DOSE:

75 mg

oral

Pharms - Venlafaxine

(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

190 lb

[Erowid Note: This report describes the same events as Experience ID 37418 - Do Not Combine!]

The combination use of Effexor XR (generic name: venlafaxine) and marijuana has proven to be a seriously bad mixture for myself and a few others I've spoken with who have combined the two.

This combination has caused severe tachycardia (increased heart rate) and arrythmias along with other cardiac/respiratory problems.

I had taken my regular dose of Effexor XR (75mg) at about 2100h, and then smoked half a joint with my girlfriend at about 2200h. About 10 minutes after smoking, I found that I was having a hard time breathing, along with severe dizziness, sweating and tremors through the entire body. I decided to lay down in bed to try and let the feeling pass, and ended up slipping into a deep catatonic state, although my mind was completely conscious.

The next thing I felt was my heart pounding so hard and so fast that it actually caused pain. My girlfriend, who was stoned as well, was alarmed to the fact that she could literally hear my heart beating hard and fast from the other side of the bed.

She is a nurse and took my pulse- it was strong and fast- (normal heart rate is 80 per minute; mine was 196). She had originally thought it was cannabis induced anxiety and panic symptoms, however the symptoms worsened to the point where all my lower body muscles began to contract and the fine tremor that originally was displayed, now turned into lower extremity convulsions. At this point, my breathing had become more shallow and laboured- and a call was made to 911.

Ambulance arrived and put me on the heart monitor- it showed a dangerously prolonged QT Interval in the heart rhythm, and tachycardia at a dangerous level- now 216. I was rushed to the Emergency Room and immediately given Narcan (naloxone) (an anti-narcotic) along with an IV of valium to slow the heart rate. Full status seizures occured while in the ambulance en route the hospital.

After being admitted to the hospital and a series of test run, it was shown that the mixture of marijuana and venlafaxine caused a severe seretonin block and reuptake in my brain; that triggered the fast heart rate and lead to the full epileptic-like seizures.

Later testing in the hospital with the assistance of an outside laboratory showed that the combination of venlafaxine and marijuana triggers too many 'mixed messages' in the brains neurotransmitters that control and regulate the amount of seretonin. The final diagnosis was serotonin toxicity directly caused by the combination of these two drugs.

Serotonin toxicity can be a fatal medical emergency for a number of reasons. The heart looses its effectiveness when pumping at more than 120 beats per minute. This combination shoved me up to 216. As a result, the blood is not circulating properly, which in turn displaces the ratio of oxygen:carbon dioxide in the blood, in turn can cause a pulmonary embolism in the heart and lungs- that is where the possibility of it becoming a fatal mixture occurs.

Doseage was 75mg of Effexor, and basically 3 tokes from a medium sized joint.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 37376
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 23, 2004	Views: 30,803
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Cannabis (1), Pharms - Venlafaxine (191) : Hospital (36), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3)