[monstermash]

Here is a little insight to my journey of treating depression with Venlafaxine (AKA Effexor) and coming off the medication. This is all based on my own account and may be some help to people out there that are going through the process and need a little support.


Living with Depression
Living with depression feels like drowning while you watch everyone else effortlessly breathing. Depression is an awful backseat driver to your life that makes you do things and feel things you don’t want to. I lived with this ugly backseat driver for over a decade and fought against it with things like counselors, support groups, artistic expression, healthy foods, and exercise. These all helped me cope with depression, but with progress there is always slipping/relapse. Many compounding variable contributed to my depression rearing its ugly beast head. Compounding variables such as stressors from school, chronic sinusitis, constant sickness, unhealthy family relationships, internalized malicious thought processes, and low self-esteem all sucked the life out of me and kept me in my hole of depression. I went years stubbornly fighting this beast without a medication because I didn’t want to numb myself with happy pills and ignore the root of my problems. I wanted a better life and to truly be happy as everyone in the world deserves to be. After years of lingering in depression and slipping into major depressive episodes, I decided I needed medical help or else I would not be alive for much longer. I held onto hope while testing medications that were incompatible with my chemistry until I found a medication the worked.

Venlafaxine: A Beast of a Drug
I finally found a competent psychiatrist that saw how severe my depression was and prescribed me Venlafaxine. Venlafaxine is a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI). This means it increases the concentrations of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine in the body and the brain. Serotonin is a hormone that makes you feel happy and norepinephrine acts as a hormone and a neurotransmitter to help with focusing and paying attention (Thank you Wikipedia!).


The psychiatrist started me off at 37.5 mg. The first two weeks I felt side effects really strongly. The side effects that I felt were strong suicidal thoughts, insomnia, restless leg syndrome at night, and nightmares, which are apparently common with SSRIs. I was able to tell myself that the suicidal thoughts were from the medication to comfort myself. I was lucky enough to have a loving and supportive boyfriend at the time to help me through it. Anyone starting this medication should know the suicidal thoughts are just the medication and should be around loved ones at all times! As for the insomnia, restless-leg syndrome, and nightmares, I found that taking the medication in the morning and taking 25 to 50mg of Benadryl before bed helped me sleep better. I also found taking Venlafaxine in the morning gave me energy throughout the day to help me function. Suicidal thoughts lessened and sleeping became easier everyday while my body adjusted to the medication. The psychiatrist then suggested increasing the dose to 75mg which I did. After this increase I felt the side effects of insomnia, restless leg syndrome, and nightmares but not so much of the suicidal thoughts (Thank Bejeebus). Taking Benadryl before bed saved me from many sleepless nights.


Even after a week of starting the medication, my boyfriend at the time said I was “less mopey” and more importantly I felt an increase in my well-being. I worked with a counselor to create the healthy life habits that I did not pick up along the way (which I recommend to people wanting to better themselves emotionally). Though, I struggled with thought processes and self-esteem issues at first, I found the medication gave a general boost in mood and energy. Every time I had a hurtful inward thought it didn’t have as much emotional weight because I was able to bounce back easier. This gave me the freedom to choose a route of happiness and practice happier thoughts without feeling like I was faking it the way I felt before the medication. I actually was expressing the way I felt which created the self-propelling upward spiral out of depression. I loved the results but didn’t want to stay on the medication forever.

Withdraw Symptoms
I experienced withdraw symptoms typical of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) every time I didn’t take my medication right away at my scheduled time. (Even though Venlafaxine isn’t technically a SSRI it has similar withdraw symptoms to SSRIs and there is a lot of information on the internet regarding SSRI withdraw.) I hated these symptoms because I felt the medication was controlling so much of my life. If I took my medication just 2 hours late I would be bed ridden with brain zapping, sadness, and nausea. Wikipedia explains that because it has such a short half-life in the body (the amount of time it takes half the medication leaves the body) your body is more susceptible to withdraw. So for a while I made it my first priority to take the medication at the exact time every morning which isn’t easy when you are a scatter-brain and easily distracted!

