Lowering dose on Effexor question

[Ari Magnússon]

ok long story short. I am dealing with GAD. I was first put on Zoloft and Ativan with not so much luck. I was switched to Venlafaxine(EffexorXR) 75mg and Mirtazapine 15 mg and later upped to 30mg. I felt terrible I was very groggy and tired during the day. So the doctor dropped the mirtazapine and told me to up the EffexorXR 2 days after I quit the mirtazapine. The first two days without the mirtazapine I was getting better. Then upped the dose on the EffexorXR to 150mg. For the first 3 days after that I felt perfect! After the first 3 days on the 150mg I started going backwards veeery quickly and started having panic attacks again. My stomach is very weird and I am very tired. I feel like I am passing out, fainting and nauseus. I felt like before I started any medication. So the doctor told me to drop back to 75mg which seemed to be the golden dosage. My question is how long time does it take for the medication to drop back in the system? I was on 150mg for 10 days before the doctor dropped it back to 75. This is the first day back on the 75 and I still feel pretty bad. I am just very confused and want everything to be like when I was taking 75mg.

[Linda0818]

When I was coming off of Celexa, I was dropping the dose back gradually and it usually took about 2 weeks for the weirdness to go away once my body adjusted to the new dose. I would then drop the dosage again and wait another 2 weeks, etc. Everyone is different, but that was my experience. I'm a little surprised your doc told you to simply "drop from 150 to 75" just like that. That's quite a drop in dosage without tapering.

[ozm8ey]

It could be from something else, I've been on 150mg EFEXOR-XR for about 2 years now and without it I feel like i'd be dead. I don't seem to get the bad effects that other people do, though first they put me on zoloft and that made me feel like crap so they switched me to EFEXOR-XR. Not saying that it is something else but it could be