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antidepressant absorbtion

I have been on several different antidepressants over the past tem or so years. The last time was 3 years ago when my mother passed away. It was effexor. My doctor weaned me off about 10 months ago. Now because of sudden severe panic attacks and anxiety i have been prescribed prozac and have been on that for 4 days now. Because the antidepressants were in my system previously will that mean the prozac will act faster?
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784558 tn?1276007829
My guess is that it won't. Have been on several A's & every time it felt like starting afresh. Taking up to 10 weeks before the benefits clicked in. Try to be patient when taking new meds.Good Luck. George
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Avatar universal
No.  First, these two drugs work very differently, as Effexor targets norepeniphrine (adrenaline, basically) as well as serotonin and is therefore a very stimulating antidepressant.  Prozac is also a stimulating antidepressant, but not as much as Effexor.  It also lasts a lot longer in the body than all the other ssris and snris, and so tends to be easier for most people to tolerate and get off of, but isn't necessarily the best thing (but better than Effexor) if your main problem is anxiety, not depression.  But we metabolize all these drugs differently -- some metabolize well, some don't.  Also, some drugs appear to be stronger in their affinity for neurotransmitter receptors than others, which makes it harder sometimes to go down in intensity from those drugs to others (and makes it much harder to be on those stronger drugs and to come off of them).  Which all means, you'll just have to wait and see what happens.
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