Venlafaxine symtoms

I went of sertraline about 8 months ago all together and just went of it because of being in hospital a lot had really bad withdrawals for ages including serotonin syndrome. That's stayed with me anyway from a long weekend I had in hospital. Sertraline just didn't agree with me so I just had to. Have been on and of diazepam to help and been using propranolol for a while now that did really help for the anxiety but my mood generally did improve for a while till I relapsed again.

Thank you I stopped being sick now though about 6 and managed to eat something just dreading tomorrow morning if it happens again

Just for future reference, when withdrawing from these meds, it is normal for there to be a windows and waves pattern of recovery, where you will feel bad, then better, then bad again, etc. until eventually everything gets less intense, but it can take months and even years if you taper off too fast or do a cold turkey.  It is recommended when coming off these meds to do a 10% per month taper, 10% of the previous dose, not the starting dose, so that the cuts get smaller as you go.  This is because from the minimum effective dosage down to zero is freeing up receptors that had been blocked by the drug, and freeing them up creates big neurotransmitter imbalances that cause the withdrawal symptoms.  Very often the anxiety and depression don't come on until five to 10 months out.  So, your "relapse" falls in line with the expected pattern. Your best bet would have been to try to reinstate a very small dose of sert just to alleviate wd symptoms (maybe 10mg) rather than going to a new med.  If ven turns out not to agree with you, you could try that, see if the doc would prescribe a liquid to make it easier to get that smaller dose.  Once stable you would then do the 10% taper off the rest.

Be careful about switching around meds at this time.  Your nervous system is highly destabilized from the sert wd and scrambling to try to regain its footing, so adding new drugs into the mix could in fact go paradoxical and make you feel worse, may be what is happening with the ven.  I know some people have bad start-up symptoms going on it anyway.  When I started ven, I had no start up side effects that I was aware of.

Yer it was longer then 8 months was more like a year ago I came of sertraline then about 3 or 4 months ago my anxiety got a lot worse again with having like mini fits as well now or what ever they are. Yer does make sense in the time frame your saying still. So went doctors he offered me to go back on setraline but refused and just agreed to the propranolol that worked really well to begin with made me a lot more confident but gradually that isn't working as well and my mood been getting worse again kind of burn out that's why they think I have emotional instability as well because my mood was up and down but in extreme little periods. Then went up or ages now just down so they think it's burn out as well and now my mood just relapsed again. I just don't want to go back on sertraline again after all the hallucinations and nearly loosing my self I felt like my personality changed a lot on that drug and became so forgetful on it. Tbh though after the sickness I'm feeling not a lot of difference from this to the sertraline.

The ups and downs are definitely cycling from wd (windows and waves).  The idea of reinstatement is to put you on such a small dose that it will alleviate such symptoms without bringing on the side effects that you were having.  Unfortunately, all psych meds have such drawbacks - they are not a cure but a band-aid, and long term use brings on bigger problems than they fix.  

 It is no fun to consier going back on the med that was causing such troubles, but sometimes we have to do it to get stable and then taper very slowly off, hopefully staving off withdrawal, and then be free of them!

They poop out and then you end up where you did.  P drugs are great for crisis situations to give you a leg up, but aren't a long term solution.  So, therapy, CBT in particular, as well as meditation (scientifically proven to help with depression and anxiety), mindfulness, etc, are more lasting solutions.  But now you are caught up in the instability from the drugs and sometimes during these periods it is difficult to even have these techniques help, because the symptoms are not from life situations and historical patterns but from brain chemistry gone awry.  I get the problems you speak of, the memory issues, personality change, etc.  You just want your self back.  I have had all of this on ven, along with sexual side effects, so it certainly wasn't a magic bullet for me.  I just kept taking them, though, thinking I had a depressive brain that required meds; just didn't think about the fact that I wasn't fixed on them.  They make you not care to try, really.