coming off venlafaxine

Hi folks, hope this helps somewhat to some of you, i have twice hadto come off venlafaxine and it is not easy but here are some tips to what i did from coming off 375mg to zero. I had been on the ven for approx 10 years. This was done with help of my GP and advice from pharmacist.

1) Reduce slowly - i withdrew at rate of about 75mg/2 weeks. Every withdrawl caused brain shocks (sort of like when you turn your head and it takes split second longer for your vision to catch up), but these passed after couple days

2) After the last 75mg i withdrew down to 37.5mg for fortnight

3) Then went down to 37.5mg every other day. This is when brain shocks and nausea came worse

4) after stopping completely two days later withdrawls were terrible. I went back on the 37.5mg and dr prescribed me low dose of prozac which i took alongside the ven for couple days, then stopped the ven, continued the prozac for another week then stopped that too and had no further withdrwals.

The second time round i did it without the prozac, but had only been on the med for about 6 months this time and only came down from 150mg.

I went through same process, but when the withdrawls kicked in this time i took travel sick meds and wore those wee travel sickness bands to help with the nausea feeling , which was like motion sickness, drank ginger tea and took week off work and basically lay on the couch, took about a week to fully clear the withdrawls.

Hope this helps some, and if anyone wants any more infor just ask

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