new moon prayer

a new chapter in my deprescribing story begins #withdrawalwarrior

This summer has been… rough. It feels like so much has happened, and there have been times when I swear I was just barely hanging on my sparkly fingernails.

But that’s not actually what this post is about.

Nope––I want to write about something that happened this morning.

---

I just want to pause here for a moment to welcome the 50 or so folks who have subscribed in the 2.5 months since I published my last post! I’m not sure what exactly has been keeping y’all here––clearly it’s not the videos I keep promising 😅

(And omg, I actually just managed to DELETE the note I had posted a few weeks back with the Jo Dee Messina video clip!! Finger slipped on the iPad, and poof!! Gone. Oops. Oh wellz… Full version is on its way at some point!)

---

See, over the last few weeks, I gradually realized something about my situation and my plan for getting off the rest of the psych meds I no longer want to be on:

If holding at 40 mg of Vyvanse (stimulant) + 37.5 mg of Effexor (SNRI) was going to play any kind of significant role in helping me stabilize––after the series of deprescribing injuries involving four classes of psychiatric drugs in 2022-2024, after losing my house and fleeing my crumbling life to start over again all alone in a rural part of the state, after being forced to withdraw from the people who said they loved me because they kept hurting me over and over again––IT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED BY NOW.

And it just hasn’t happened.

I mean, I’m doing a lot better in many ways. I’ve definitely been seeing some big-time healing happening, sneaking up on me in fits and spurts. And there was that miraculous window I experienced following my first Covid infection back in January (see my previous post, “a window opens,” for that story). I’ve made a lot of progress with just allowing the symptoms to be there, instead of freaking out––a development that has improved my quality of life in many ways.

But don’t get me wrong––I am still struggling to function. Most days, I feel pretty crappy for most of my waking hours (and my sleeping hours too, actually––ugh). My recent move to a rental further out into farmland a few weeks ago nearly knocked me flat, and I’m not sure if I’ll even know when I’ve recovered.

I discovered last fall that Vyvanse and Effexor don’t play nicely together in the body, according to the interaction checker on Drugs.com. (Side note: if you haven’t plugged your meds and supplements into a tool like this before, you probably should. And yes, your doctor(s) should in theory be informinbg you about this stuff. But wouldn’t you rather be the one in the driver’s seat here?) And I honestly don’t remember how both of these drugs ended up together in my cocktail of prescribed harm, since about 2023. But don’t quote me on that time frame––I went on and off different doses of Vyvanse and other stimulants at least a dozen times in the early 2020s, due to the worldwide shortage stimulants prescribed for ADHD during those years.

What I do know is that some of my most intense and least favorite symptoms I deal with every day are on that list. And lately, I have started to wonder about this.

Up until the point I looked up the interactions, I had been attributing these symptoms to the deprescribing injury two summers ago, when my psych NP said I could safely reduce my Effexor from 150 mg to 37.5 mg over the course of just five weeks, on the heels of a rapid taper off of Lamictal (mood stabilizer) a earlier that year and a cold-turkey off of Abilify (antipsychotic) the year before. Yes, YIKES is right… 😰

And it’s possible the symptoms still could be from all that, and several years later my nervous system is still trying to get its bearings. There were a LOT of sudden med changes for one nervous system to handle in such a short period of time.

But the truth is, I really don’t know how much the Vyvanse-Effexor interaction is contributing to my symptoms right now. No one knows. And there is very little info out there on tapering stimulants as part of polypharmacy deprescribing in previously injured patients like me, with my decades-long psychiatric history that started at age 16.

In any case, as the months of holding at my current doses keep dragging on, I’ve been feeling this increasing sense of urgency to get off the damn Vyvanse, and somewhat quickly––so I can see what I’m dealing with. I have another somewhat pressing medication decision to make about my menopause hormone replacement regimen (a topic save for a future post, because it’s a fraught one, to say the least). The only way to untangle it all is to start tapering.

Perhaps part of why I’ve continued to hold at this dose of Vyvanse for so long was remembering what happened in spring of 2025, when I had a failed tapering attempt and ended up aborting that mission after two months. This involved opening the capsules and weighing the powder inside using a pharmacy scale I had purchase for this purpose – which was incredibly arduous and difficult for me to do, as I’ve lost so much dexterity in my hands the last few years (arthritis? withdrawal? perimenopause? 😣). I had no one to help me with things like this in any reliable sort of way, no compounding pharmacy I could find would touch stimulants, and the psychiatrist I had at that time had absolutely no experience with what I was trying to do, even if she was supportive. And at that time, I was dealing with even more intense symptoms, all while trying to sell my 3BR house, pack everything for storage, and figure out where I was going to live. My life was imploding by the minute.

So is it any wonder I fucked up the math at several points, accidentally up-dosed myself (by how much, I’m not even sure now), and wound up even further destabilized and worse off than I had been before?

But things are different for me now…

I’m in a much more stable living environment––one that doesn’t dysregulate me like the one I just moved from––and in fact, I have absolutely fallen in love with the little house I’m renting now, with its gorgeous sunsets and more cows for neighbors than people.

I have a few social connections now: people who recognize me and remember my name when I show up for things in town, people who invite me to small gatherings at their homes, people I can contact if I am in dire straits and in need of help.

I was able to hire someone I trust to come over twice a week and help me unpack and settle into my new place, along with cooking, cleaning, and other adulting tasks I simply can’t seem to do on my own now. I have needed this kind of in-home help for two years, maybe longer, but my pride and fear of expressing needs always got in the way. Not any more, though.

I have built some incredibly supportive therapeutic relationships with my amazing therapist, somatic experiencing/somatic touch therapist, and withdrawal coach. I finally have a psychiatrist who has experience helping patients like me get off their meds and heal from withdrawal.

I am no longer communicating with the people who claimed to care about me but whose inconsistency was bad for my nervous system and interfering with my healing.

By all accounts (not that there are all that many out there), the Vyvanse will be “much easier” and “more forgiving” to taper off of than the last 37.5 mg of Effexor will likely be.

And so today, my psychiatrist encouraged me to trust the intuition that’s behind this momentum I’m feeling right now about this… which, of course, doesn’t mean I should go super fast or be reckless about it.

But it does mean that it’s time.

This is huge for me, y’all. HUGE.

And so this morning at 11:11 a.m., I went out onto the deck, turned my face upward, squinted up into the hazy sunshine where I imagined the new moon might be, and offered an impromptu spoken prayer that went something like this:

I’m calling on the new moon in Leo to be my witness, as I make this ask of the universe…

Please bring me strength and hope for this milestone in my withdrawal journey.

Please bring healing to my brain and my body.

Please help me to open my heart to joy, laughter, truth, love.

I trust you.

I trust this journey.

I believe that you’ve been guiding me, even when it feels like I’m lost. Even when my steps are faltering.

And I know there’s a reason for it all––this pain, this suffering, everything I’ve lost.

Please show me the way to keep going, so I can become the person I was supposed to be.

I’m ready.

And as my voice trailed off, the breeze at my back picked up suddenly, and I swear it felt like arms––warm, comforting, tenderly wrapping themselves around me.

And for a few minutes, I just stood there in silence, closed my eyes, opened my heart, and did my best to receive that loving embrace from the universe.

Wish me luck, y’all… because today is Day 1 of my Vyvanse taper.

💜💪

---

---

---