Tips on minimizing withdrawal symptoms from Effexor (aka Venlafaxine)

Hello Chris, thank you for your kind words. I have a little senior dachshund, Sadie, who is now 15 years old. She is my best buddy ever! I am so attached to her and she DOES bring me smiles and a sense of purpose. But being alone at this age is really getting to me. I've been divorced for 14 years and lost my son six years ago. It was a tragedy of which I will never recover. No parent ever gets over losing a child. He was the light of our lives. A proud Marine who served three tours to Iraq (his dad divorced me when he was on his third tour) but he never got his feet back on the ground when he returned home. He struggled with PTSD, TBI and alcoholism. The VA is a joke. I tried like hell to get him the help that he needed but they only pushed meds on him which made him worse. On the morning of 1/3/12, he sent a text stating that he could no longer endure the life he was living and couldn't see living to be an old man in the shape he was in. He lived an hour away and I flew like hell to get to him but when I got to his house, I found the police and the coroner's van there. He had texted a coworker who got there before I did. That moment changed my life forever. I sought help from a psychiatrist to help me with the depression and anxiety of not only the death of my son but also the grief of losing my 31 year old marriage. It was a hell a wouldn't wish on anyone. I truly felt like I was kicked in the gut when I was down at my lowest. I retired after I lost my son. I just couldn't get my shit together....fighting with his dad over my son's possessions (of which he took and sold), family and friends abandoning me because I wasn't the same person I had been before. To this day I am mostly estranged from my family; parents and three siblings. My anger is off the charts. All of the betrayal and loss I have endured have damaged me forever. I work HARD on forgiving those who left me when I needed them most but I can't forget. I have a couple of friends who are parents who have endured the same and we try to support each other. I am the only one, however, that is single and living alone. They are so blessed to have each other for support. The days are long and the nights are lonely. I did join a local fitness club this week hoping to get out at least once a day to exercise but it's tough to get out and do things alone. I will keep your email address and contact you soon.

Chris, I tried to email you at the address you listed but it came back as not a good address.

@sadiesmom I can't even imagine the pain of losing one of my children. A relative lost her son to suicide a few yeas ago and I think of her often, wondering how she is doing. I am so sorry you are having to deal with this. I am sure a person never does get over this type of thing but you do need to do the best you can in being active to keep yourself occupied.
That's great that you joined a fitness club. When I joined mine, about 6 years ago I think, I knew no one there but I got involved primarily in the aqua classes. I don't have any real friends there, not people I do anything with outside of classes, but they are my "club friends" and nice people. I hope you will find the same at your club. These days I am not going to classes since I can exercise as long as the classes are recovering from my knee replacement. The instructors are very understanding though and I could easily come late of start early but one of the things my ortho recommends is marching in the water so I go at off hours and do that myself, it's better for my knee than the class would be I think. One of the active class attendees keeps out email addresses and publishes them so I do hear from some of the people there.
I hope at some point that you may be able to mend the family estrangements. It may be up to you to initiate that even though you feel you have been the one wronged. I think in the long run it would be worth it to again have those family relations and support. Obviously they do not understand and maybe they never will, but that is not a reason for them to be estranged. I have a sister in law who will not move on from the loss of my brother, nor does she want to. I know she will forever love him and miss him but she needs to get out and live her life now. She pretty much has become a shut-in except for going to her grandchildren's activities. We are all concerned about her but we are all there for her too. Her home is like a shrine to the grandson she lost and to my brother.
JK

Hi Connect. I am new to the site. I have been looking for information on Effexor. I loss a child almost 6 yrs ago & a 2nd almost a year ago. I also loss a parent in between the loss of my 2 children. My Dr. started me on Effexor last summer and I stopped cold turkey the end of October. I started out on 37.5 & within 2 weeks was up to 75mg. The Dr.wanted to increase me to 150, but I stopped because I thought I no longer needed it. My Dr.failed to disclose any side effects. After reading the stories here, I am not sure if what I am currently experiencing are sides effects or something else. I do however realise I am not ready to be antidepressant free. I only had effexor & since stopping my biggest issue has been gastro. By way of this site I know have a name for the other elements... brain zapps, skin pricks the tingling makes sense now, confusion, memory loss and a few others.
I know I have a long road to recovery. How I get out the bed everyday is a mystery. I am raising my 1st deceased child's children, so I am sure they are my strength.
Can someone tell me more about how effexor related to gastrointestinal complications?

