmic anhedonia" or "ejaculatory anhedonia" -- but seemingly isn't even as common amongst anti-depressant long-term victims! anyone here on antidepressants wanna trade? I'd rather not have the sex drive in the first place! :P)

In December I had to take off the last week of classes, then finals, because I had a kidney infection. In retrospect though, I bet I had one that whole damn semester, starting from day 1 of classes (the morning after probably the last 'serious' panic attack I've had.) I woke up after like half a night of sleep with kidney pains and a terrible urinary urgency... something that has always happened to me once in awhile, since I was a kid, except the urgency was much worse... anyway I was getting those pains like that every day or two the rest of the semester, as well as the urgency, both of which I shrugged off as a 'side effect' of my increased fluid intake (via coffee) that I'd just have to put up with.

But see, every time I've been on effexor, I've become almost entirely unresponsive to caffeine, and this time even more so because I'm on double now what I was before I stopped taking it when I was 19. My daily caffeine consumption the past two semesters, has definitely been unprecedented. I also kind of need it to have any desire to do anything, feel anything, talk to anyone, get out of bed...raise my blood pressure enough that I can still breathe after I get out of bed....

I'm already going to take a 5th year to graduate college because I transferred and where I am now has all these requirements I didn't have before. But on top of that, after just barely being able to keep my GPA skimming over a 3.2 overall for about 3 years, the past year it's plummeted lower than my grades have ever been. I found it so infuriating to think that people who slacked off in my freshman class who had GPA's in the 1's and 2's, are able to end up with 3's and 4's as I watch mine plummet at the last second b/c of what essentially was the biggest medical conglomerate of undetectable issues that ever was...hard to function academically, when you an't function, period; hard to get to class, let alone get any work done, when even having to get out of bed before you pee yourself or die of starvation are overwhelming burdens...

There is really no such thing as reward for me. The only thing I find rewarding is sitting in bed alone and being on a computer, because for some odd reason I can derive pleasure from things like reading PubMed, or watching whatever on YouTube, but effectively none in typical human ways towards accomplishing a goal, or food or sex... (in fact I don't understand why I need an appetite, or a sex drive, when I find both about as enjoyable as scratching a bug bite!)

I guess none of this is much to worry about, as I've seen a doctor on about 5 sepaarate occassions for it ("it" collectively referring to 3-4 dozen systemic symptoms/health 'concerns' I've had.) I've gotten things like Benadryl (to help me have a more regular sleep schedule, i.e. a less nocturnal one), blood tests (always come out normal, or with irrelevant things like low Vitamin D, or "very low....very good triglycerides"....or a "whopping kidney infection" that somehow didn't spread in the course of 3-4 months or show any other abnormalities...), and then I've gotten things like "that's too much coffee", and "oh, so sounds like depression", and "you're doing this to yourself", and "that's because you don't get enough exercise"" (I guess walking about 2-3 miles/day for 4-5 days a week, for two semesters, half of that time being stairs and/or jogging and/or running because I move in slow motion til I have to rush last minute to...well..everywhere LOL....doesn't constitute 'exercise.') So I guess in the end wanting to go off effexor -- a drug which, presumably, caused me to basically abuse caffeine and depend on stimulants to not wake up feeling like I was under anesthesia for a week -- is just me being a total nutjob! As I always have been, hence all the medication I've always had to take!

Anyone have ANY ideas??

[Immaculata]

Lots going on for you. I send a hug through cyberspace.

Has anyone ever considered that *it* might be some form of Bipolar? I am sure no doc, but you are describing many things that could fit such a diagnosis. One of the things that also keys me into this idea is that your experience with SSRIs seems to bring about both passivity and anxiety. SSRIs (as well as ADD meds) can really set off some serious stuff for us BPs. Also, lack of empathy is something I experience in my worse of the worse manic periods--no empathy coupled with uncontrollable rage (your word was anger) is a scary thing, and I have been in that space.

I lived in a world much like you have described until last year when I drove myself to the ER and told them I could not take it anymore and I was going to kill myself if someone did not help me. That was the BEST thing I ever did for myself. I did not have the money to do it or the family support, but I am living a life now, with the right medications, that I could not have imagined previously. Not everyone has such an experience, but some do.

I suffered for three decades, I wish I had done it sooner.

[RaceAgainstMyself]

Originally Posted by Immaculata

Lots going on for you. I send a hug through cyberspace.

Has anyone ever considered that *it* might be some form of Bipolar? I am sure no doc, but you are describing many things that could fit such a diagnosis. One of the things that also keys me into this idea is that your experience with SSRIs seems to bring about both passivity and anxiety. SSRIs (as well as ADD meds) can really set off some serious stuff for us BPs. Also, lack of empathy is something I experience in my worse of the worse manic periods--no empathy coupled with uncontrollable rage (your word was anger) is a scary thing, and I have been in that space.

I lived in a world much like you have described until last year when I drove myself to the ER and told them I could not take it anymore and I was going to kill myself if someone did not help me. That was the BEST thing I ever did for myself. I did not have the money to do it or the family support, but I am living a life now, with the right medications, that I could not have imagined previously. Not everyone has such an experience, but some do.

I suffered for three decades, I wish I had done it sooner.

I've always seen it as the exact opposite... more like nonpolar! A flat line doesn't have any poles... I have been on zyprexa many times, as I've said... it seems to have just made everything worse. I had a harder time waking up than I do already, slept longer, and during the day everything seemed overwhelming, but rather than apathy it would turn into anxiety over having to do things. I've also been on Lamictal.... went off it cold turkey like a year ago and didn't notice a thing, just like when I started it. lol. I'm starting to just assume I'm a mutant and the laws of probability don't apply to me.

[Taonuviel]

This may be totally out there and possibly against better judgement, but after reading that I'm left wondering what your symptoms actually are that the meds are trying to treat, and if a detox, with careful supervision, would be worth a try. With it try some natural pills - vitamin D and fish oil, and a body detox of some sort where you're eating and drinking natural stuff. I don't know, it just seems like the symptoms you were talking about are mostly side effects of whatever concoction you're taking...