Effexor Withdrawal/Antidepressant Withdrawal

I’m currently going through withdrawal from a prescription drug called Effexor. Effexor is an SNRI antidepressant, which I mentioned in my last blog post. I’m writing my personal experience here because you also need to know the downside of these medications. I’m not just going to tell you the wonderful side to them. They do save lives, it’s true – but they come with side effects like any other medication. Because the type of depression I suffer from is bipolar depression (I’ll write about that some other time) my doctors and I fear my high dose of Effexor may be causing me some problems. We decided to get me down to half the dose I was at and boy am I suffering right now!

Effexor is known to be a pain to lower the dose or discontinue. Like most antidepressants, you can have withdrawal effects. Right now mine are extreme anxiety and some agitation. I’ve found taking a Benedryl seems to calm me down and make my thoughts race less. Many doctors will deny that antidepressants have these withdrawal effects. Take it from someone who has been on most psychiatric drugs on the market though – they do. Any time you stop putting a medication in your body, you’ll miss it in one way or another!

By any means, don’t take this as my telling you not to take antidepressants if you need them! As I mentioned, I’m just lowering my dose, not coming off the Effexor entirely. And I am doing this under my psychiatrist’s supervision also. I just wanted to write this to make it clear there is a downside too. Everything has both sides of the coin to it.

I’m taking some steps to minimize the withdrawal and if you decide to lower your dose or come off your medication (with your doctor’s approval) I’m going to share them to help you. First – go as slowly as possible! The more you can draw out the tapering down process, the better. Also, you can alternate doses every other day. For example, I’m taking 225mg one day right now and 150mg the next for a few days before I drop off to 150mg. As I said I’ve found Benedryl is helping me…it may or may not help you. Those are the main tips I can give you. Good luck with your journey.