Hi, I'm new here. I've been on Effexor for about 4 years now. I had no idea about how hard it is to get off or I'd have never started. I just saw my Dr May 30th and told her I wanted off. I was having anxiety attacks just thinking about it. I take 150 mg. She gave me a prescription for 75mg and told me to switch them back and forth for a few weeks before just taking 75 daily. I'm beyond terrified. I've been switching them lounge she said. I feel weird the nights that I taken the 75mg that day but I'm not sure if it's actually withdrawals or just my anxiety. So far I've been able to take a Xanax when it happens and I'm ok. She didn't give me a lot of info and I'm not sure when I should try to just take 75 all the time. I have about a weeks worth of the 150 left in my bottle and I have refills but will the pharmacy refill it since I just got the 75 mg bottle the other week? I'm so freaked out. I mean I'm really really scared. Tryingto act normal is killing me.

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Hi, I'm new here. I've been on Effexor for about 4 years now. I had no idea about how hard it is to get off or I'd have never started. I just saw my Dr May 30th and told her I wanted off. I was having anxiety attacks just thinking about it. I take 150 mg. She gave me a prescription for 75mg and told me to switch them back and forth for a few weeks before just taking 75 daily. I'm beyond terrified. I've been switching them lounge she said. I feel weird the nights that I taken the 75mg that day but I'm not sure if it's actually withdrawals or just my anxiety. So far I've been able to take a Xanax when it happens and I'm ok. She didn't give me a lot of info and I'm not sure when I should try to just take 75 all the time. I have about a weeks worth of the 150 left in my bottle and I have refills but will the pharmacy refill it since I just got the 75 mg bottle the other week? I'm so freaked out. I mean I'm really really scared. Tryingto act normal is killing me.

Jump to this post

Hi, I'm new here. I've been on Effexor for about 4 years now. I had no idea about how hard it is to get off or I'd have never started. I just saw my Dr May 30th and told her I wanted off. I was having anxiety attacks just thinking about it. I take 150 mg. She gave me a prescription for 75mg and told me to switch them back and forth for a few weeks before just taking 75 daily. I'm beyond terrified. I've been switching them lounge she said. I feel weird the nights that I taken the 75mg that day but I'm not sure if it's actually withdrawals or just my anxiety. So far I've been able to take a Xanax when it happens and I'm ok. She didn't give me a lot of info and I'm not sure when I should try to just take 75 all the time. I have about a weeks worth of the 150 left in my bottle and I have refills but will the pharmacy refill it since I just got the 75 mg bottle the other week? I'm so freaked out. I mean I'm really really scared. Tryingto act normal is killing me.

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So, I just finished this process with Zoloft (sertraline) and here are some things that worked for me. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully these are low risk for you to try.

1) You may need to ask your doctor for a slower tapering program than other patients. Some people are just more sensitive to dosage changes. Be aware that symptoms will get better, then may reappear each time you taper. AAFMA (practice group of family physicians) says that the symptoms typically last 1-2 weeks and as long as 4 weeks, so I just kept reminding myself that it was temporary.
2) Be watchful for things that make your symptoms worse. For example, caffeine seems to trigger the brain zaps for me (still, even after being off for several weeks), so I cut back my caffeine intake. I didn’t give it up completely (because I still need to function), but cut back on how much real coffee I was drinking, mixed decaf with regular, and switched to tea sometimes. In the end, I probably cut my daily caffeine intake in half, and it did help quite a lot.
3) Ibuprofen or other pain reliever can help with the flu-like body aches.
4) Benadryl helped with the brain zaps.
5) Exercise helped with both. Even if I wasn’t up to a run, a few blocks of walking would settle down the symptoms for a while at least. (Then, when they come back, just take another walk. We took a lot of walks for a while there).
6) Get enough sleep. As I came down off the meds, my normal sleeping patterns returned, which was great, but it did mean that I needed to plan time to let my body rest.
7) Pay attention to your diet. Your brain uses carbs to make seratonin, so now is not the time to go on the Atkins diet. Eat well and make sure you’re getting enough healthy carbs. You may crave sweets; I certainly did. I tried to counteract this by having bananas, graham crackers, and other healthy things I could snack on instead of sticking my head in a birthday cake like I seemed to want.

No lie – it’s a painful process, but this did really help make it easier. Also, at a certain point, when I was down the below the normal starter dose, I just ripped off the bandaid and went to zero. At that point, it felt like each taper was just prolonging the suffering. Don’t just go cold turkey from your current dose, though, as that can be dangerous. Also, don’t add any supplements or substitutes for the SSRI without talking to your doctor first (also dangerous).

And of course, watch for the return of depression / anxiety type symptoms. For a while it was hard to tell whether I was tired because of the change in meds or because my depression was returning. I figured as long as I felt okay enough to function and wasn’t thinking about being harmful to myself or anyone else, I could play it out and see. It turned out to be the meds and on the other side, I can see that I was more worried about it than I needed to be.

I wish you the best of luck and a healthy life.

