Obligatory disclaimer: Not a doctor.
Venlafaxine is the generic name for effexor, a serotonine/noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor or SNRI, first parented by Wyeth in the 1990s. It is certified to treat major depressive disorder. It is considered by some to be the giant silverback gorilla of the antidepressants, because unlike other SNRIs, it also works similarly on dopamine reuptake as well as serotonin and noradrenaline. It's further noted for its very short half life in the body compared to other antidepressants.
It is also pure, concentrated evil in pill form.
So, wind the clock back to 2016. I escaped my alcoholic ex after being booted out of her home for the second time at the behest of her family because I went from saint in their regard during the love bombing phase of my entanglement with her and said family to sinner once I'd been got down the aisle and it was revealed to me that I had actually signed up to be an unpaid carer for her and her inability to live without a bottle and a half of spirits every day and to be the poor ninny who picks her up and takes her to hospital when she has seizures or DTs or be the dutiful little chump who keeps her sane in rehab and for my sins get nothing more than an earful of abuse constantly because they'd rather cover up the fact and offload her onto the first mug who seems suitable, and me being a lawyer but also a sperglord was right up their alley as a top drawer chump. And with Operation Love Bombing complete, Operation Gaslighting began.
While all this was ongoing it was decreed I needed to see a doctor as I could in her words "barely function" and was clearly depressed and full of anxiety. I was put onto Citalopram to begin with but when this failed to have any real interest and stop me feeling constantly like I was wanting because nothing I ever did was good enough for her or her parents (who were always chippin' in and consisted of a railway enthusiast manlet for a father and a snooty social climbing hamcannon for a mother.) I was then put on Venlafaxine. Which worked, after a fashion. I didn't feel like the wheels were coming off all the time any more, but still didn't stop me getting slung out for incomprehensible reasons later, with nothing but the clothes on my back, two bags full of stuff, my craptop, and no fucking money where she'd drank it and no job because I couldn't keep it together long enough thanks to Operation Gaslighting to keep one. I then had to fucking BEG the worthless suppurating cancers on the anus of humanity to be allowed to retrieve all the rest of my stuff a few weeks later. With hindsight I should have just put all her manlet railway enthusiast father's most favourite model trains on a really high shelf and then hidden his stepladder.
I was then depressed. Mainly because it turned out she was right. I wouldn't find anyone else if I escaped. I wasn't good enough. After all, why else was I unemployed and skint? So, I kept taking the venlafaxine, trying to find another job and failing because I gave off the energy of the sort of washed up depressive who doesn't make a very good minion in most workplaces. I had my therapy on R NHS, which was rationed to six sessions despite me having paid a usurious amount of tax in my life and having to tug my forelock and beg just to get access to what I've already paid for (and which I am still bitter about it having been rationed to the point at which I refused to clap for it during the coof.) But... there's the thing. Despite having nothing, I didn't feel particularly like unaliving myself though. So I suppose it worked. Statistically, anyhow.
In fact, I didn't really feel anything any more. It was basically numbness and watching the days go by. Eventually I did find a job and a purpose in life again, even if it was some shit short term contracts and stuff and even if I had to move across the country to do it when I did get a proper job again in 2018. But I just wanted to feel something again.
So I stayed on it because I didn't want the wheels to come off and to sabotage my precarious new employment.
Oh joy. Side effects have entered the chat.
