effexor xr weird side effects

i have been on effexor xr for 3 days now and i have been getting weird tremor feelings. What happens is i get dizzy then everything i'm looking at looks like it is shaking then i get dizzy again and then it goes back to normal again. . What is this does anyone know what it is? It only lasts for a few seconds but is very annoying.

This should pass as your body adjusts to the meds. I remember when I first went on it, I got really dizzy. At one point I actually fell over in my boss' office. I also had this weird visual depth perception thing happenning. You know how you can be standing at the top of an escalator and look down at the moving steps and be sure you're giong to put your foot wrong and fall? We'll I'd get that sensation walking accross perfectly flat floors.

Effexor has some pretty weird side effects - dizziness is one of the more common.

--splitimage

I had severe shakes on effexor and my legs felt like jelly. I could not even type on my keyboard. Never will take it again.

i take effexor xl, i dunno if this is similar but the name suggests to me it is (im from the uk, it maybe that the name is just slightly different) but when i started taking thati had a funny sense of depth perception too, and i would go light headed rather than full on dizzy, sometimes aswell like my ears had popped, but that all disappeared after a while and i felt and was like normal on it

This is the same thing, it's called XL here, and XR most other places!

But on the origional post, I also felt very dizzy when I first went on it but even worse when I forgot one and when I came off it. It should calm down, but if it's not and it's affecting your life badly ti'd probably be best to see your psychiatrist to see if you can try something else.

The side effects your feeling are due to your body adjusting to the medication. Effexor is a re-uptake inhibitor, it stops the serotonin from being recycled back into your nerve cell. Therefore, the serotonin stays outside the cell and hangs out, in hopes of creating stronger cell communication. Eventually, a great amount of serotonin builds up around the nerve cells, signaling the cell to stop producing serotonin. When the cells stop making serotonin, your nerve cell communication becomes even weaker and creates more depression and anxiety (muscle twitching and jitterbugs) than before you took the medicine. This is believed and documented to be the cause of the side effects during the first few weeks of therapy.

Because the nerve cells are sensitize to great amounts of serotonin, they start to loss their signaling proteins, thus, becoming less sensitive and begin to create serotonin again. This is when the therapeutic effects manifest and the side effects disappear.

In a nutshell, it's normal and happens with many anti-depressants. I hope this helps.

Hi thanks for the replies im not having trouble with it anymore. it only lasted 2 days.
bit worried though now im on it cos i have heard its the hardest anti depressant to come off

crystalrose,

Different strokes for different folks. In general, a significant portion of people who take Effexor XR have some difficulty stopping the medicine. Doctors make withdrawals as easy as they can ~ by slowly and gently tapering the dosage down and off.

Try not to worry about getting off the medication. You have lots of time and professionals working to make the experience smooth for you ;0

Shez

It's not nice to come off, but if done properly it's not THAT bad. It's not like it's addictive or anything, you just feel a bit rough for a while. I still worked while I was coming off it, and although it wasn't easy to do that, my job is quite physical and that was probably the only problem it really caused.