Shaking and losing time - meds or Asperger's?

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Is shaking (shivering-type shaking, uncontrollably) ever part of Asperger's? How about losing time (finding oneself somewhere with only a vague sense of how you got there)?

I'm on Effexor/venlafaxine, which has horrible, horrible side effects if you miss a dose, and I've had some shaking-and-crying jags in the past that I blamed on withdrawal side effects, including one that ended with me in the bathroom of my then-wife's flat (we weren't living together), distressed and uncertain how I'd gotten there. I'd still think it was med withdrawal, from failing to take my meds at the right time due to the time change in visiting my wife (she was an ocean away, and I forgot to take my meds on the plane)--except that I've had shaking jags in the past few days.

I'm just starting to educate myself about Asperger's (I'm undiagnosed but have a father I'm certain is on the spectrum) and, so far, I've noticed myself shaking when I'm most distressed by what I'm reading (i.e., the parts where it talks about mindblindedness and Theory of Mind, the concept that I can only ever, if I have Asperger's, act as though I understand others, in a scripted, careful way, guarding myself against meltdowns and unreasonable demands, instead of ever actually being able to offer the mutuality and maturity I've always hoped I'd someday reach).

As you can tell from that sentence, the idea is devastating to me! Is shaking something anyone else experiences when they're upset? Is it not the meds?

sorry, can't say if it is part and parcel of AS but now and then I will have a mysterious shudder or shake.

I'm known to do both when anxious and overstimulated, and I'm no longer using any psychopharmaceuticals. I have it down as an anxiety symptom, rather than AS. They had me on Venlafaxine ("Effexor") for a while, until I put my foot down on the subject, but very little would surprise me about their drugs.

IME it goes away after a few hours in a quiet, dark room.

I have essential tremor. it runs in my family. I always shake a little. people think I'm nervous when I'm not. when angry or anxious, I tremble visibly from across the room.

there's also something called enhanced physiologic tremor. everyone shakes some when nervous. high thyroid and certain meds (lithium, anti-psychotics) can make it worse.

Hi. It's the meds. The drug you are taking causes shaking and tremors in very many users---and it may cause permanent,tremors meaning even if you stop taking it...I may post more stuff later if I have time to find it....

https://www.google.com/#q=Effexor%2Fvenlafaxine+shaking

https://www.google.com/#q=Effexor%2Fven ... ent+damage

Many people have found it helpful but almost as many consider it a curse and wish they never took it. Sorry about what you've been going through. littlebee

2-5% of people taking venlafaxine get tremors. (medscape reference)

the only permanent side effect that I know of SSRI's is sexual dysfunction. you can't put stock in everything that comes up in a google search.

Iatrogenic effects aside, the theoretical foundation underpinning SSRIs is shaky at best, and the evidence that they actually work as advertised is pretty weak. This from the peer-reviewed literature, not some random opinion on a dubious web site.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/inf ... ed.0020392

NB: Do not go cold turkey on SSRIs - this will cause a withdrawal syndrome and can do damage.

http://www.drugs.com/comments/venlafaxi ... ssion.html

These are six pages of patient reviews,some quite good, some horrific, and they sound sincere; however after reading the many negative reviews I do not see how anyone could take this drug, and it just occurred to me that some of the positive reviews could be made by some people selling that drug. Why not:-)???

I will write more later.

This is kind of off topic, but did anyone here read the Vanity Fair article on the nueva ring? The only reason I read this article is that I found a copy of the magazine. If you know any woman who is taking that birth control, tell her to stop as it could kill her from blood clots in the lungs...The way Merck hid evidence and got it past the FDA is shocking---very shocking, and I am sure manufacturers of other drugs do the same..

@Kicker You're right, of course. I do wish I trusted my psychiatrist more; she's the one who put me on this drug when I was in college and didn't know any better than to ask about side effects, so I'm in the market for a new one who's less willing to jump for the big guns first and more willing to talk things through with me. Being between psychs is a bastard! And paying for the time to really talk with them is also a bastard.

For all replying on the side effects of Effexor: believe me, I know! I've had it all: the brain zaps, the walking into walls, the uncontrollable talking, the night terrors. I'd almost weaned myself off of it by the end of last week (very, very slowly, over the course of months), but right at the end, when I was down to the tiniest bit of the drug, I felt as though the symptoms I was experiencing there (poor spatial awareness, mental cloudiness, a hard time finding words) were 'me' and not the drug. It scared me into reversing the process and starting to work back up on the drug again.

I would definitely not recommend anyone get on Effexor/venlafaxine without trying other drugs with longer half-lives first. I feel like I'm essentially an addict at this point; I need the drug to feel 'normal' but have no idea if that's because of underlying neurobiological reasons or because of long-term exposure to the drug.

First, I agree with Kicker's advice to discuss this with your doctor.

More generally, I'm again seeing the all-too-common fallacy that "I am using this drug; I am having a given problem; therefore the drug is causing the problem."

This is the kind of logic that got us anti-vaxxers and the growing public health threat they caused. "I gave my child a vaccine; my child started showing signs of autism; therefore the vaccine caused the autism" is the same syllogism, at least as expressed in symbolic logic, as the one above - and a logical fallacy.

