Edronax (reboxetine) - The Good, The Bad and The Funny. From People Who Have Taken These Crazy Meds...and SCIENCE!

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US Brand Name: Edronax

Other Brand Names:

Generic Name: reboxetine mesilate

Other Forms:

Class: Antidepressant, specifically NRI.
Read up on these sections if you haven't done so already, because they cover a lot of information about multiple medications that I'm not going to repeat on many pages. I'm just autistic that way about not repeating myself.

FDA Approved Use: Depression

Off-Label Uses: Panic/Anxiety, Bipolar Depression, ADD/ADHD, Eating Disorders

Pros: Far less likely to trigger mania in the bipolar or seizures in the epileptic. Either is still possible, it's just that the odds are higher (i.e. the events are less likely). NRIs typically have a low side effect profile for most people and are either ineffectual or are the greatest thing ever for someone.

Cons: Not available in the US, so I'm just guessing about what's approved by the local FDA-equivalent in Forn Parts, and what's off-label usage. The high potency/small dosage make it difficult to fine tune.

Typical Side Effects: The usual for NRIs - headache, dry mouth, urinary hesitance, constipation, early awakening. The headache tends to go away and only reappears with a dosage increase for most people. The urinary hesitance (think the Beavis and Butt-Head episode where they forgot how to "go"), dry mouth, constipation and early awakening strike at random throughout the time you take it.

For tips on how to cope with these side effects, please see our side effects page.
These aren't all the side effects possible, just the most popular ones.

Not So Common Side Effects: Increased heart rate or heart palpitations, getting really sweaty. Guys report temporary and permanent sexual side effects with Strattera (atomoxetine), ranging from painful ejaculation to erectile dysfunction, so the same may follow for Edronax (reboxetine mesilate).
These may or may not happen to you don't, so don't be surprised one way or the other.

Freaky Rare Side Effects: Damned if I know, the PI sheets in the UK and Australia are just pitiful! Only the kiwis have a half-decent one. The only moderately freaky and quite rare one I've found is impotence at the higher dosage. That's about it for sexual side effects at all.
You aren't going to get these. I promise.

Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably Won't Tell You: I haven't bothered looking yet. I'm sure there's plenty out there.

Dosage: Initial dose is 4mg twice a day. After three weeks it may be increased to 5mg twice a day. From one e-mail and reading the experiences of a couple people with unipolar and bipolar depression the optimal dosage is in the range of 8-12mg a day.

Days to Reach a Steady State: Five days.
When you're fully saturated with the medication and less prone to peaks and valleys of effects. You still might have peaks of effect after taking many meds, but with a lot of the meds you'll have fewer valleys after this point. In theory anyway.

How Long it Takes to Work: About two weeks. If my experience with Strattera (atomoxetine) is any gauge, you could start feeling something within three days. Others have reported Strattera (atomoxetine) kicking in within 3-4 days as well. The few reports I've had from people taking Reboxetine give a similar timeline. A week is common, three to four days is not surprising.

Half-Life & Average Time to Clear Out of Your System: Reboxetine's a half-life is 13 hours. You should step down your dosage by 2mg a day every three days. Fortunately NRI discontinuation isn't as hairy as SSRI discontinuation.
If you've worked your way up to a particular dosage, it's usually best to spend this many days at the next lowest dosage before going down the next lowest dosage before that and so forth. This is the least sucky way to avoid problems when stopping any psychiatric medication. Presuming you have the option of slowly tapering off them.

How It Works In Your Brain: Like all NRIs Edronax (reboxetine mesilate) doesn't make you produce more norepinephrine, rather it makes your neurons soak for a longer period of time in the norepinephrine you already produce.

In a comparison with Effexor (venlafaxine) and Norpramin (desipramine), Edronax (reboxetine mesilate) was found to have the most potent effect on norepinephrine. It was vastly more influential on that neurotransmitter than Effexor (venlafaxine).

Comments: I honestly don't know squat about this med, but I list it here because it's helped a lot of people, including some for whom Strattera (atomoxetine HCl) was almost but not quite the answer. Also, since all reuptake inhibitors are subject to poop-out, you never know if you're going to have to switch between Strattera (atomoxetine HCl) and Edronax (reboxetine mesilate), so it's best to have options! Otherwise it's just back to the TCAs. And a lot of those still mess with serotonin.

Like all NRIs if you take too much you might be subject to norepinephrine depletion or vulnerable to the adverse effects of MAO. Read up about it on the page about NRIs.

Manufacturer: Pfizer

Sample US Cost: Not available in the US. Search it out at a UK, Australian or New Zealand pharmacy. Anna pointed me to Victoria Pharmacy in Zurich, Switzerland.

As of 11/03/2003. Full retail for the uninsured. Go ahead and gloat, citizens of civilized countries and all of you with full medical coverage.

Sample Canadian Cost: The Canadian pharmacies I've looked at won't sell it to us, even though they can take it.

As of 11/03/2003. In US dollars, for re-importation to the US. Does not include shipping charges or currency conversion charges you might incur on your credit card. Currency fluctuations will alter the price on a daily basis.

Remedy Find Rating for Depression

Check for Drug-Drug Interactions

New Zealand PI Sheet

UK PI Sheet

Canadian Monograph from Internet Mental Health

Please see the section on how to read these sheets. Don't freak out about every potential side effect. Look at the odds of something having happened during the clinical trials.

Reboxetine in the News

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If you still have unanswered questions about this or other medications, including which one is, or combination of meds are the best for you, your best bet is to ask on Crazy Meds Talk. Better yet, if you want to let the world know how they worked out for you and want to help out others in their quest for the correct meds, join the party.
If you want to discuss your issues, I suggest checking out one of the various support groups online.
Otherwise, if you're letting me know about how much you like or hate the site, or need to let me know about medication effects in private, then just drop a note to jerod23 at gmail dot com Honestly, I usually don't have a lot of time to answer e-mail these days. The snide autoresponse message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same thing.
Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you one. You see, so many dickweeds with malicious intents and too much time on their hands have appropriated the crazymeds.org domain name to use for their spam, viruses and the like. Subsequently some lazy-ass e-mail protection software authors just go by the domain name, and not the IP address. So I've been blacklisted because of the actions of others. Or the software just doesn't like the domain name because of the "crazy" and/or "meds." Or your question about a particular medication will set off spam flags. So the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless. Sorry.

Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.

Created Sunday, November 09,2003

Last updated Saturday, May 15, 2010

Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about. And any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That's usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that's OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I'm cool with it.

All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily happen to you. Nobody on this site is a doctor, therapist, or a pharmacist. We don't portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don't be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you'll get every side effect from every medication. Self-prescribing is just as dangerous. All information on this site has been obtained through personal experience, the experiences of my friends, the experiences of people reported on online support groups, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. Know your sources! As such the information presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies listed after them in the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may or may not have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Always read the PI sheet that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away. If you didn't get a PI sheet, demand one. Loudly. Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to. We like them, or they're paid advertisements, or they're something you should read to make an informed decision about a particular med. Sometimes they're more than one of those things. But what's on those sites is their business, not ours. Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. And from time to time I do look at search terms used to find it in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited.

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