You see, Venlafaxine has really horrific side effects. You think not being able to feel was bad enough? You can live with it if the alternative is panic attacks and spilling spaghetti all the time. But that's not all. The first one was the weird dreams. I kept a log of some of these. There was one where I was battling to try to get into my front door while semi-formless shambling greyish beings with sorrowful expressions and long fingers that seemed to constantly drag on the floor got inexorably closer to me, which I somehow knew were clouds of nanobots powered by an enslaved soul. Then there was one where I was in a library but instead of books it was banned medications and in between each row of shelves was a pit of glowing green slime that had the power to immediately cause me to deform into a person with phocomelia if I touched it. Then there was one where I was on a space station around Mercury but inside was a dojo for galactic warrior priests, but I was also outside it at the same time. Then there was the one where I was attacked by a psychic liquid lifeform called the "Tri Para Barabba" which, alarmingly, I managed to sleep-google on my phone. Then there was one where I was starring in a TV adaptation of DragonLance even though I never really read it and didn't get on with it all that well. Then there's the one where I was the only person at a music festival and a band played a song called "Here's Me Inside Her But I Can Tell From Her Vagina She Doesn't Really Care." (I will IRL send a wonderful prize to the noder who can write the lyrics to that the best.) Yeah, really weird shite. But I will admit that I actually enjoyed it sometimes, well, when it wasn't utterly terrifying. It was like having a cinema from another universe in my brain sometimes. Though most of the time I didn't really sleep properly or slept too much or ended up having to have naps after work.
Then there was the appetite. It gave me the appetite of a horse. Have you ever munched a 15 inch deep pan double pepperoni pizza and still felt hungry despite just having absorbed 2,000 calories? I have. In fact I often did it more than once a week. That, combined with lockdown, caused my weight to balloon to over 150 kg by Christmas of 2021. And the fun part? I was probably even heavier than that in the summer of that year because I'd spent 6 months or so not using venlafaxine and had only just stopped munching so much and that was the earliest I could bear to weigh myself. I was on it for about 5 years or thereabouts and I went from being just plain fat to what obesity denialists call deathfat and had I kept taking it and kept chomping my way through things I would have probably become what they call infinifat. As an aside, that I know those terms makes me feel polluted. But that's life on the ven for you.
Oh, and if you miss a dose? The fun really starts then. If I forgot to take it I would sort of feel like I was dizzy and swimmy in the brain, like someone had put my frontal lobe in a twitch, and then couldn't concentrate properly. Missing multiple doses led to having the aforementioned weird dreams even when semi-awake. During lockdown, I ran out and the pharmacy was shut and the GP was not answering the phone because they were fat and useless. I thus had to tough it out while trying to keep the clients happy. That evening they did provide me with some but I felt like some sort of junkie having to beg people not to go into withdrawal, which I kind of was.
Oh, and later on? The really joyous thing? It didn't work. I still had what are medically known as "acute stress reactions" when a load of crap fell on me all at once. It was like I built up a tolerance to it and just ended up taking it because if I didn't, the wheels would come off because of the side effects detailed above. As opposed to the wheels coming off because of the side effects of the alleged antidepressants. I still felt despondent about things because of lockdown and the fact that our lords and masters had decided to emulate a cabal of Commie rodent scum and their worker ant minions and forcibly close things just because and change the regulations as to what was and wasn't allowed on a weekly basis because reasons. I'll be noding about how lockdown in the UK damaged almost all trust I had in the British government and the media in due course, BELIEVE THAT. But anyhow. So basically I was on an anti-depressant that wasn't anti-depressing and if I didn't take it the wheels were going to come off but if I did take it the wheels were coming off by some other means. I therefore resolved to tough it out and quit the cunt things. I started taking only three magic tablets every four days, then two every three, and then one every two. Then I stopped needing it. Then by about the summer of 2021, I felt like I didn't need it.
And I actually felt like I had emotions again. I remember watching an old episode of Farscape in 2021 for some reason after I'd come off the ven. It was the one where the crew of Moya go into a negative space wedgie where time flows faster on the inside as on the outside and is only accessible once a day but that day is 57 years inside or something like that, and seeing the impossibly aged John and Aeryn at the end made me feel a bit tearful. I'd not felt emotional about a piece of media in well over a decade. I actually feel now like I can feel things which previously I was just numb to.
And then I realised how exploited I'd been over the past decade or so and resolved to Take Action and stop people taking advantage of me. Which I probably wouldn't have on the venlafaxine, to be honest. I suspect that the Alcoholic Ex and her family knew this and this was part of their plan to have me be her unpaid carer because they knew all along they were offloading their alcoholic offspring on to me so they didn't have to deal with the fallout of same. Should I be thankful? Possibly. I don't know. Still, I'm not going back on it.
Tl;dr - Venlafaxine. Evil.
(IN24/19)