Saying hi

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd drop in and say hi.  I normally stay over on the bipolar board, but thought a fresh view might be just the thing for me, so I may lurk here for a bit too, so I thought an introduction was in order.  I have bipolar II, but anxiety is a major factor in my disorder, and in fact, my doctor chides me a bit for letting my anxiety "get in the way" of letting my bipolar medication do it's job.  I'm primarily a worrier, obsessive, and I have social anxiety like only this crowd would believe.

I'm on Topomax 600mgs, lamictal 200 mgs, and abilify 20 mgs for the bipolar, and Effexor 37.5, and serax ?mgs for anxiety.  The effexor was a much higher dose but gave me the brain zaps and vertigo, so I only take it now until I'm willing to take a couple days to be really dizzy and wean myself off it. 

This seems like a nice board, thanks for having me.

serafena.

The zaps are annoying, but I'll be able to get through them once I've got a day or two off in a row. I don't want to try and work and have them at the same time. I work retail and I'm on my feet and it makes me nauseous. On the higher dosages though, my vertigo was so bad, I couldn't stand up. Yes, I hadn't heard of it either until I was on the effexor. Now my dh takes it too and is perfectly fine. He's been on it for a couple of years with no issue at all.

Thanks for the kind welcome.

serafena

Yes, I had the zaps and vertigo on Effexor. It was the worst when I was on 225 mgs. Mind you, I'm on a bunch of other things also, but we narrowed it down to the Effexor. The vertigo finally stopped when I lowered my dose, but if I forget to take even my 35.7mg pill in the morning, I still have a mild case of the zaps during the afternoon. The doc said it would take a day or two to "wean" me off of it.

As I said though, my husband's been on Effexor for ages with no problem - so it may be something about the combination of drugs or some such thing... who knows?

serafena