Hi I'm new to this and would like to share my horrible expirence of Effexor. I had been perscribed Effexor a year ago in march and started out on 75mg, I think? Well I went up to 150 mg's I think is what is was was the highest I got, but It was very difficult for me to go to sleep. So on top of that they perscribed me a anti depressant called Remeron to help me sleep in the night time. One night I ran out of the remeron, and was convicnced that there was a 24 hour pharmacy open somewhere around town. It was about 3AM and I jumped into my car still wired and was on the look out for the pharmacy. I couldn't find one, so I checked every town north of me, and went up to 2 more downs which is a 15 mile radious of where I live driving around angry looking for one to help me sleep and get a refill or something. I was out of my mind by this time, it was probably around 4 or 4:30 in the monring, and i decided to stop at a gas station to get some coffee and ask if there were any pharmacy's open. It took me seriously 15 minutes to make myself coffee at a 711, and they called the cops. The cops arrived and I had no idea what I was doing or where I was. I was completely shocked at this point.

I talked to the cops and rambled on about my situation, but it took me a couple minutes to remember what the hell I was doing. They were convinced I was on illegal drugs and wouldn't let me go. Finally I let them talk to my parents and they said for me to come home and they had no idea what was going on. So I drove home and it took me about an hour and a half to find my way back home because I forgot where I lived. I had remembered that it was my brother's birthday, and took some sleeping pills and finally went to sleep at around 7 AM. I woke up shortly after that at 9:30 AM and had no idea where I was, or what had happened. It took me a couple days to recover and find out exactly what happened.

My advice to you, is to get off Effexor because when I told my doctor he said he hadn't heard of any side effects like i had. I was constipated and would only go once a week, and would have a bad memory problem. I haven't touched that awful awful drug since then, and was taken off of it immediately.