SUICIDAL AND SELF HARMING WARNING
Hey guys! I've been having a hard time with Effexor, I have been dealing with anxiety and depression for some years and for a while Effexor helped me to go through hard situations without loosing my mind.
But I went off of it to duloxetine and then got into the worst anxiety crisis in 2 years, I moved and I'm not with the same doctor that first prescribed me Effexor, now, I found an amazing doctor and it's been like 3 months or more of treatment with him, he prescribed me Effexor on the same dose as I was taking before ( 150mg) + 75mg of Pregabaline.
At first it was going really well and I started going to therapy 1x a week, but then out of the blue (after more than a month) I had an nightmare and woke up feeling without air and then the following days it would be the same, even with breathing exercises, I was feeling awful and went to an appointment .
He raised Effexor to 225mg , it didn't help much and every time I get into anxiety for a long time I start to get depressed, I asked him to raise Pregabaline to help ( I felt a huge difference after taking Pregabaline since the first time he prescribed) and he did ( I only asked because he wanted me to raise my benzo daily dose, I take 1 pill of 2mg divided in half, half in the morning and other at night, he wanted me to raise the dose while I would settle with the new dose of Venlafaxine but, I know my body would get addicted to it, there was a time where I used to take 2 pills of 2mg of klonopin a day and even though my tappering was a mess bc of the doctor I was seeing by that time, I managed to go back to only 1 pill a day ( was the best I could do by that time, I was without any other professional help), so after the hell I went that time I didn't want to make my body get used to it again. )
So after Pregabaline was added everything was way smoother, I changed my therapist in this meanwhile and I was getting really hopeful, cause she works with Cognitive Behavior therapy and I was liking her work. Then, I had a setback with anxiety because of another nightmare, but I got myself right and things went "normal " again, but then I started to have anxiety attacks again every time I would wake up, and I'm still having this problem. I'm scheduled to Tuesday. All this mess really got me down and I really got suicidal, and sometimes just wishing to be runned over by a car or something just to don't have to deal with all of it again, and also when I feel anxious I feel like hurting myself, this Sunday I was having breakfast and I was anxious and passed through my mind to burn my arm on the cooktop, because any pain would feel better...
All of it makes me really sad, I hate to think these things and I really think I didn't do anything because I'm really trying not to and also Quetiapine has always helped me with suicidal ideation and not doing it. I just feel like all the other meds are doing something but Venlafaxine even on this high dose is not, neither for anxiety nor depression, and I feel like I can't "trust" it again, because out of the blue something might happen. But I also feel like an impostor, that the problem is me and not the meds, that nothing is really going to help because the problem is me.
Sorry for the long post, sometimes I just wish people that feel the same as me would say that things can get better, that there's hope.