Mardee

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Hi, I'm new here. I've been on Effexor for about 4 years now. I had no idea about how hard it is to get off or I'd have never started. I just saw my Dr May 30th and told her I wanted off. I was having anxiety attacks just thinking about it. I take 150 mg. She gave me a prescription for 75mg and told me to switch them back and forth for a few weeks before just taking 75 daily. I'm beyond terrified. I've been switching them lounge she said. I feel weird the nights that I taken the 75mg that day but I'm not sure if it's actually withdrawals or just my anxiety. So far I've been able to take a Xanax when it happens and I'm ok. She didn't give me a lot of info and I'm not sure when I should try to just take 75 all the time. I have about a weeks worth of the 150 left in my bottle and I have refills but will the pharmacy refill it since I just got the 75 mg bottle the other week? I'm so freaked out. I mean I'm really really scared. Tryingto act normal is killing me.

Jump to this post

Hi, I'm new here. I've been on Effexor for about 4 years now. I had no idea about how hard it is to get off or I'd have never started. I just saw my Dr May 30th and told her I wanted off. I was having anxiety attacks just thinking about it. I take 150 mg. She gave me a prescription for 75mg and told me to switch them back and forth for a few weeks before just taking 75 daily. I'm beyond terrified. I've been switching them lounge she said. I feel weird the nights that I taken the 75mg that day but I'm not sure if it's actually withdrawals or just my anxiety. So far I've been able to take a Xanax when it happens and I'm ok. She didn't give me a lot of info and I'm not sure when I should try to just take 75 all the time. I have about a weeks worth of the 150 left in my bottle and I have refills but will the pharmacy refill it since I just got the 75 mg bottle the other week? I'm so freaked out. I mean I'm really really scared. Tryingto act normal is killing me.

Jump to this post

So, I just finished this process with Zoloft (sertraline) and here are some things that worked for me. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully these are low risk for you to try.

1) You may need to ask your doctor for a slower tapering program than other patients. Some people are just more sensitive to dosage changes. Be aware that symptoms will get better, then may reappear each time you taper. AAFMA (practice group of family physicians) says that the symptoms typically last 1-2 weeks and as long as 4 weeks, so I just kept reminding myself that it was temporary.
2) Be watchful for things that make your symptoms worse. For example, caffeine seems to trigger the brain zaps for me (still, even after being off for several weeks), so I cut back my caffeine intake. I didn’t give it up completely (because I still need to function), but cut back on how much real coffee I was drinking, mixed decaf with regular, and switched to tea sometimes. In the end, I probably cut my daily caffeine intake in half, and it did help quite a lot.
3) Ibuprofen or other pain reliever can help with the flu-like body aches.
4) Benadryl helped with the brain zaps.
5) Exercise helped with both. Even if I wasn’t up to a run, a few blocks of walking would settle down the symptoms for a while at least. (Then, when they come back, just take another walk. We took a lot of walks for a while there).
6) Get enough sleep. As I came down off the meds, my normal sleeping patterns returned, which was great, but it did mean that I needed to plan time to let my body rest.
7) Pay attention to your diet. Your brain uses carbs to make seratonin, so now is not the time to go on the Atkins diet. Eat well and make sure you’re getting enough healthy carbs. You may crave sweets; I certainly did. I tried to counteract this by having bananas, graham crackers, and other healthy things I could snack on instead of sticking my head in a birthday cake like I seemed to want.

No lie – it’s a painful process, but this did really help make it easier. Also, at a certain point, when I was down the below the normal starter dose, I just ripped off the bandaid and went to zero. At that point, it felt like each taper was just prolonging the suffering. Don’t just go cold turkey from your current dose, though, as that can be dangerous. Also, don’t add any supplements or substitutes for the SSRI without talking to your doctor first (also dangerous).

And of course, watch for the return of depression / anxiety type symptoms. For a while it was hard to tell whether I was tired because of the change in meds or because my depression was returning. I figured as long as I felt okay enough to function and wasn’t thinking about being harmful to myself or anyone else, I could play it out and see. It turned out to be the meds and on the other side, I can see that I was more worried about it than I needed to be.

I wish you the best of luck and a healthy life.

Mardee

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Happy to help. Good luck with your process. I also forgot to mention that both stress and sugar seem to make the brain zaps worse for me. Even though I’ve been off for about a month now, I had a cupcake yesterday afternoon and within about an hour, I had quite a few. Worth watching in case it does the same thing to you.

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Hi! I was on Effexor XR for a few years and got off it several years ago. It was a very difficult process, so I fully sympathize. You MUST wean off
VERY SLOWLY. I don’t remember what my dosage was at the time (225mg?), but it took me about 9 months. Please do not let that long time scare you, it’s worth going slow, that will be your biggest help w/ withdrawal. At the time I had a very difficult time finding any doctor with experience getting people off it.
Luckily I was advised to to find one and luckily I did. It is considered harder to get off than heroine. Not trying to scare you, just want to make sure you go as slow as possible. Mostly, I was moody/angry, had headaches, and some brain “shivers”. The brain shivers I already had while on the meds.
I think we went down in 25mg increments over several weeks for each reduction. Keep us posted and good luck! Just give yourself some time and it will be over before you know it!

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Can the withdrawal symptoms include paranoia, anxiety or strange nightmares?

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I have been taking Effexor/Venlafaxine for stress induce menopause hot flashes.
I quit cold turkey once because I blame it for gas and weight gain. What a mistake that was. All I did was cry.
Now I am told I have dry mouth and this med can be the reason. I don't know what to do

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All I can say is my withdrawal from EFFEXOR over 8 years ago is NOT something I would want to experience again. I can say I am more at peace with myself and others without this DRUG. Withdrawal from these type of DRUGS can be lethal w/o proper supervision. Sad that professionals are NOT better educated or just don't care…

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