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Hello, first time poster here. Six months I wasn’t tapered properly off Sertraline after 6 years of use. I foolishly cut my dose from 100 milligrams to 50 without a taper and was then cross tapered to Venlafaxine about a week after the initial dosage cut. I was already experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms and had warned my doctor multiple times but she insisted on the taper to a different drug. After a few days of dropping from my dosage even further as ordered from my doctor and heavily dealing with withdrawal symptoms I started developing tingling and mild numbness in my feet which over the course of a week had taken over all my limbs. Long story short, I completed the tapering process and switched to Venlafaxine, but still 6 months in I’m going through multiple bouts of horrific neurological symptoms and my neuropathy symptoms have turned to debilitating full body burning, aching, severe pain. I now have an extreme heat intolerance, I sweat excessively even when I’m cold, I have full body tremors and jerk in my sleep, I run a fever across my entire body and feel like my CNS is completely fried. I have an appointment coming up to see a Neurologist to get testing done in case this isn’t anything to do with my medication history but I firmly believe my issues are linked to severe case of AD withdrawal syndrome. Or at least it’s morphed into severe protracted withdrawal. I have never reinstated my previous drug but I only realised when I was in tears the other night in severe pain that I’ve still got the medication on hand and was tempted to try reinstating. I don’t think I can fight this any longer and the big ‘S’ word has passed my mind quite a few times. I’m so scared I’ve completely fried my system due to my own negligence as well as my doctor completely screwing me over and if reinstating gets rid of these debilitating symptoms than I’ll do it, but I’m scared I’ll kindle and further damage myself. It is possible to be stuck in severe withdrawal syndrome whilst actively still medicating via an antidepressant? I was on Sertraline which is an SSRI class drug but now I’m on Venlafaxine which is still an antidepressant but under the class SNRI, I’ve never heard of anyone else going through this experience besides me, it’s always people who have removed the drug entirely. I need some help guys if possible, at least some insight that I can pass onto my neurologist in a couple of days… I’m dying here.

Moved back to Arizona in November 2023 and none of the corporate doctors will give me a prescription for tramadol. I have fibromyalgia probably arising from Ehlers Danlos, IBS, Raynaud's, Sjögren's, osteopenia, and inflammatory arthritis in my feet. I can do the taper but then I have no pain management at all. Does anyone here know anything about low dose naltrexone for pain and inflammation? I want to start the naltrexone titration before I am completely off the tramadol in the hopes of having some pain control.

Hi All: Thank you for this WONDERFUL resource! I am so excited to start my first post. In 1994 or 1995 at about the age of 28 I started taking Venlafaxine for immense, longstanding depression with concomitant anxiety. I can remember having severe and debilitating depression with concomitant anxiety since I was about 10 years of age. Back to 1994/1995 (+/-). After taking Venlafaxine for a while, the depression abated and has never come back. Unfortunately, I never ceased taking the drug, even after I felt better. I have been on it for many many years. You can do the math. Yikes! Ultimately, after a 10 month up-titration to 75mg (maybe in 2015), I lost my libido. It was low but not lost. It has not come back. My poor wife. In 2017 and 2018 (I believe), on two separate occasions, I attempted to taper. Each time counting beads from the capsule over a 10 month period, but I went too fast. As a result, I suffered bizarre, horrific and terrorizing anxiety and panic attacks, especially related to communicating with others. I would have this unreasonable idea that I offended someone, or that they misinterpreted something I said, or that they were mad at me, or that they thought I talked their ear off, etc. The emotional reaction I had was almost a sense of terror and panic. Very bizarre. I knew it was the withdraw. I had never ever been THIS crazy, even before starting the Venlafaxine. Please note, when I tapered I also had all the other "fun" side effects - electric shocks, brain zaps, tinnitus, etc., etc. But the worst was the social paranoia, by far! After these 2 unsuccessful tapers(2017 and 2018) things changed in my body/brain. I lost the periodic, positive feelings of excitement and joy, also I noticed I became flat (had almost no feelings of love, empathy, sympathy, or sadness, etc.). Thankfully I don't suffer from depression anymore. It stopped way back in 1995+/-. The depression didn't even come back during my tapers. Now I just suffer ftom moderate social anxiety, GAD, sexual disfunction, lack of excitement, and a feeling of "flatness." In the past I was able to down-titrate to 18.75mg with "tolerable" discomfort; unfortunately, back then I didn't wait to stabilize before further down-titration. I tapered again before I felt better. This compounded my WD symptoms....And, I kept tapering and tapering, thereby compounding the WD symptoms more and more. I am now trying to taper once again. Its been 2 days. This time I am titrating down to 18.75mg and holding there until I feel better, only then will I decrease very slightly and slowly (10% decrease per each down-titration). This time I am not drinking any alcohol or eating sugar. This time I am exercising much more. This time I am more strictly sticking to my whole food plant-based diet. This time I am taking: Multivitamin/multimineral D3 B6 Magnesium potassium Coq10 Choline Inositol Theanine Tryptophan Tyrosine N-acetylcysteine (NAC) Omega-3 Probiotic One of my VERY FEW good qualities is that I have good logic skills and I am a good "researcher." I am intellectually curious. I have seen Medicating Normal (a movie about psych drugs, as most of you know). I have done tons of research of MANY scholarly articles (for many many years), and I am NOW ready to do the taper CORRECTLY this time. I have read many of Alto's articles and many SA posts. They are amazing and informative. Fyi, Venlafaxine Extended Release is my only "psych" drugs. No benzos. No other SNRI/SSRIs. No anti-psychotics. Nothing. I guess I am lucky for that at least. I own and operate a successful business. I Have a beautiful family. I have great family relationships. I Have a 3-year post-graduate education. Don't know if anyone wanted to know all this, but I guess it adds some color to my situation. OK. Enough about me. I want to give ALL of you a very very heart-felt thank you! I truly appreciate what Alto and the members have done by setting up, running and managing this forum. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Hugs and love - The TaperShaperVXR Pls forgive typos and bad grammar. I am writing this from my phone. 🙂

Hi everybody. My name is Gus from Australia. I think i may have found the right site here. I've been on effexor 150mg/day (most of the time. 200mg/day at worst times, 100/day at better times)for about 11 years, was on zoloft, aropax and citolopram for short times beforehand. I wish i'd found this site earlier as it has some great advice for tapering. Too late though as i've already done that with a set of ebay scales and a calculator. Tapered over about 4 months(yeah i know, too fast according to this site). Even still, a lot slower than the doctors would have me do it. I'd just got down to 75mg and a dr told me to go on 37.5 for 2 weeks then just stop. I took his precription to avoid an arguement and threw it in the bin once i got home. Once i got down to about 60mg/day i only dropped it by about 5mg/week. I've been on zero for just over 9 weeks. If my wife hadn't suggested i try her magnesium powder(as it may help with stress) i'd be a complete mess. This stuff really helps. Are there many people out there who can please tell me how long it took to get back to where you were before you started effexor? What kind of symptoms, waves and windows you had and how often did you have each and how long did they last each time you had them? Also, i've heard omega 3's are usefull. Can anyone please tell me how so? What do they relieve and how much to take? Any informed/positive replies are very welcome. Regards, Gus.