Tell me about your experience with Effexor!

That is why I want to get down to the lowest dose. I don't want to have to worry about withdrawal symptoms if I miss a pill.

I do the generic 37.5 one a day and can say the SEs weren't terrible the first couple if days. Felt a little loopy but no different than if I drank a pot of coffee. About 6 weeks after I would feel real tired (see above) but that could be from my thyroid function. I'll find that out tomorrow at my regular checkup. Otherwise I've had no real problems with it. 

Karen 

Wrenn, today was my fourth day on 37.5 and I've had no side effects at all. I've been taking it in the mornings.

I just started 2 weeks ago....for hot flashes at night which were unbearable.  . 37.5 and then upped to 75.   No real side effects.  I was taking 2 in the morning and had a couple hot flash nights so now I space them out.  One in the a.m. And the other 37.5 in the p.m..     That seems to work better for me.  Not sure if that's the way to take it.  Bottle just says take 2 a day with a meal.   

Anyone else take 2 at separate times? 

I had no SE starting it either. I stopped Prozac for three days then started Effexor.  It was an easy transition.It works pretty well for HF but periodically I have "breakthrough" HF for a couple weeks. Must be when I am really hormonal.

Good morning. Freaking out a bit here. Is anyone experiencing excessive bruising? It looks like I've been beaten! This morning I found a big ugly one on my butt cheek that wasn't there yesterday. One of the reasons I started is my stupid fear of recurrence or leukemia. 

Thanks

Karen

I have had very good experiences with Venlafaxine, the Effexor generic. Many in my family have used it for depression, so often at higher doses than for hot flashes. One's biology has a lot to do with which meds work well for them. My opinion is to always start at half the recommended starting dose, and go up very gradually. Prozac is a useful drug for decreasing or d.c.ing Effexor. It IS important to do that grqdually as well. 

Wrenn, how are you doing?

Thanks for checking Mameme. It has been two weeks at 37.5 and I think I feel a bit less dark. :-)  I am noticing nausea and I want to sleep a lot. I used to sleep 8 hours and wake up alert but now will fall back to sleep for 10 hours and still don't want to get up. My doctor wants me to increase the dose but I want to stay on as low a dose as I can as long as possible. I am also concerned that an increased dose will mean increased nausea and sleepiness. I will give it another week and then might double it.

I am reallly glad I found this thread. I didn't read that about the bruising. I haven't noticed any. 

I am stopping the effexor. I felt like I was on acid last night with vivid wide awake dreams and the buzzing in my head is way worse at night when it is quiet. I have only been on 37.5mg for just over two weeks so I shouldn't have withdrawal. I missed this morning's dose and feel fine but if I feel harsh side effects I will take it again until I see my doctor on Tuesday. I don't want to wait until then to stop because that means it is in my system that much longer. I was told you need at least 200mg to affect neuropathy and I am sure I couldn't handle that.

Will come back to report on withdrawal effects. If anyone else here has come off them can you tell me what your experience was? thanks. 

Thanks Farmerlucy, I was trying to get used to the constant sleepiness even after sleeping many hours and wanting to lie down in the grass when I was out but these latest SE tell me it is not for me. I was also noticing my stomach was really bloated. One person asked me why my stomach was so high up. I actually went to try on bras because the giant stomach looked so much worse without boobs to distract. I found the bras were just riding up into my neck because my stomach was so bloated. I will happy to see that go down a bit.

I called the pharmacist and she said it is such a low dose and I haven't been on it long so withdrawal shouldn't be a problem. whew....there are some crazy withdrawals if you look at the internet.

I am really greatful to this thread for helping make the decision to try. 

wrenn & others,  If you got the headache feeling the first few days you went on Effexor, then expect to feel them again when you wean off of it.  You will see the withdrawl sometimes listing "brain shivers" and the best description that I have read about it said, "it's like when you turn your head to look at something and your brain is about a second behind your eyes."  

I took Effexor XR for about a year.  The highest dose being 75 mg.  While it helped with hot flashes quite a bit, fibromyalgia somewhat (more was needed to help that and I didn't want to up the doseage); it gave me severe dry mouth.  Biotene didn't help the dry mouth, so I finally wanted my saliva back and weaned off by going back down to 37.5, and then actually splitting the grains from one of those capsules in half for a few weeks.  Even then, once I quit taking anything, my head still felt spacey for 2-3 weeks.  Not terrible (because I weaned down) but definitely noticeable.  Had some headaches too.  Just tried not to take anything for them because I knew it was the withdrawl.

If you have the regular tabs (not time release caps) it is not to difficult to halve or quarter them to wean off slowly.  If you have time release, you can ask for the non-time release just to wean off.  What I did, spliltting the grains, is not recommended.  Someone mentioned getting another drug to help with the withdrawl.  I'm not familiar so I can't say.  Just do not go off cold turkey. 

I'm sorry it didn't work out for you, Wrenn.

I've worked my way up to 150mg (which is where my MO wanted me to be, for now at least) and haven't had any real issues. I *am* sleepy a lot, but I'm doing radiation right now as well, plus I'm on half a mg of klonopin twice a day (planning to wean off that after radiation is done) so I figure it would be something of a miracle if I *wasn't* sleepy a lot. In any case, it's not an *extreme* "must have a nap right now" sort of sleepiness, just more of a general "a nap would be nice but it can wait" sort of feeling. If that makes sense.

Otherwise, the only side effects I've had are that I've lost a little weight because my appetite just isn't all that big (this is a good thing,) and each time I've upped the dose I've had a day or so of feeling a little jittery--which I had been warned might happen, so I wasn't alarmed by it. 

I've only been on them about three or four weeks, so theoretically shouldn't be feeling that much benefit yet, but my depression level has improved *drastically* and my anxiety is also better, and both were pretty bad, before I started the effexor. So thus far, I'm happy with them.

My mom was also on Effexor after she had DCIS and during at least part of the time she was on Tamoxifen. (She also lost weight while she was on it.) She said the withdrawal part when she stopped them "sucked" but wasn't the worst thing she'd ever been through, and she was over it pretty quickly. It wasn't bad enough for her to discourage ME from trying them, anyway.

As someone told me: Don't let the stories on those internet sites frighten you much: Only the people who have a really hard time bother to post about it. Most of the people who have no real issues are too busy getting on with their lives to complain on the internet.   

lisa - My PCP put me on klonopin after I became severely depressed after my diagnosis. He basically ordered me to stay on it for a year. About ten months later I was feeling good and tapered off over two months. I had no problems at all. It seems you have a very wise MO to recognize and treat not only the physical issues but also the emotional ones.  I hope they all move in that direction.

Have you recently finished active treatment? Watch out for the "end of active treatment" blues. They're a doozie!