Hello all,
It has been a long time since I frequented this website, but I remember reading it and speaking to others in the community helped me through a large depression I went through last year. Everyone here always seems so helpful, caring and well-informed. I am back again, not for myself, but for my partner. I am just looking for some type of feedback on what some users of this prescription have experienced, and am looking on advice on how to be supportive in her decision and help her in any way (for some background: I am a 24 year old male, and she is a 21 year old female. We are both college students).
My partner has recently decided to look into medication to help her control her anxiety. I find it strange because she would seem to most to be a very social person. However, she gets flustered very easily I find, and I've noticed she embarasses VERY easily. I've never seen one of her attacks, but she has told me about them. The symptoms seem to show when she gets, well, nervous obviously. hah. She goes beat red, her skin will even break out at times, high pulse rate. The other day in a mock interview for school, she started to cry in the interview because she was so nervous/intimidated. The same happened to her in her appointment with her doctor today as she described her symptoms.
As her partner, I've slowly started to notice mood swings in her and she seems to have very severe PMS (her mother has said so. it's not just the boyfriend's opinion :). We'll be out in the day shopping, everything will be great. Then she'll just start to get annoyed and irritible if she can't find something. it's as if the world is over. then we'll head back to the car and she'll be very affectionate, and once we're home; she seems irritible again. Sometimes I just feel she doesn't even want me to touch her once we're home (which really hurts because we're in along distance relationship and only see each other on weekends), and lack of intimacy has started to feel like a problem in the relationship from my perspective. Like, not even as much kissing. I can go on with a number of different examples and weird quirks in behaviour, but suffice to say: sometimes she just seems so irritable that i feel she doesn't even want me around (yet she'll cry if i tell her i can't come down on a weekend, and she'll get upset if we don't get to be together in the day). It all kinda came to realization to her and her mother that she may need help when she started wanting to quit her job over this.
Now, I read into Effexor XR and there seems to be a wide range of reviews on it. Doctors say it isn't addicted while patience are saying you pretty much crash coming off of it, and that the withdrawal is terrible. Some experienced weight gain while others experienced loss of appetite (which i know she'll be sensitive about). Some say that they just kind of felt like they were on auto-pilot and experience some slower memory/words. A lot of patients--albeit older--experienced loss of sex drive as well. There's some people that say their depression worsened. Can anyone tell me if they experienced any of this and/or other symptoms?
I am just kind of scared of how the drug might affect her. Despite the impression I have likely given, I really do love her, and think she has a terrific personality. If I were to be completely honest, I would rather see her try something non-medicinal to help her anxiety, but I will support whatever decision she makes (I have told her this). I just kind of feel she is rushing into it, hoping to for lack of a better term "fix things" before looking into it (she keeps saying she wants to be good for her interview coming up in a couple of weeks).
Does anybody have any advice on how I can be of help to her in this time whether emotionally or clinically? I'm really at a loss.