Nimm: history and Pristiq tapering without 25mg tablet

[Nimm]

Hi all,

 

I have been lurking this site since June and wrote up a tapering schedule for myself using the Desvenlafaxine tapering thread as a guide.

 

In May I was on 100 mg, and decided to come down as I felt like my energy and motivation was too tied up in the drug, and it was no longer working for me as it had done before. I also had a change of living situation which has given me a more comfortable and much safer space in which to finally do this.

 

My brief history is that I have tried on a few different drugs since I was 17.

 

I had brief stints on lexapro, cymbalta, but experienced impotence, so my GP prescribed me Pristiq in I think 2012, which at the time was a gamechanger. It allowed me to conquer my performance and social anxiety and let me complete my undergraduate degree, and form a lot of new relationships. 

 

I stayed on 50mg for a long time, which I think was really the sweet spot for me, until mid 2016 when I went through a stressful breakup and had my dose upped to 100mg. I stayed on it until January 2017 when I decided to quit cold turkey because I felt fine.

 

What a mistake that was. I was doing well until I experienced a severe panic attack during a uni exam for my Grad Dip in Psychology and ended up dropping out of the course. After that I experienced extreme suicidal ideation, which had never happened to me before, and decided to seek admission to hospital in May 2018. I was there for 3 weeks and completed a full cycle of their inpatient anxiety program, and the psychiatrist put me back on the 100mg dose of Pristiq. Once I  was discharged I did a 1 day a week outgroup program which lasted 4-5 months. They kept trying to eject me from the hospital after the first week but I fought them and insisted I wanted to complete the full cycle as well as the outgroup, and this honestly has made the biggest difference for controlling my anxiety than Pristiq ever did.

 

This year I moved out of home interstate for a Masters degree for the first time, and everything was swell until Covid hit, and due to a number of factors, none of which was influenced by anxiety or depression, I decided to come home. I've had 4 addresses this year, and despite the world being very chaotic, my mental state has been clear, and I am now able coach myself through the disruptive thinking. I also became a bit fed up with becoming a zombie by 8 PM because of the drugs half life, and decided it was time to get off the drug. I didn't tell my GP until I'd hit the 50mg mark last month in September, as I had a hunch which turned out to be correct; she just told me to stagger the dose to every other day and do it over 3 weeks to get down to 0mg. I want to stress she is a fantastic GP and really came through for me to get me a bed in the clinic in 2018,  but I told her I had written up a schedule and done my research on this site and was going to do it my way.

 

I have seen a psychiatrist in the past, but he was happy to no longer see me, and honestly I don't see the need to go back to him now as I feel like every health professional treats coming off ADs as a crap shoot, and I feel like I can do this without seeing him.

 

My schedule since June had been to drop every 2 weeks fortnightly on a Monday, before this I was taking 50 mg in the morning and 50 mg at night:

 

• 22nd of June = 1 x 50mg in the morning (M), 1 x big half 1/2  + 1 x little quarter 1/4 at night (N)
• 6th of July = 1 x 50 mg (M), 1 x big 1/2 (N)
• 20th of July = 1 x 50 mg (M), 1 x little 1/2 (N)
• 3rd of August = 1 x 50 mg (M), 1 x big 1/4 (N)
• 17th of August = 1 x 50 mg (M), 1 x little 1/4 (N)
• I held at this dose until the 14th of September as I was feeling a big groggy and fatigued

 

Symptoms I experienced during this time varied from mild to moderate:

 

• Fatigue
• Grogginess in the morning
• Extra sensitivity to caffeine
• Mild anxious thinking
• Visual hallucination (seeing dog out of the corner of my eye but she's not actually there)
• Auditory hallucination while sleeping (heard a man yelling in my dream and woke up myself up thinking it was real)
• Moderate lack of motivation
• Minor brain fuzz and a few zaps
• Minor nausea

 

• 14th of September I cut my morning 50mg into 2 halves and took the bigger in the morning the smaller at night
• 28th of September = 1 x big half (M), 1 x big quarter (N)

 

As of today the 6th of October I am holding here, as the effects of splitting the tablet have hit me like a truck. 

 

• Within a few days of cutting the tablet I experienced extreme night sweating for about 4 nights before it eased
• Days of extreme lack of motivation, hard to get off the couch
• Fatigue, and trouble waking up, I'm sleeping 9+ hours every night
• Extreme grogginess in the morning, I have to have a berocca to become mentally alert and its not lasting long at all
• Persistent headache, it feels like the front of my head has ballooned and my eyes always feel heavy
• Trouble regulating temperature, I'm getting hot and cold a lot, yesterday it was 28 degrees outside and I was walking around in a dressing gown

 

Today is the worst day I've had in ages, I just feel physically crap. My mental state is unaffected in itself, but starting to get a bit run down by all the physical symptoms because I want to do things but its a struggle.

 

I have been cutting the tablets with a pill cutter, as we don't have 25mg doses available in Australia which makes this much harder than it needs to be. The cuttings are a little arbitrary, as I'm trying to do it by eye.

 

I'm going to hold here for a month and see how long this takes to ease, and I might start exploring somewhere to get the drug compounded.

 

 

[Gridley]

Welcome to SA, Nimm.

 

To give members the best information, we ask them to summarize their medication history in a signature -- drugs, doses, dates, and discontinuations & reinstatements, in the last 12-24 months particularly.  Please include your taper schedule in the signature with your best guess of how many milligrams Pristiq you're taking at each reduction.

 

Account Settings – Create or Edit a signature.

 

We recommend tapering by no more than 10% of current dose every four weeks. Pill cutting isn't an ideal way to taper as it's inconsistent and inexact.

I can't really tell how fast you're tapering but given the withdrawal symptoms you're experiencing it appears that you're going too fast.  It might take more than a month for things to settle.  It's best to go by your symptoms rather than a set schedule.

 

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

 

What is withdrawal syndrome.

 

ChessieCat, one of our moderators who lives in Australia, has been tapering Pristiq using a compounding pharmacy.  I suggest you take a look at her links.

 

My tapering program

My Intro (goes to my tapering graph)

My website - includes my brief history + links to videos & information on the web

 

Compounding when you resume your taper would be a good idea.  Here's our link on tapering Pristiq.

 

Tips for tapering off desvenlafaxine (Pristiq)

 

We don't recommend a lot of supplements on SA, as many members report being sensitive to them due to our over-reactive nervous systems, but two supplements that we do recommend are magnesium and omega 3 (fish oil). Many people find these to be calming to the nervous system. 

 

Magnesium, nature's calcium channel blocker 

 

Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil) 

 

Add in one at a time and at a low dose in case you do experience problems.

 

This is your Introduction topic, where you can ask questions and connect with other members.  We're glad you found your way here.