Someone I know once told me that she have homoeopathic "medicine" to her dog, the dog got better, therefore homoeopathy works. Ah, the joys of having to explain logic in words of one syllable. In fact, several randomised controlled trials have been conducted on homoeopathy, and it turns out to be pseudoscience.

Let's turn to SSRIs in general and Venlafaxine (Effexor) in particular.

The theory behind SSRIs is that depression is caused by inadequate quantities of serotonin (5-hydroxy-tryptamine or 5-HT for short), an important neurotransmitter, in the brain. It follows that, if this is true, the inhibiting the reuptake of 5-HT in the brain will inhibit the symptoms of depression. Venlafaxine inhibits the reuptake of 5-HT. Therefore Venlafaxine should inhibit the symptoms of depression.

As a couple of authors (I'll come to this paper) have pointed out, this is as logical as saying that headaches are caused by a lack of aspirin in the brain, so giving someone with a headache lots of aspirin will make the headache go away.

In order to be sure that the conclusion is correct, we have to do two things.
1) we need to verify that depression is caused by inadequate levels of 5-HT in the brain.
2) we need to verify that venlafaxine inhibits the symptoms of depression.

Have these tests been properly conducted, and have they demonstrated that these two assumptions are correct?

These tests have been conducted, and the results reviewed in this peer-reviewed paper.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/inf ... ed.0020392

The answer to the first assumption is that in fact no, there is no evidence, after people looked for it, that depression is caused by inadequate levels of 5-HT in the brain. This rips out the theoretical underpinning for why SSRIs work.

The neurobiological theory of depression is not supported by the data.

We still need to know whether or not Venlafaxine helps to control the symptoms of depression. After all, even though headaches are not caused by inadequate amounts of aspirin in the brain, aspirin still reduces the effect of headaches, so it may be that Venlafaxine may reduce the effects of depression.

This is when things get messy.

There are some studies that suggest that Venlafaxine helps inhibit the symptoms of depression. The trouble is, these studies are often flawed - with things like small samples and high dropout rates. There are also studies that show that it's actually pretty ineffective. It appears that the value of Venlafaxine in dealing with depression is minimal at best.

But, I hear some of you cry, some people take Venlafaxine and feel better!

I have no doubt this is true, but let's go back to my acquaintance and her sick dog. Just because someone takes Venlafaxine and then feels better, does not mean they felt better because they took Venlafaxine. They might have got better anyway and, unlike the dog, they might have felt better because someone with authority told them they might feel better.

What happens with much antidepressant prescription is that the doctor tries one drug for 8 weeks or so. If not improvement is seen, then another drug is tried, following a washout period, and then often a third. If the patient feels better the drug is declared a success. If the patient later feels worse, it is declared that the drug “stopped working” and either the dose is increased or another drug is tried.

Somebody please tell me that it is not just me who can see that this is completely illogical?

We have already seen, from the paper above that a) the neurobiological theory of depression probably isn't true and b) there are important questions surrounding the actual efficacy of SSRIs.

In many cases, over the course of 6 months, depressive symptoms fluctuate. It is simply not possible to tell whether the change in symptoms was down to the drug, down to the placebo effect, down to natural fluctuations in mood or down to a change in the patient's environment.

The behaviour of the medical establishment in this matter also looks like pseudoscience.

If you want to learn more about the way the pharmaceutical companies manipulate data, the regulators, doctors and us, I suggest you read Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre, who was very popular among the medical establishment when he showed how things like homoeopathy are complete woo, but less popular when he called out the pharmaceutical companies for similar offences, but carried out on a massive, organised scale.

I'm always instinctively tempted to put down any adverse symptoms to the drug as well, but the converse to what I write is also true. At one time, they had me on Prozac. I was more suicidal on it than off it and, while it evidently wasn't doing much good, I cannot logically demonstrate that the drug was what caused me to be more suicidal. I was already depressed and suicidal.

With millions of people, some more psychologically unstable than others, taking these drugs some of them are eventually going to feel worse and exhibit strange symptoms. Some, many or all of these symptoms might be caused by the drug but, without a large-scale randomised controlled trial the fact is that we don't know whether or not the symptom is caused by the drug unless large numbers of people start showing the same symptom not or rarely found in people not using the drug (as is happening with people taking Zolpidem (Ambien, Stilnox and Sublinox)).

The OP is correct to ask whether these symptoms might be being caused by the drug, but we are probably the wrong people to ask. The drug may well be causing the symptoms, but it may be something else. I get similar symptoms when I get anxious, and I avoid the drugs.

I'm completely in agreement that I can't tell whether the shakes are the drug or not. I was asking here because it occurred to me they might be a common Asperger's trait I'd chalked up to the drug. And, again, everyone is right that they can't tell and even if it were, it might still be or not be the drug in my case.

Sounds like your meds. I used to get leg cramps from Lexapro, and when I forgot a dose I would get awful dizzy spells.

I shake like a sh*****g dog in a mornings. I think it is drug related, you know.