alt.support.depression

asd? I'm trying to get to it, but cannot because apparently my mac osx won't take me to any website that starts with "news", or to a newsgroup. I guess I don't know what this means. Did learn a new term from a site called "users guide to alt.support.depression":

(the) Pit
I could wax eloquent on this, except when I'm in it! It's a name for an intense depressive episode which is usually of shorter duration than the medical definition of a major depressive episode. Other terms are used, such as the beast, or the black dog -- we all have our own images (much as we'd like to forget them). Some posters refer to -being on the edge of the Pit- or - circling the drain- or - feeling Pitish- to describe the feeling of an impending crash.

The reason I'm trying to get to this site is that I saw new headshrinker today, and he prescribed a new drug for me to take along with old drug and to eventually switch to? He thinks old drug is causing anxiety and new drug will make everything fine. I asked about whether it is hard to get off of, because I've heard stories about drugs like Paxil making discontinuation very difficult. M.D. said, "no anti-depressant should be difficult to stop taking". Hmmm. Here is what Wikipedia tells me about the drug he prescribed:

Venlafaxine is somewhat notorious for its potentially severe withdrawal symptoms upon sudden discontinuation. (The recommended discontinuation is a drop of 35 mg a week, and sudden stops are usually advised only in emergencies.) Wyeth-Ayerst refers to these severe withdrawal symptoms in its literature as "severe discontinuation syndrome". These have a tendency to be stronger than the withdrawal effects of many antidepressants, but are similar in nature to those of tricyclic antidepressants and SSRIs such as Paroxetine (Paxil®). These effects may include irritablility, headache, nausea, fatigue, and "brain shivers". Rarer withdrawal symptoms include shaking legs, dizziness and dysphoria. "Brain shivers" have been described as electric-like shocks in the brain causing pounding headaches and disorientation, increasing over time before abating. Although "Brain shivers" aren't exactly painful they can be severe enough to be disabling. Antidepressant withdrawal effects do not indicate addiction, but are rather the results of the brain attempting to reach neurochemical stability. These can be minimalized or avoided by tapering off of the medication over a period of weeks. However, studies by Wyeth-Ayerst and others have reported very rare cases of withdrawal symptoms severe enough to require permanent use. In some of these cases, successful discontinuation was eventually achieved by the addition of fluoxetine, which was later discontinued itself without difficulty.





All I know is I'm not taking it until I know more.