Effexor Withdrawal is Hell
By angel_smiles
@Lolaze (5092)
St. Louis, Missouri
May 29, 2016 12:27pm CST
Effexor is one of many anti-depressants out there today. It's an SNRI, which means it works on two different chemicals in the brain, while SSRI's like Prozac only work on one. I've been on Effexor for about 5 years at one dose or another. In the last few months, I got put on an extremely high dosage – 300mg to try and treat my anxiety. I'm feeling like this isn't a good thing for me and I want to reduce the dose to half of that.
The bad thing is, Effexor is known as the cocaine of anti-depressants because it's so hard to reduce the dose or stop taking. The withdrawal symptoms are horrid! Insane amounts of anxiety and racing thoughts are what it causes for me. This past week has been awful. I still have another 75mg to decrease to get to where I want to be and I'm starting that now. I'm going to try to do that a little more slowly but it's still going to be rough.
3 people like this
3 responses
@yukimori (10192)
• United States
29 May 16
Yeah, it's pretty awful stuff where withdrawals are concerned. I start getting vertigo within about 4-5 hours of missing a dose, and I'm on a pretty low dose. 
I've seen some discussion on forums where people who are trying to cut down their dosage actually take the capsules apart and count out the little pellets inside because dropping a whole pill at a time is too difficult. I have no idea if that's actually advisable, though... they're pretty adamant that the extended release capsules can't be chewed or otherwise damaged in the leaflets I get.
I've seen some discussion on forums where people who are trying to cut down their dosage actually take the capsules apart and count out the little pellets inside because dropping a whole pill at a time is too difficult. I have no idea if that's actually advisable, though... they're pretty adamant that the extended release capsules can't be chewed or otherwise damaged in the leaflets I get.