I'm on Effexor now (and have also been on it with lithium in the past). I don't tend to get side-effects from anything actually (guess I'm lucky...) so from that point of view it is fine for me.

I've always had a sneaky suspicion that it doesn't work THAT well. When I confessed this to my pdoc last time, he said it is definitely having an effect because I got hypomanic on it a couple of months ago. Er, right.

Anyway - we discussed replacing it with Wellbutrin for some lingering depression (I really like the sound of this AD - it seems to actually make you feel better, instead of just making you feel less bad, as some do). But he is worried about hypomania, and so he upped the Lamictal instead and that is working great for me so far.

Hope this helped. Long and short of it is: for me Effexor has been 'fine' but not 'amazing'. And I had no problems taking it with lithium.