Hi, @nanaand3js, and welcome to Connect. So glad you found this community. As a parent myself, I cannot even fathom losing two of my children. How utterly heartbreaking. I agree that in tough times children and needing to take care of them and their sweet personalities can help the adults in their lives find some strength to keep going -- I've experienced my kids helping raise me up when I was very low.

I am glad that reading this discussion has been helpful for you and given you names for some of the things you've experienced. This drug does seem to take quite a toll when stopped too abruptly, as you've seen in the stories in this thread.

Have you by any chance touched base with your doctor about where you are at with stopping your medication and what symptoms you've experienced since you ended this treatment?

I can't seem to find a Dr that knows how to taper me off. I was taking 300mg and my Dr dropped me to 275, and then 175. I have a chemical imbalance and have been on an emotional rollercoaster. I've been on 175 for 3 months now and have terrible brain zaps, crying a lot, nausea, migraines, body pain, nightmares, severe depression and anxiety. I'm not sure what to do next. My prescription came in wrong once and I was a week without meds and ended up in emergency room in such severe withdrawals that I had massive migraine, talking strangely in a very confused state, brain zaps, crying uncontrollably, severe nausea to point of feeling I would pass out. They had no idea what to do for me and said they didn't think Effexor withdrawal could cause such symptoms...lol. No matter that even Google says its worse than heroin withdrawal! I'm not in a good place at all and need to finish tapering off so I can be put on other meds for chemical imbalance and depression.

Some psychiatrists jokingly refer to Effexor as sideffexor.

This drug is insidious. It has been 6 weeks since I stopped taking effexor completely. I titrated down over a period of over 9 months. I have experienced depression, extreme emotions (crying a lot) and am now starting to experience anxiety. I'm getting frightening thoughts and its hard to get rid of these thoughts. I just read a post that said melatonin may seem to help with anxiety. I'm going to try that. I started taking 400 mgs. of SAMe about 30 days ago. I feel like it has helped. I had some problems with upset stomach, but drink a full glass of water when taking the tablet (must be taken on an empty stomach. I might need to increase the dosage. SAMe is an amino acid that is naturally produced by the body. I'm not sure that there is any prescription medication that doesn't cause side effects. Anytime something messes with the chemistry of the brain side effects are bound to occur. If someone has any recommendation about other helpful options, please reply.

Hello All! I wrote a couple weeks ago about being prescribed Effexor for menopause symptoms and when it quit working I went on Prempro. The gyno that put me on both acted like just quitting the Effexor would be fine since i was only on 75 mg for about 3 months.
I decided to taper myself so went down to 37.5 mg for a few days and started Prempro at same time. Don't know which or maybe both caused it but I had a horrible migraine for 3 days where I couldn't hardly get out of bed and couldn't work. After the 3rd day the headache went away and I decided right then to not take another Effexor EVER so I totally quit and actually thought I was doing fine but after reading some of these recent posts I'm beginning to wander if maybe some of my symptoms which i have thought were completely menopause related might actually be from stopping this drug.

It's been a 1 1/2 weeks since i quit taking Effexor completely and since then I have been so emotional and cry over everything especially anything that upsets me even a little. This is really strange behavior for me and people who know people have commented that something isn't right with me because I am not and have never been a crier. Not that I think there is anything wrong with crying ( I don't); it's just that is not in my personality and my staff and bosses have noticed it. It is very embarrassing to be discussing a work issue and have tears come to my eyes and get all choked up when trying to talk. I have always been more of the Kiss my a**; this is the way it is going to be kind of person. Not unkind but never a crybaby. I certainly hope this passes soon (if it's related to the Effexor) because it is really impeding my job performance and my personal relationships too.

I hate feeling like this but not sure how to overcome it but I can tell you for sure I won't be trying to overcome it by going back on Effexor because one way or the other: This too shall pass; it might pass like a kidney stone but it will pass! 🙂

Yeah unfortunately I’m here to tell you that is definitely the side effects of coming off that drug. My recommendation is to get the smallest dose possible and then portion that out, that goes into even smaller doses... and smaller doses and smaller doses.

this could take upwards of months to almost a year. This is one of if not the worst antidepressant to be on end to come off of ..

if you live in a state where marijuana is legal medicinally I recommend talking to someone about low-dose THC prescription. I understand how a lot of humanity is opposed to this as medicine, but it has worked wonders for my brain when I never thought it would. And to be honest when you’re all at options why not try things that are new to you and presented as safe, positive, organic, and to be quite honest one of the most relaxing ways I’ve ever ingested medicine. there are ways to have marijuana medically and your life now that I had never thought would be possible. Tincture form, edible form, beverage form, pill form, and lotion form, topical form, even as a suppository!