RRR,
(kind of long, sorry...)
I was on norvasc for about a year (5mg). There are long term effects. I always felt extremely tired, quite often depressed too. I skipped going to the dr. mainly for monetary reasons, I was going every 1 - 2 months. I was finally down to the final refill, so I had to call the drs. ofc. to have them call in another rx for me, shortly thereafter, one of the drs. called me, and asked when I was coming in for an appt., so I made one and my b/p was up- I think it was something like 149/92. They put me on a new b/p med, lotrel 10/20, one of the ingredients is norvasc. I took it for about 3 months, I had to stop taking it, it's too expensive. It made me feel 10X worse than before anyway.
I personally feel that most drs. hawk the more expensive meds to make money from the drug manufacturers, and I agree that drs. are quacks and pill pushers...(most, anyway)