Then after a while (two months since I started the meds) I started getting the withdraw symptoms again when taking the 75mg at the exact same time every morning. I even tried taking one 37.5mg pill in the morning and one at night and still had the withdraw symptoms and wasn’t able to sleep because I took half the meds later in the day. The psychiatrist explained that my receptors were not getting enough serotonin at this level of medication and should up the dosage. He said that Venlafaxine prescribed under 300mg provides serotonin to the receptors in the brain to keep you from feeling depressed while on the medication. However, at around 300mg, the meds start to repair the receptors to absorb the serotonin at a normal healthy functioning rate. For the longest time, I thought he was just trying to push drugs to make more money from the pharmaceutical companies, but after being on the medication for four months I decided to trust him and wanted to “repair my receptors” so they could absorb the natural serotonin that I would produce after going off the medication. I definitely didn’t want to take all this nasty medication and be back to depression square one once off the medication. I stayed at 300mg for eight months.


Getting off Venlafaxine
After months of pairing my medication with visits to a counselor, going to a 12 step group called Adult Children of Alcoholics, practicing with a local roller derby team, and making new healthy friends, I was finally ready to get off Venlafaxine. I had a stable living environment and some free time to allow myself space to get off the drug. By this time, I had graduated college and no longer had access to the psychiatrist at the university’s health center and my insurance did not cover the very expensive visits to a psychiatrist so I decided to work with an inexpensive nurse practitioner. I talked with her about getting off Venlafaxine and she was not very familiar with the drug. She did recall having one client that went off Venlafaxine cold turkey. I was so excited to get off the medication I did not do any research of my own. Big mistake. I decided to cut down my dose from 300mg to 150mg and had one of the worst days of my life. I do not recommending this to anyone in the world! There may be a lucky few that can quit this medication cold turkey, but I think the majority of people need to taper off slowly and carefully. Please learn from my mistake and do not take such a big step down from 300mg to 150mg. I had multiple severe panic attacks, severe brain zaps, nausea, severe suicidal thoughts, and extreme emotions due to withdrawing from such a large step. I stubbornly stayed at 150mg when I should have gone back to 300mg because I wanted so badly to get off the medication and did not know I had to taper off for such a long period of time. I did some research online and everyone recommends tapering off slowly. What I should have done was go to a psychiatrist and get 37.5mg pills and take one 37.5mg step down every three to five days depending on the severity of the withdraw. So after I got my bearings, that is what I did from 150mg a slow steady decrease.


Coping With Withdraw Symptoms and Tapering Off
I made sure that I was totally prepared before decreasing to 112.5mg. I got some supplements that people online recommended for SSRI withdraw, Fish Oil and B Complex Vitamins. I am not sure if these worked for me because I still had brain zaps (maybe not as severe as without them?) and I was scared to see how it would feel without them. I have found that eating lots of dark greens helped and eating enough food so that I was never hungry kept the brain zapping down. Drinking lots of water also helped the brain zaps. Exercising every day to get a cardio workout helped too. HASfit.com has amazing youtube video workouts online for free. My favorite home workout routine is HASfit’s Dynamic Warm-up, the 20 Minute Aerobic Workout to Look Good Naked, and 7 Min Oblique Workout Muffin Top Exercises.


I found it really difficult to decrease from 37.5mg to 0mg. I took half of a pill (about 18.75mg) for five days and thought the intensity of brain zaps would decrease, but they were still very persistent. I then tried a quarter of a pill for a couple days and still zapping. Today is my second day off the medication and still have brain zaps and feel very emotionally sensitive. I really hope the zaps go away soon because they affect my vision and hearing a little. Driving is a little scary too because making turns makes me dizzy. Overall I am excited to be off the medication and am hoping for the best. I am looking forward to staying happy and healthy without this medication. I plan on living out my dreams and living a meaningful life just like all the other happy people in the world do. Today, I do not let my depression backseat drive anymore. I hope I will never need to use Venlafaxine again, but am so thankful that I was able to use it when I did because it really saved my life. I hope this helps people through their process. Thanks for reading!!!

[gayleggg]

Thanks so much for sharing your story. I'm sure there are a lot of people that will benefit from your experience.

I took Effexor once for a while. I don't remember having any trouble switching to another med but I know that a lot of people suffer when trying to get off of it.

[RisuNeko]

i think i went off high dose effexor cold turkey and had no problems. i guess i'm one of the lucky ones.

[kiwi33]

I have the impression that individual differences may be important here.

I have been on Effexor XR (150 mg/day) for about 7 years. It has helped me and I have not experienced any unpleasant side-effects.