anyone on fluvoxamine?

[Eek]

There is nowhere in the drug subforums to put this as fluvoxamine isn't one of the drugs listed, so as it's directly related to my HA I put it here.
A year and a half ago my psych put me on fluvoxamine (luvox) for my HA along with olanzapine and diazepam. Recently I have developed a massive med phobia and realised when looking online at drug interactions that a lot of mine interact

Fluvoxamine increases the half life and clearance time of diazepam by 65%
Fluvoxamine increases the half life and clearance of Olanzapine by 70ish %
Fluvoxamine blocks the metabolism of caffeine
Olanzapine lowers blood pressure when used in conjunction with micardis - blood pressure med
Fluvoxamine dramatically increases the effect of Klonopin
the list goes on.

Anyway, it seems that fluvoxamine interacts with a lot of drugs usually massively increasing their half life by blocking their metabolism or increasing their effect so you can get too much drug in your system from both interactions.

I'm now very concerned at being on fluvoxamine as it interacts with so many things even over the counter things like benadryl, valarian or melatonin (can increase the concentration of melatonin in the blood by 17 fold.) Even grapefruit juice can increase the blood level of fluvoxamine, it seems everywhere I look even innocuous things interact with my drug. I'm terrified I'm going to take a lethal combination. My psychiatrist just poo poos it saying the interactions don't exist but it's well documented online even with scientific studies - but then my psych also says fluvoxamine has the highest half life of all the SSRIs when it's actually the lowest at only 15 hours. He also says he doesn't really prescribe it much these days. The combination of this drug and my apparantly incompetent psychiatrist are adding to my already overwhelming anxieties and I'm not sure what to do. I can't talk about it to my psych, my doctor just tells me to stay off the net but it's there in black and white, fluvoxamine interacts with so many medications including many that I take. I'm beside myself with worry about it all.

anyone here take fluvoxamine and can reassure me that it's not as bleak as it looks. I'm just so worried that I'm going to end up with some fatal combination of drugs that my psych is likely to prescribe for me as I'm struggling at the moment and in the process of withdrawing from another med and he's likely to prescribe me something to replace it.

[Eek]

Anyone else take this?

[Eek]

So I'm the only one on this med? I know my psych said he doesn't use it much so it must be a pretty rare drug :( or maybe not a good one? Or maybe a dangerous one?

[cattia]

Hi Eek,
I've never been on this but I've certainly heard of it in my time on HA boards. It's an SSRI so I wouldn't think it was particularly dangerous or poorly tolerated, SSRIs are very widely prescribed so I don't think it would be dangerous.

[Eek]

Fluvoxamine is slightly different than other SSRIs in that it blocks a lot of things that are metabolised by the liver hence it interacts with lots of things like caffeine and drugs and grapefruit juice. This is what really worries me, I'm scared of eating something or taking a drug that causes a reaction with it.

I'm also worried about how hard it's going to be to get off the med as it has an extremely short half life, has anyone actually come off of this successfully?

[Emphyrio]

After feeling like crap on my latest round on fluoxetine (increased anxiety etc) I have been prescribed fluvoxamine. My main issues are a sense of panic and feeling that I'm about to lose control, coupled with intrusive 'pure ocd' thoughts about harming myself or others close to me. I've been asked to work up to 100mg but I may only need 25mg as I experienced considerable relief from my symptoms on just 5mg of citalopram.

What should I expect?