I am happy to share my process. A couple of caveats:

I have come off of seven psych meds concurrently. Venlafaxine in my opinion being the worst, followed by Lithium.

My taper was very aggressive.

I enlisted the help of my psych provider, PCP an therapist.

I did a lot of research and built a specific plan to discontinue all my meds by the end of this year. I am ahead of schedule.

I radically changed my diet: no refined sugar, no ultra processed food, more protein and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.

I started exercising, both light strength training and cardiovascular exercise. In the beginning I could only do fifteen minutes of each everyday. I now exercise two hours a day everyday. Probably more than needed, but it makes me feel good.

My goal for the venlafaxine was to reduce by 75mg every two weeks. Initially that was easy. I did not experience any difficulties until I got down to 225mg. I then started to experience body aches, diarrhea, sleep disturbances and high blood pressure. My PCP put me on a blood pressure med temporarily. I will stop the BP med in a week or two.

I dealt with the other discontinuation effects by pausing the taper until they went away, usually about a week. After two weeks at 75mg I dropped to 37.5 for two weeks and done.

A couple of things of note:

I was desperate. I was going to get off these meds or blow my head off. My life was not worth living.

I did my homework. That allowed me to recruit the help of my doctors. I could not have gotten my life back without their initially skeptical, but nonetheless committed help.

I had to advocate for myself. I have been a pain in the ass for my doctors. It’s my life. I will no longer suffer needlessly.

None of this would have been possible had I not changed my diet and committed to moving my body.

I currently take low doses of Latuda (prescribed as a precaution as I discontinued lithium) and bupropion. Both currently below therapeutic levels will be gone by mid December.

Most importantly:

THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT ME! I AM A PATHETICALLY AVERAGE WHITE SIXTY YEAR OLD GUY.

Bonus: I’ve lost twenty five pounds and my body fat has dropped from plus thirty percent to twenty percent and I am always stuffed, veggies will do that.

Now my docs have a problem; either I am cured (something the current science does not allow for) or I should have never been on all this poison to begin with.

I was very lucky that my current docs just happened to be new and we’re not responsible for putting me on any of the meds. They might not have been so cooperative otherwise.

I keep in mind a line from the Shawshank Redemption; it was time to “get busy living or get busy dying”

I hope you find the peace you deserve.

Oh, I forgot to add I feel mentally and physically the best I have in my entire life! Perhaps that’s just in contrast to how bad I have felt for the last fifteen years.