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Trying to get off venlafaxine.
Mental Health | Last Active: Apr 6 2:46pm | Replies (6)Comment receiving replies
I’m a 54 year old female and was put on Venlafaxine 75 mg about six years ago due to menopause. It’s been about 8 years since starting menopause. Menopause was a nightmare to be honest and all you’re told at the Drs is “it’s a part of life” well I thought I was loosing it and it was hell so this was my only option at the time. Over the years my dose was increased up to 225 mg.
I’m ready to get off it so I’ve been tapering off with the direction from my Dr. and I’m currently down to 37.5 mg. I’ve had many withdrawal symptoms…fatigue, night sweats, fogging feeling in brain, sinus pressure with zaps, nausea, and a lot of dreaming at night. This is all with tapering so I can’t imagine going cold turkey. I will continue with the tapering and be off this for good.
Looking back, I feel there needs to be more resources and support for Menopausal patients. The symptoms I experienced during this stage made me a different person that I didn’t like. Health insurance companies need to support women at this stage with options like holistic health care not just conventional medicine. Conventional medicine Drs are too quick to just put you on an anxiety medication and not address the underlying problem. Some of this is due to insurance not paying for additional testing which should be done because our bodies significantly change along with our mental health during menopause.
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I went cold turkey. I'd been tapered down to 37.5, but had been on Effexor for over twenty years. I was never told that it would be a challenge to get off of it. I'm male, so I didn't have menopause as an added complication, but my experience was about two weeks of hell and two weeks of slowly diminishing symptoms. It's now been seven or eight weeks and it's been a couple weeks now since I've felt anything. So it is doable in my experience. That said, I would not advise going cold turkey even though it worked for me, and even though I feel I was having more ill effects than good from the two drugs I was on (Abilify was added to the mix last fall and I quit both at once). It's not medically advised, and it isn't fun in the early going.
My big complaint is that I was never informed about the difficulties of getting off of Effexor. I was put on it twenty some years ago by a G.P. because of severe depression, and then I was sent home. If I had known what it would do if I quit, I likely would never have started. I have gone onto a different class of pharmaceuticals, but this time I asked a lot of questions first.