Feeling a Little Better Today

Hey folks,

I am feeling a little bit better today, I will explain what I have been going through for the past several weeks with withdrawal from some meds I have been on for quite some time.

If you remember, way down at the bottom of the page, I stated about my father passing away in Dec. 2000, around that time I was put on what was labeled as a "Miracle Drug" by my Doctors. It comes from a different family as Prozac and has less side effects, or so I was told, and you can stop it any time you want. Well, here I am 8 years later and struggling to get off of the drug PAXIL, and slowly succeeding.

At my highest point I was taking 60mg/day of the drug to level out my depression from my fathers death and today I can boast that, mainly due to my own diligence, I have reduced my intake to 5mg/day. It has not been an easy journey to get here, and I only really started it, seriously, about 4 months ago. My previous attempts at "quitting" this drug just didn't pan out.

The makers of PAXIL, Glaxo-Smith-Klein, refute that it is an addictive drug and under FDA guidelines(I use the FDA guidelines from the U.S. since we follow their lead here in Canada) it is considered non-addictive. In order to be an addictive drug one must feel a draw, pull or need for said drug, which admittedly I do not with PAXIL. However that is not to say that you cannot go through withdrawal from stopping it, which is what I am and have been experiencing for the past several months. My symptoms of withdrawal have been slight in contrast to some that have been reported out there and for that I feel lucky. You only have to do a quick search on google using the keywords "paxil withdrawal" to see the devastation being felt out there by millions of users.

So yesterday I was feeling woozy, it's kind of an electrical thing going on in my brain, at certain times I get a little fuzzy around the edges and feel kind of a "woosh" effect in my brain. It is hard to explain if you have never experienced it but is very similar to the reported conditions of vertigo. Although I have been at the 5mg/day level for a number of weeks now, I feel maybe I had a touch of a bug as well and that helped to contribute to the effects I was feeling. For the most part I am fine, just this vertigo feeling strikes once in a while. Unfortunately, these withdrawal symptoms can stay with you for up to a year after stopping the drug, ouch, I sure hope not! I plan on stopping my current 5mg/day dose as soon as my surgery is over and can use my 6 weeks of healing time as a bit of a detox as well. For the most part, the paxil is no longer in my system, as a drug that only stays with you for 24 hours, my 5mg/day is a very minute amount for a man of my size. I am confident I can finally get off this medication, Lord only knows what it has been doing to my insides for the past 8 years.

If anyone has questions or would like me to expand on my PAXIL "problems" then please drop me a line and I would be more than happy to discuss it a greater detail with you.

For now, today, I am feeling better, and am planning on going for a walk in a little while, just to get the blood pumping, have a great day everybody.

Wayne