@dixie66
I have to agree with some of the other responses, that your moving too fast. It’s taken me over 7 months to finally get off of it. For 5 years I was taking 150mg of Venlafaxine daily along with 250mg of Lamictal. I started decreasing it with the help of my psychiatrist lowering it from 150 to 112.5mg for two months, 75mg for two months, then 37.5 for almost three months. Now that I’m at the lowest dosage, she has me taking the 37.5 every other day for two weeks, and then stopping it. If I notice a lot of withdrawal symptoms, she recommends that I take it every third day for three weeks and then trying to stop it.
So far I’ve been taking it every other day for 5 days, and I’m definitely a bit foggy and light headed but I’m hopeful that it won’t get too bad because I am taking it slowly.
One of the major positives that I’ve noticed since lowering my dosage is an improved quality of sleep. Ever since I started taking antidepressants, I’ve constantly been exhausted. To the point where I would sleep 20 hours a day, essentially only waking up for classes and then going back to sleep. I had originally just associated it with my depression. Well the depression became more manageable, but I was still exhausted. I was taking both Adderall and Ritalin (prescribed by a neurologist) just to function throughout the work day and was still having problems with staying awake and didn’t trust myself to drive more than 10 minutes. After doing a sleep study and almost being diagnosed with narcolepsy, they determined that the test was inconclusive because my antidepressants were REM inhibitors. This was something that I never realized. So long story short, after decreasing the Effexor to 37.5 I noticed that I was starting to dream again (I hadn’t remembered dreaming since before my depression). I’m also noticing that I’m no where near as tired during the day and have even been able to get off the Ritalin. I’m hoping to stop the Adderall as well because I don’t think it’s doing much for me.
I hope this helps anyone who is trying to come off their Effexor and/or is having problems with exhaustion while taking it.