Anxiety & Panic Community

First off, let me just say that if you are currently trying to get off of Effexor, you're doing the right thing and I sympathize with what you're going through. Over the past 3 years I've tapered down from 300 mg, and am almost completely off of it. I've been on Effexor for 6 years, and I'm a 25 year-old female. Every time I taper off of Effexor, I drop about 10 permanent pounds (as in non-water weight, real pounds) and my hair grows. My mood is more stable on a regular basis and I have more energy. The good results come after 7-10 days of withdrawal that I've learned how to manage from each time I taper down. Here are some tips I have:

• Take supplements- Omega 3, Milk Thistle and (non-flush) Niacin have helped me to avoid brain zaps.
  
• Get lots of sleep
• Don't taper down again as soon as you feel "okay" because your body is still adjusting. It's like landing a plane. If you do it too fast and taper down too many mgs at once, you'll have a much harder time.
• It's not the number of mg you're reducing, it's the percentage of the dose that makes a difference. If you're on 150 mg and you taper down 75, it's going to suck. This leads me to my next discovery:
• I made up this method with my doctor and it worked very well: I wanted to go down from 75 mg to 37.5, but I was working and going to school so I couldn't risk the debilitating effects of withdrawal. I had my doctor write two prescriptions: one for 37.5 mg of Effexor XR capsules, and another for 37.5 mg of Effexor immediate-release tablets. I took a 37.5 (extended release) capsule in the morning, when I normally take my pill. Around noon, I took half of the 37.5 immediate release tablet. I waited until around 5pm when I started sweating and feeling a bit dizzy, and took the other half of the immediate release tablet. I did this for a week. I gradually spaced out the length of time between taking the two halves of the immediate-release tablet so that I was taking the second half before bed. Then I stopped with the second half of the tablet, and spaced out the XR capsule and half of 37.5 where I finally got to where I could take 37.5 of the XR capsule in the morning, and one half of the IR tablet at night. I spaced it out by increasing 2 hours every couple of days between taking the 1.5 pills per day. Finally I was only taking the 37.5 XR capsule in the morning.

Make sure that your doctor gives this the "okay" before you try experimenting. I've read in lots of sites that you shouldn't remove the beads per-XR capsule to try tapering off of 37.5 mg (because they don't make doses that go any lower). I'm sensitive to withdrawal from Effexor, and I've been able to taper down from 37.5 by taking the beads out. There are 124 beads per XR capsule. I removed one bead per day, now I'm only taking 20 beads a day and I feel okay enough about going down to zero. I want to get off of this stuff. I have no history of depression and I think I was wrongly prescribed this based on situational depression. My (former) doctor kept increasing my dose, I think I started at 37.5 and I got up to 300 mg. I gained 50 lbs, I was crying all the time, I binge-ate and couldn't stop sleeping. This stuff is poison. If you're thinking of getting on antidepressants, I highly recommend considering a different medication than Effexor unless you are okay with having to take a pill every single day until you decide to taper off. With Effexor, you can't forget your meds at home or skip a day. The half-life is shorter, so you start going through withdrawal within a matter of hours after your usual time of taking the pill. I have been in plenty of situations where I've had to shell out $300 for my dose because of a lapse of insurance coverage, or when the pharmacy was closed over a long weekend and I had to go to the ER to get a dose. It turns any prescribed patient into a junkie, and it's a sick game played by these manufacturers.