Anyone reinstate Effexor (Venlafaxine) after 9 weeks off to taper more

Hello 🤗
I was on Effexor (Venlafaxine) ER in January 2025, with my highest dose being 225 mg. I didn’t feel like I was getting much improvement with Venlafaxine, so I eventually tapered down gradually and slowly to 75 mg. Since the ER is a capsule, I asked my doctor to switch me to the IR so I could taper more even slower. Per her taper recommendation, I stayed at 25 mg for about 2 months, then went down to 18.75 mg for about 4 weeks and 12.5 mg for another 4 weeks and went down to 6.25 mg for another 4 weeks. Since I couldn’t cut the dose any lower, she recommended taking 6.25 mg every other day for about 2 weeks and then stopping. I stopped completely on June 4th.
I’m now 9 weeks off, and my doctor believes I’m still experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Since June 10th, I’ve felt keyed up much of the time, with adrenaline rushes, nervousness, rapid heart rate, and waves of anxiety. I’m also really sleepy, sluggish, and feeling wiped out. Even after sleeping 7–8 hours, I still wake up feeling like I haven’t slept. The symptoms continue from morning through the evening and are really affecting my quality of life. My doctor also prescribed Prozac to help with the withdrawal symptoms, but it didn’t help, so I stopped taking it. I take 10mg of propranolol in the morning to help with some of the anxiety symptoms.
I met with her last week and she said she did some research and also talked with some of her colleagues about my symptoms and they recommended that I reinstate at a very low dose and then taper much more slowly. One option she gave me was to restart with a 75 mg Venlafaxine XR capsule and count the beads, taking 10 beads (about 5 mg) to start. The plan would then be to gradually reduce the number of beads: 10 → 8 → 6 → 4 → 3 → 2 → 1 → 0, staying at each dose for 2–4 weeks or longer if needed. She also found a compounding pharmacy that can make liquid Venlafaxine IR, which would allow for even smaller dose reductions, but I am really hesitant to restart Venlafaxine. I worked hard to get off of it, and it wasn’t really helping the anxiety symptoms when I was taking it. I also don’t want to go through withdrawal again after I eventually stop.

Has anyone else been in this situation? Were you still having significant withdrawal symptoms 8–10 weeks after stopping Effexor (Venlafaxine)? Did you decide to reinstate and taper more slowly? If you did, did it help? If you decided not to reinstate, are you still having withdrawal symptoms, and have they started to improve with more time? What did you do that helped?

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has been through something similar because I’m really struggling 😞. Thank you