God bless! We’re here for you! I respect Jake’s enthusiasm for Effexor, but in my humble opinion this med is poison, as bad if not worse than any benzo and yes I stand by my opinion that this particular drug should be banned. I’m so sorry the doctors we trust just don’t get it. No understanding at all. Slow taper, fast taper they don’t get it! How many years have benzodiazepines been on the market? How many people have been prescribed these for years and years? Effexor is fairly new. The docs don’t even really understand the antidepressants yet! No one really knows for sure how they work and new research is telling us antidepressants are just placebos. The ONLY med that really truly works for anxiety are benzos, yet the docs love to push the antidepressants for severe debilitating anxiety. All these meds are poison. At least allow us to take a poison that works.