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Venlafaxine(Effexor) Severe side effects.

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Devin2493

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Joined
Feb 12, 2010
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Rochester Mn
Ok, so I just started taking 75mg of VenlafaxineIR. I am a 165 pound male if that helps, but after taking the 75mg pill in the morning I end up vomiting it up within two hours anyways. The 75mg is once a day for a week, then its twice daily after that. I mean I think it helps because even the little bit that does absorb before it comes back up makes me calm, so I dont want to stop taking it, I just need some suggestions for my extreem nausea after taking it. Any suggestions or personal experiences would be VERY much appreciated. Thank you guys:)
 
Try Effexor XR, oddly enough XR has a much lower reported incidence of nausea. I myself take XR, but the insomnia and appetite loss are a bit of a bummer.
 
Effexor is the single most vile-tasting thing I've ever had the displeasure of putting onto my tongue. The tablets seem to dissolve into the saliva almost immediately, filling your mouth with foul bitterness that makes the pills even harder to swallow. And even once you've got them in your stomach, it may still give you nausea/dry heaves (I'm not sure whether that is because Venlafaxine actually is an emetic, or whether it's just your taste neurons telling your stomach: "Dude, we just swallowed the vilest shit ever, no way that was intentional, better vomit it up")

The solution? As stated above, take Effexor XR. Zero bad taste, zero nausea (and in my case, zero effect on my mood, just like regular Effexor).

You'd figure that they could easily make regular Effexor more tolerable by simply coating the pills so that the bitter taste isn't felt for several seconds (atleast long enough to swallow them), but then again, they're probably making *a lot* more money with the XR version.
 
I still can't believe why doctors continue prescribing venlafaxine (Effexor). The amount of bad secondary effects is astonishing. The addiction potential is enormous and the withdrawal symptoms simply unbelievable. Sorry to be so emphatic, but I've known personally several cases of people being continuously prescribed effexor with little or no effects but had tremendous problems afterwards. One, particularly close to me, was actually hallucinating profoundly (like in delirium, so not funny at all) And these were using just the prescribed dosage.

I have talked to several doctors since and many were aware of the problems and were not prescribing effexor any more and were actively advising their colleagues to stop doing it. So I find it appaling that some people are still using and prescribing this substance.

Other illegal substances have lesser problems than venlafaxine!
 
Rorthron said:
I still can't believe why doctors continue prescribing venlafaxine (Effexor). The amount of bad secondary effects is astonishing. The addiction potential is enormous and the withdrawal symptoms simply unbelievable. Sorry to be so emphatic, but I've known personally several cases of people being continuously prescribed effexor with little or no effects but had tremendous problems afterwards. One, particularly close to me, was actually hallucinating profoundly (like in delirium, so not funny at all) And these were using just the prescribed dosage.

I have talked to several doctors since and many were aware of the problems and were not prescribing effexor any more and were actively advising their colleagues to stop doing it. So I find it appaling that some people are still using and prescribing this substance.

Other illegal substances have lesser problems than venlafaxine!
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And what about the millions of other people that took it no problem and tapered off no problem?
 
I've known several people that have been prescribed effexor, and none had anything positive to say about it. One was a girl whom i was dating at the time and she had no end of difficulties associated with this medication. The others had less severe, though still unpleasant, side effects. The girl i mentioned earlier had significantly reduced renal function, which probably had something to do with her side effects being more severe. There are entire internet forums devoted to venlafaxine side effects & methods of tapering off, plenty of horror stories abound as well.. I certainly wouldn't advise going directly against your dr.'s advice, but its certainly worth inquiring about alternate treatment options. I would say that about any med that made someone vomit every time they took it. Lots of anti-depressants have some side effects, but they seem to be more pronounced with effexor.

IIRC, venlafaxine isn't approved for human use or was banned in several EU countries, might want to double check that though.
 
wow interessting i am on 187.5 mg capsules after trying so many others,
and have absolutley no side effects.
guess im lucky to have the cpsules though i have herd about those nasty pills...
 
any major dude said:
I've known several people that have been prescribed effexor, and none had anything positive to say about it. One was a girl whom i was dating at the time and she had no end of difficulties associated with this medication. The others had less severe, though still unpleasant, side effects. The girl i mentioned earlier had significantly reduced renal function, which probably had something to do with her side effects being more severe. There are entire internet forums devoted to venlafaxine side effects & methods of tapering off, plenty of horror stories abound as well.. I certainly wouldn't advise going directly against your dr.'s advice, but its certainly worth inquiring about alternate treatment options. I would say that about any med that made someone vomit every time they took it. Lots of anti-depressants have some side effects, but they seem to be more pronounced with effexor.

IIRC, venlafaxine isn't approved for human use or was banned in several EU countries, might want to double check that though.
Click to expand...

I would say that the side effects of anti-depressants in general are very much down-played - the attitude being "what's a few side effects if you no longer feel like killing yourself, you should just be grateful you're not suicidal anymore". The impact which those side effects can have on quality of life is often overlooked or minimised - many of those side effects have a huge and negative impact on interpersonal relationships of all kinds and that's not a trivial issue for most people.

I can't think of any of the "newer" anti-depressants which haven't been the subject of lawsuits at one time or another. I understand that until a drug is in the wild it's extremely difficult to make a reliable assessment of its risks and benefits but these drugs have been in use for a relatively long time now and it's time to stop over-hyping them and be more honest about their limitations. I think what pisses many people off isn't that these drugs are imperfect but that they aren't warned in advance about those imperfections and are often treated like whiny little bitches when they complain about side effects.
 
Lolie said:
I would say that the side effects of anti-depressants in general are very much down-played - the attitude being "what's a few side effects if you no longer feel like killing yourself, you should just be grateful you're not suicidal anymore".
Click to expand...

Maybe it varies from person to person, but that's exactly my attitude towards SSRI discontinuation syndrome, which I've gone through countless of times trying out probably around a dozen ADs.

Sure, having your head feel like its contained in some sort of free-floated gyroscope and getting zaps everytime you move your eyes from side to side is... irritating, but it sure as hell didn't make me feel like killing myself - very much unlike my depression.
All in all, I'd gladly have taken a year of SSRI discontinuation syndrome over a month, heck a week of depression.

And since we're on the subject of Venlafaxine, I found the taste of this stuff so unbearable that it was only the discontionuation syndrome that got me to continue taking it because I could barely tolerate the taste.

Then again, maybe the reason SSRI discontinuation didn't feel like much of a change was that SSRIs/SNRIs never worked for me in the first place. The people hit hardest by SSRI "withdrawals" are probably the ones that were actually helped by these drugs, and whose depression immediately starts kicking in once they stop taking them - which to me kind seems like a diabetic person complaining about getting hyperglycemia from "Insulin discontinuation syndrome".

Another thing: From my experience, SSRI withdrawal symptoms can be almost nullified by gradually tapering down the dose, or even taking a small dose of a different SSRI. Case in point: I'd forgotten to get a refill a prescription for my current AD (probably Escitalopram, not sure though) and the zaps were beginning to kick in. Out of curiosity, I stumbled upon a barely opened box of Paroxetine my dad had at some point been prescribed as a possible remedy for his cluster headaches. Dropped a pill and bingo - the brain zaps were almost gone.
 
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