First time taking Effexor. Any experiences?

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My doctor prescribed Effexor. I'll be starting at a low dosage (37.5 mg) and then increasing. I'll follow up with her in 1 week.
This will be my first time on this type of medication.

A bit of background: lately, everything bothers me. I send an email, I wonder if I wrote the wrong thing. I send someone a FB, and I wonder if I offended them for intruding on their privacy; moreover, if the the friend request target is female, I worry that her husband or boyfriend will get angry at me. The rare times I'm at a social gathering, I wonder if I said the wrong thing or came across as a jerk. My daily experiences and conversations run in a loop at night and can't get it out of my head, screwing up my sleep. I'm excessively self-conscious and fear that people view me as a creep.

I’ve never been on Effexor, but I am on some psych meds. I have a similar thought pattern. I ruminate a lot. Unfortunately, the meds haven’t really helped with that.

Do you see a counselor? They can help you learn how to break negative thought processes. I’m still trying to figure it out. I have good days and bad days.

Good luck.

I've been on Effexor a couple different times before and it worked like it was supposed to I guess (I never could stay sober long enough to get the full benefit from it) and the only side effect I can recall that was notable was excessive sweating. I'm now currently on Cymbalta which is another SNRI

In my experience medication has been more of a hindrance than help with depression. While I was on effexor I ended up having an EKG because of too fast heart although it couldn't have been the drug. Coming off that one was the most unpleasant.

For me, Effexor didn't last long. I was in hospital when I was put on it and a few days later after I was discharged from hospital, I kept having panic attacks. They worsened in intensity so my mum took me to the ED. The doctor there found that my blood pressure was really high too so he said to stop taking Effexor. I was put back on Lexapro, having been on it before.

My psychiatrist said that Effexor was meant to calm panic and anxiety and couldn't work out why I had such a reaction.

Aside from all this, RavenShark, I hope Effexor helps you.

Effexor has a really short half life which you can enter withdrawals just by missing your daily dose by a few hours. Effexor has the worst withdrawals of any antidepressant there is. Just keep that in mind. If you ever decide to go off, taper really slowly and you may need to open the capsule and divide out the beads to taper off the smallest size dose capsule before stopping completely.

Effexor works as an SSRI up until about 150mg, from 150mg to 300mg it works as an SNRI and at 300mg+ it works as an SNDRI.

I had minimal benefit the first time I was on Effexor, about 10 years ago, and I can definitely vouch for the horrendous "discontinuation syndrome."

I came back to it, though, after having been on everything else, because it came up as a good match on genetic testing.

This time I'm on it in conjunction with Abilify, and I'm really experiencing some relief, notably from anxiety, but a fair amount of relief from depression as well.

Drug combinations make a difference, as do genetics, it would seem.