If something works for you don't fix it.

For me and for many others the side effects of Effexor are intolerable.

I won't list them here but a very brief review of the side effects via a simple Google search provided me an explanation for many of the debilitating primary and secondary negative effects I experience for years.

For me venlafaxine was the worst of the fourteen meds I was taking the drugs negative effects were worse than even ECT.

Study after study made it clear that many of the supposedly systemic health problems I was having can be laid at the feet for Effexor/Venlafaxine.

Again for me the proof is in my actually lived experience. The medication is gone and so are the side effects. More telling the primary mental health conditions that the drug was prescribed for are also not present in anyway. Either I am cured, I should have never been put on them in the first place or should get and an Academy Award.

It's not just the me saying this but the doctors reporting it to my parole officer. Did I mention if I screw up I go back to prison.

What makes a deferential diagnosis of mental illness so difficult is that symptoms of mental illness are the same as problems created by the average American lifestyle.

We complain they give us pills to shut us up. Those pills create more problems requiring more costly interventions and medications. The only benefit is to the bottom line of companies and institutions seeking to hold power in the pursuit profits.

I ask myself if the current system worked so well why are there 65,000,000.00 people with diagnosed with mental illness in the United States. That's just those with a diagnosis.

Milton Friedman, the eminent economist whose theories shaped our current economic world stated unequivocally, that "the only duty a corporation has is to its shareholders".

That is to profit.

I believe I have been nothing more than a drug addict looking for a fix that Big Pharma was happy to provide.

Sadness and grief are not depression they are appropriate feeling in response to the suffering we see all around us. I took pills rather than feel those feelings.

If something ain't broke don't fix it.

I'm glad you are at peace. Life it to short to spending it suffering all the time.