Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Your experience is not necessarily mine

Just for fun, go to Remedy Find and pick a drug, any drug.  Let’s choose boring old NSAIDs (like Aspirin and Advil), and read reports from individuals about how aspirin worked to treat their fibromyalgia.  Among the comments you’ll find things like, “It bothered my stomach too much and then my asthma doctor got nervous about me using it as it could cause an asthma attack”, “the end result was an ulcer and bleeding into the bowel”, “My kidney’s (sic) starting leaking blood”, and “wound up with irritable bowel syndrome, and hiatial hernia, gerd and almost ulcertive colitis”.  After this, go to the Vitamins section, and read about people’s experiences with B12 injections.  You’ll find comments like, “I was more tired the next day then in weeks and over the next week even today I’ve been sick and had to go to the doctor to get medication”.  Try another category, something innocuous like chiropractic care.  Under the FMS section, you’ll see comments like this, “I was more tired the next day then in weeks and over the next week even today I’ve been sick and had to go to the doctor to get medication”.  Finally, if you want a real scare-fest, check out the Antidepressants section.  Someone left this gem in the Zoloft subcategory, “Antidepressants make u feel awful”.

The fact is, everyone has a horror story about something.  I know someone who seems to vomit everytime she takes Ibuprofen, so if you were given Ibuprofen for the first time and knew nothing about it and asked her opinion of it, she might tell you, “That stuff is awful!  It makes you throw up!” You could be surrounded by thousands of other people who take Ibuprofen all the time and never talk about it, but your opinion would probably be tainted the bad experiences of one person.  You might decide to not take Ibuprofen, convinced it will make you vomit, too.  I’m bringing this subject up (no vomit pun intended), because I’ve been seeing a lot of knocks against antidepressants online lately, knocks against Effexor in particular.

Let me be the person to finally speak up and say, I LOVE EFFEXOR.  EFFEXOR WORKED FOR ME.  I’VE BEEN ABLE TO TAKE EFFEXOR AND DISCONTINUE EFFEXOR WITH NO ILL-EFFECTS. Does that mean I think Effexor will work for you, too?  I have no idea… that’s between you and your doctor.  I’d never sit here and post that Effexor will work for everyone with no side-effects, yet I’m finding others who won’t hesitate to say the opposite, to imply that Effexor is a dangerous medication which no one should take, simply because their own experience with it wasn’t a positive one.  Last year, a friend was prescribed Effexor, and her co-worker said to her, “You shouldn’t take that—I’ve read that it’s dangerous!” Was the coworker a doctor or related to a doctor or had she even tried Effexor herself?  No.  However, she still felt qualified to try to scare someone in emotional crisis, to convince them against taking a medicine which might be helpful.  Last week, I dealt with two different people who need antidepressants, but are convinced from things they read online that Effexor (or other antidepressants) will make them fat or alcoholics or any number of other things.

The horror stories are bizarre and irresponsible.  Just because you had a bad experience with something, doesn’t mean others will.  If you have a bad experience, please write about and relate what happened to you, but don’t attempt to convince people that your experience is universal.  I could tell you nasty things about Wellbutrin, because I only lasted 48 hours on it and my doctor pulled me off it in a panic, but my reaction to Wellbutrin was unique to me, and means nothing to anyone else.  I might have wanted to vent about it if I’d had a blog at the time, but I wouldn’t have assumed that Wellbutrin was bad for everyone.

I linked to RemedyFind to show that someone, somewhere, has a horror story about something.  I think it’s great that there are so many online avenues for personal research, but please take what you read with a grain of salt, and don’t let fear stop you from trying a treatment which might lead to a happier, healthier life.  I read a great quote on another forum, and this is a perfect place to reproduce it:  Proceed with caution, but proceed. 

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I want to add that I’m currently on Cymbalta, not Effexor, but it’s not because anything was wrong with Effexor (except the price).  Cymbalta has a similar formulation to Effexor, and I decided to try it in hopes I can take a lower dosage of it, still have it be effective, and save money.  It’s an experiment in progress.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/12 at 10:07 AM
Tired Girls • (4) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
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