Tips on minimizing withdrawal symptoms from Effexor (aka Venlafaxine)

Well, it's been a cr*ppy week, or so. My akathisia got the better of me this past weekend. For a few days before, I tapered way back on the supplements especially the l-tryptophan as I was using more Valium (see my 8/19/18 post) and thought maybe I had too much serotonin building up and that was ratcheting up the anxiety. Then last Friday's two-hour staff meeting and hour+ meeting after lunch was too much; despite taking 1/2 a Valium and several doses of l-tryptophan, GABA and B6 throughout the afternoon, by the time I got home, I was having a lot of akathisia. I was able to calm down late evening and rest Saturday. Sunday I began an acute episode of akathisia. Around 4 pm, I felt I had better go to Care Now as I was not getting relief from the maximum Valium dosage. Fortunately, the doctor I saw is familiar with Effexor withdrawal. She wrote a prescription for a l-methylfolate supplement as well as a three-day stay at home taking a whole Valium twice a day and resting. Her thinking was that I needed to use a significant amount of Valium to stabilize and then back off. I am also back to taking all my supplements four times a day. All of this seems a pretty serious consequence for taking 25mg of Effexor for hot flashes despite slow tapering and being off the drug for MORE THAN FOUR MONTHS!

Saw this info about an Effexor tapering kit (New Schientist 7/7/17); I have no affiliation with this group, nor have I tried the kit. May only be of use to those in the Netherlands--
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140106-people-are-hacking-antidepressant-doses-to-avoid-withdrawal/
https://www.cinderella-tx.org/en/
http://www.taperingstrip.org/
To help people taper their dose more easily, a Dutch medical charity, called Cinderella Therapeutics,together with Maastricht University creates personalised "tapering kits”, with precisely weighed out tablets in labelled packets that gradually reduce over several months. The website recommends people do this under medical supervision and must first receive a doctor’s prescription.

The charity has been sending out such kits since 2014, distributing around 2,000 tapering kits for 24 different medications so far. Most of these were for people in the Netherlands, but a few kits have been sent to other countries, including the UK. The website is in Dutch, but an English-language version is being launched next week. [Is now launched.]

Pharmacist Paul Harder, who makes the tapering kits for Cinderella Therapeutics, says an unpublished survey by the charity found that about 80 per cent of users manage to completely stop taking their medicine. Another 10 per cent reduce it, but the rest return to their original dose. The average time people using the service taper for is two months, he says, but some people take up to seven months.

Wow. What a great idea! Thanks for posting this.

"Sometimes, even if you are slow and deliberate when weaning yourself off an antidepressant, you still may experience symptoms of discontinuation syndrome. One possible way to get relief is to take a single 20 milligram (mg) dose of Prozac [sometimes another]. Your symptoms will likely go away within a few hours. And because of Prozac’s long half-life, you won’t have withdrawal symptoms after taking that one capsule."--Antidepressants and Discontinuation Syndrome: Tips for Relief from Withdrawal Symptoms by Nancy Schimelpfening; https://www.verywellmind.com/tips-to-reduce-antidepressant-withdrawal-symptoms-1066835

Has anyone tried this? If so, did it work? Do you know if it would work on someone who's been off Effexor four months and still experiencing discontinuation symptoms?

Sounds excellent - let me know how your discussion goes. My friend won't even bring up the fact that her AI is making her irritable to her oncologist and ask if there might be a different AI she could try (in her mind there is nothing wrong - it's everyone else that is the problem - according to her husband)

Check the back of the package but Benadryl and a PM pain med usually contain the same ingredient diphenhydramine -it's just that the pain med also has ibuprofen or some other NSAID as well. In other words - both will probably help address the itching and any sleeping issues - the pain med will help if you have - you guessed it - aches and pains or fever.

Best to ask a psychiatrist - but it's not unheard of - it depends on whether the ingredient causing your discontinuation symptoms is the serotonin or the norepinephrine....if it's both or just serotonin - the prozac might help.. .As an SNRI, Effexor works on both chemicals - while Prozac is an SSRI....but prozac, zoloft etc seem to be easier to taper from.

@youngsally
I am a breast cancer survivor and it was estrogen positive. I was on tamoxifen and as some years went by, put on Aromasin. I was put on 25 mg of Effexor to control hot flashes when the tamoxifen put me into chemical menopause. The only side effect I noticed from Aromasin was from the very first pill until three months after I was taken off it 6.5 years later was that I would "urp" all night long after I went to bed--nothing ever came up, no acid, no food taste--just "urp," then "urp," etc. Side effect in the small print--dyspepsia. If there's a weird side effect to something, I get it.

Re your friend's irritability, perhaps it stems from menopause. She should look into supplements and AVOID EFFEXOR--https://www.thesleepdoctor.com/2018/02/20/natural-supplements-menopause-sleep/.

@texasduchess
Good Morning!
Thank you for posting the article. I read it and found another article more specifically for Effexor:
https://www.verywellmind.com/brain-shivers-as-effexor-withdrawal-symptom-1065516
Interesting, too.
Have a great weekend!
Ronnie (GINSBERGr)

Thanks - I am pretty certain she won't be taking Effexor -- she won't so much as take an aspirin even though she says that her joints hurt all the time....I think she was okay mood-wise until she switched off the tamoxifen - but it was a five year cycle of tamoxifen so as I understand it - most women don't take tamoxifen any longer than that because it has more serious cardiac risks long term.