{"id":13727,"date":"2025-09-11T06:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/13727\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T06:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:05:07","slug":"i-sometimes-wonder-if-ill-be-on-antidepressants-for-the-rest-of-my-life-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/13727\/","title":{"rendered":"I sometimes wonder if I\u2019ll be on antidepressants for the rest of my life \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read a headline recently declaring that Gwyneth Paltrow<\/a> is back eating carbs and cheese. \u201cThey said there would be signs,\u201d I whispered to myself, taking Gwynie\u2019s return to the devils of dairy as a sure omen of the impending apocalypse. Couple that with the usual stuff like plagues and floods and, I don\u2019t know, maybe the end times are near. <\/p>\n

Many years ago, I saw a creative fiction prompt which invited writers to consider the hell of wearing braces on your teeth indefinitely in a post-apocalyptic world. Truly, any kind of dental issues are nightmarish to think about in such a scenario. Remember Tom Hanks<\/a> taking out his own teeth when he was stranded on the desert island in Castaway? Shudder. <\/p>\n

A friend and I talk regularly about the horrifying prospect of being stuck in the apocalypse with no access to a medication we both take \u2013 an antidepressant called venlafaxine. Venlafaxine (also known by the brand name Effexor) is widely regarded as the most difficult of all the antidepressants to come off. It\u2019s not an addictive drug, but the withdrawal symptoms are intense and can last a long time. <\/p>\n

My friend and I are so committed to avoiding the withdrawal symptoms that we have matching tattoos on our forearms that read \u201cTAKE YOUR MEDS\u201d. However, even a permanent reminder within my eyeline is still not enough to ensure I take my venlafaxine dose every day. Last week I missed it by about seven hours, but didn\u2019t realise my error, so when the symptoms started to kick in, I was sure the end was nigh.<\/p>\n

I had eaten lunch that day in a city centre taqueria, then went to an appointment, and it was on the way home that I started to feel iffy \u2013 nauseous and intensely tired, with a buzzing in my head. I wondered whether it was something I ate. Were those delicious chicken tacos now turning on me? Once home, I dragged myself over the threshold and went straight to my bed to lie down, googling \u201cearly flu symptoms\u201d and berating myself for not making a will. Who would inherit my Nissan Juke and my seven-year-old laptop when whatever this illness was inevitably took me? <\/p>\n

It was on a stagger to the bathroom that it hit me, along with a wave of \u201cbrain zaps\u201d \u2013 a symptom commonly associated with withdrawing or titrating up on antidepressants. Brain zaps feel to me like my brain is lagging. In venlafaxine withdrawal, it\u2019s a deeply unpleasant \u201cswishing\u201d feeling in your head. With the zaps came the realisation \u2013 my medication. I hadn\u2019t taken my medication. I hurried to my little pill dispenser and sure enough, there was Thursday\u2019s morning dose waiting for me. I necked the pills, lay down again, and within half an hour felt like I could go on. <\/p>\n

I was first prescribed an antidepressant by a GP in 2011 during a very difficult spell. She recommended Prozac and I vividly remember her quipping, \u201cIt\u2019s the one Princess Diana<\/a> was on\u201d. To this day, I\u2019m not sure whether I was supposed to feel glamorous or ominous. The latter was my default state at the time, so the only way was up, really. I took it for a couple of years and then stopped, with the weaning-off period going pretty smoothly. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Emer McLysaght: Fighting Big Tech, Big Landlord and Big Pharma seems insurmountableOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

I restarted on Prozac in about 2016, with an increase in dosage in 2019 which I remember came with a couple of days of feeling wired and nauseous. In 2021 my psychiatrist switched me to venlafaxine, in response to declining mental health<\/a>. The warning went something along the lines of \u201cthis drug could do wonders, but it can be very unpleasant to try to come off\u201d. Well, nothing\u2019s as unpleasant as doom and misery, so I whipped that prescription right out of her hands. <\/p>\n

I do sometimes wonder if I\u2019ll be on it for the rest of my life. Neither Prozac nor venlafaxine produced any marked day or time when I felt \u201cbetter\u201d, but I have to assume they\u2019ve done something. I\u2019m envious of people who know definitively whether these drugs are or aren\u2019t helping them. I have an idealistic vision of coming off the venlafaxine to see how I fare, but maybe it\u2019s better to adopt an \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke\u2026\u201c stance. Hopefully an apocalypse won\u2019t force me into going cold turkey. If so, I\u2019ll be the one hacking at zombies with an Ikea bread knife so I can get into the nearest Boots. <\/p>\n

The Samaritans can be contacted on freephone: 116 123 or email: jo@samaritans.ie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I read a headline recently declaring that Gwyneth Paltrow is back eating carbs and cheese. \u201cThey said there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60,13286,13285],"class_list":{"0":"post-13727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-prozac","12":"tag-venlafaxine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}