Quote Originally Posted by panic_down_under View Post
So did you take the antidepressants (ADs) daily, or just when anxiety got bad?
Yes, I took them every single day for years.

Which pretty much ensures venlafaxine won't work. Whatever benefits you're getting from it probably owe more to the placebo effect than the med.

Antidepressants have no direct effect on anxiety, or depression in the way say aspirin has on a headache. They work by stimulating the growth of new brain cells (neurogenesis) to replace cells killed, or prevented from growing by high brain stress hormone levels. The therapeutic response is produced by these new cells and the stronger interconnections they forge, not the meds directly. For more detailed explanations see: Depression and the Birth and Death of Brain Cells (PDF) and How antidepressant drugs act.

Venlafaxine has a very short half-life, around 15 hours for the XL extended release version. By taking it ever second day you are probably continually switching neurogenesis on and off and essentially training the brain to stop responding to the med. ADs need to be taken daily.
I know it’s strange, but I assure you that this does help for me. Believe me or not. I figured this out only because I forgot to take my effexor one day, and I got double vision and cried a lot. But I noticed I was able to do a bit more than I normally could. I experimented with this until I found the smallest dose I could do it with.

Yeah, I’ve had hydroxyzine. I feel nothing when I take it.