Venlafaxine withdrawal please tell me it gets better

[withdrawal123]

Gone from 225mg, to 150mg, to 75mg over a few weeks and on nothing since Friday.

I feel horrendous, physically and emotionally. I made the mistake of googling and read this could last for weeks. Right now I feel light headed and like I might pass out, quite spaced out. I also feel horrendously sick which has only just come on 48 hours after not taking any.

Does anyone have any advice/reassurance? I feel so awful.

Can you explain what a brain zap feels like ? I keep hearing this from people on AD’s

You'd know it if you had one.
It's like a short dzzzzzz in your head. Not painful at all, but startling and alarming. They can be quite strong and you never know when you're going to get them.

I also get a buzz which is not as strong but lasts longer and moving my head can induce them.

It's a bit like there's electrical wires in your head which touch each other briefly.

I'm now down at 37.5mg per day, having come down from 225mg over 24 months.

Ive been at 37.5mg since February now, and going to try to come off it completely in September.

One useful thing I found in coming down from 75 to 37.5 is that you can open up the capsules, and reduce in very gradual steps. In my capsules, the 37.5mg has three mini white tablets inside, so you can drop 37.5 to 25 to 12.5.

I found really high quality Omega 3s and a Vit B complex really helped me with the withdrawal.

@dane8 they do a 37.5 as I was on it. It was the XR version. Mind you, I’m in Canada so you might not be able to get them in the U.K.

You can get 37.5mg in capsules in Ireland, that's what DS was on.

I start getting brain zaps if I'm a couple of hours late taking mine. I can't get my head around what you were advised OP. That's not gradual enough.

Hope you feel better soon though.

You can get 37.5mg in the uk.

Here is photo of mine

It WILL get better. But this is far too fast, as others mentioned. I have no idea why HCPs are always busting their arse to get people off these meds like there's a massive rush. Unless there's a particular reason why there's a major rush, it's far far better to go slow. Withdrawal will be much less intense that way and actually doable.

You can withdraw very gradually by taking the grains out of the capsule and either counting them and removing a small proportion and then increasing the amount you remove very gradually every few days, or you can mix it with water, draw it into a needle less syringe and gradually take less and less.

This is how I did it and it made the brain zaps, flu symptoms and mental rebound much, much milder. They were really very tolerable. Been off it more than 10 years now.

Q. Is there a difference in the actual medication between extended and immediate release, or is it just that XL is in capsule format?

I'm sure I've had XL in both tablets and capsules, but thought that immediate release was only in tablet form.

I guess I'm querying whether taking apart a XL capsule and taking say 12.5mg is the same as taking 12.5mg of an immediate release?

That's a good question TheOrigRights, it could be that taking apart a XL capsule could negate its extended release benefits. Depends how the drug and excipients etc are formulated, which varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

I remember from my days on Venlafaxine that the generics all metabolised slightly differently from the branded version and each other. Ranbaxy was a particularly shite formulation. Got the worst withdrawals from that, I could have told you I was on it if you'd given me it blind.

They do 37.5mg slow release capsules in the UK, it is not advised to remove beads from those ones though as some are filler.

Please, everyone, reduce from this horrible drug really slowly. It took over 2.5 years for me to go from 375mg to zero. I managed to get liquid venlafaxine prescribed which I used from half of a 15.5mg tablet to 0.

There are a lot of good resources out there which advise on how to come of psych drugs safely.

Oof, I had a horrible time coming off that, nasty drug, would never touch it again.

I would really appreciate some advice please!

I was on Effexor for a couple of years (150mg one a day) for anxiety and felt great.

Then earlier this year, one of the GPs at my practice (not my usual doctor, who is lovely) suggested I should start lowering my dose with a view to stopping completely.

She tapered me down over a couple of months to 75mg with no issues at all. Then another GP at the practice, said I should make moves to come off or completely and moved me onto a tapering programme from 75mg down to zero over another couple of months.

I took my last 75mg pill on 8 Aug and have felt great - that was up until a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I have been bursting into tears for no reason, feeling low and waking up in the morning, feeling anxious again.

Could this just be a blip, or side effects of the withdrawal symptoms - or am I having an anxiety relapse? I really hope not!

Any advice appreciated. Thank you.