Hey, sorry I didn't reply sooner. This is going to be a long write-up because I feel like the context is important if you're going through something similar.

TL;DR: On other meds/antidepressants when I was young for years. Effexor side effects were just annoying things like sleepiness and less sexual arousal. I had a lot of apprehension, but bottom line is that it helped with 99% of my day, I'm very glad I took it and would go back on in a second if I had to.

I started effexor about a week into January. I got the prescription right away after making a same-day appointment with the on-call at my family doctor's clinic (family doctor was on vacation and I didn't want to wait). Things got a bit better right away, and much better within about 10 days. Not that things are perfect now, but how bad things were exists only as a strange memory that I still don't know quite how to relate to. It obviously hasn't been that long, though. I started reducing the dose myself to come off it about 2 weeks ago, I'll explain why later. So I was solidly on it for only about 8 weeks.

I was on Prozac and ADD meds for a while when I was younger, but stopped when I was about 15. I don’t have any ill will towards the Prozac. The ADD meds really kinda sucked, but it was still probably better than the alternatives. At 15 I was a lot more engaged and responsible so I could make up for what the drugs had previously been doing for me.

I think after that point, despite my actual experiences with medication, I tended to think of side effects as this scary unknown. As bad as things were, I was afraid of them changing things/me in a way that I had no control over and the vague promise that it "could get better" didn't really persuade me. I think I see this now as a bit anxiety driven, with this vague stubborn paranoia that I never picked apart critically. That said, even though my reasons for NOT wanting meds might not have been very well developed, I certainly never felt a reason that I wanted to actually go on them, besides being bugged by family. My family is great, but obviously it's how they addressed problems in the past and a couple close family members are also on anti-depressants. Not doing therapy, though.

So things have been bad for a couple years, and then I got tinnitus. Started in one ear after a show in August 2014. I had it for maybe 2-3 months back around September 2013 but that went away on its own. But this one is much worse and it ended up in both ears with like three seperate distinct tones and it fucking sucked. It ruined meditation as a coping strategy. Freaked me out all the time and caused a lot of anxiety while trying to go to sleep. White noise helped, but sometimes I could hear it over the noise, and overall it depressed me so god damn much I think it was a big part of why I started getting panic attacks. But I still didn’t go on meds until one night, after a meditiation class (which sucked with tinnitus), I went to sleep and then woke up an hour and a half later in the middle of a panic attack. I immediately felt like even if I could cope with the panic attacks, I couldn’t cope with not being able to rely on sleep as an escape or to help recover, so I needed something to change as fast as possible and I figured meds would do that, no matter the result. So this was the reason to go on meds for me. They could only make things more bearable, no matter what else. I got them within two days after getting the prescription at a same-day walk-in with my doctor. I’m so glad this was an option, because I kinda thought I might need to see a psychologist or something first to get diagnosed/prescribed.

The immediate side effects to Effexor were sleepiness, but not exactly fatigue so I had no problem keeping up at work or staying awake, I was just yawning a lot more. I also had jaw tightness for the first week. Also, as a side effect, it seemed to block a lot of the hormone drive that comes at the start of arousal so it took more effort to get and maintain an erection, and my orgasms weren’t nearly as intense. This got better after the first 10 days. But that also really didn’t matter for 99% of my day so I really didn’t give a shit, I was just glad to be feeling better. Now that I'm coming off the meds, it's basically reversed completely. The basic fact is that all of these things just felt like physical annoyances, but were nothing compared to the energy it took to just basically manage anxiety in the past. On Effexor, I found everything anxiety-wise just lessened a lot. I found it naturally easier to interact with co-workers and strangers, I didn’t stress out as much about any of the shit that was going. I didn’t have as hard a time making decisions, and questions or conflicts I’d been struggling to resolve in my head for months I just suddenly didn’t even care about. They slowly started to feel like ideas just in my own head that I had no reason to give any energy to, because they weren’t actually coming from the world, where there were things that I could put my energy into. The ideas that did stick around started to make more sense, and I saw what I was missing in my perspective in the past. I had a lot more patience around family and in general things just got automatically better in my relationships without having to tackle any conflict specifically, in part just because I was more upbeat, friendly, and responsive to the little things. I think in general it all just started to give me perspective, and with that I could start to challenge some of my own anxious reactions and assumptions. And I felt happier, acted happier and didn't stress out as much even if I could knew all the basic concerns were still there. I feel like all these things wouldn’t have made sense if described to me a few months ago, it all seems so vague. But it really felt that vague, too. Things were just definitely better, even if I couldn’t point at anything as to why, besides the meds.

Oh, and within about 5 days I stopped giving a shit about the tinnitus. I barely notice it anymore. Which maybe can be hard to relate to from where you are, but now it feels more like mosquitos in the summer than like an ice pick in my brain. Every so often you notice it and it's annoying, but it can't ruin anything good anymore (which I can’t over-emphasize) and often I just forget I have it. Many nights I’ll fall asleep without noticing it. In the past I was technically convinced that tinnitus would just be this omnipresent thing in any silent moment and would be impossible to get used to. But I think in retrospect, there was a harshness or dryness to my perception of a “silent moment” due to anxiety that also explicitly amplified the tinnitus symptoms. Now I feel like noticing it is itself just one state of mind. And when I’m falling asleep and I just feel fine, not even thinking too much or distracting myself, I just forget I have it and I don’t hear it. Even when I notice it, I’m way less stressed about it. It’s not like I can actually justify that feeling, it’s just like I don’t give a shit. I think that’s really the crux of anxiety: If our attention, by nature, has only a finite capacity, then why is it ever on one thing compared to another compared to nothing at all. Why these thoughts and not others. Anxiety just gums up the healthy flow of that whole thing, I think.

The reason I started going OFF the meds is because I started working with this really good counsellor that I just really jive with. And one side effect of Effexor, really like every other drug legal and not legal I’ve ever taken, is that it kind of feels like it cuts off the upper limit of my thoughts and reasoning. And I really feel like I need to produce that to work with this therapist. When I’m on meds and I’m asked to articulate something serious or subtle, I felt I would easily get jumbled in my explanation and lose the point. Like I stopped taking ADD meds way back to do school work because I felt that the work I generated off meds was better, with higher highs, despite how much harder it was to do, and in the long term that was very important to me provided I could manage it, and I could at the time. I mean it’s kind of like the same way it reduces the sex thing, it’s like it kinda dumbs things down a bit. But the truth is that doesn’t matter for like 99% of the day, so going on meds recently was still unquestionably the right choice. And now that I know what they do and what I need them for, I’d feel a lot more comfortable going back on them if things get worse instead of better. And to be honest, I miss them. I already feel sadder and more anxious without them and that’s honestly hard to fight right now. But I also kinda have perspective on that for the first time in a long time.

Also, as a side note, I would say the single biggest change I ever made for my anxiety was when for a period of about a year I completely eliminated refined sugars/artificial sweeteners from my diet. This was based on no advice or research, I just sat down one day and thought “what do I think would make this better” and “go off sugar” was the first answer. My point of this story, besides advising against sugar, is just a reminder to consider whatever safe options resonate with you and don't just always heed the intellectual-fetishism that tries to objectively tell you right from wrong. Listen to feedback, but make your own choices.

So anyways, I hope some of this is relatable. I just want to say that a lot of other people go through the kinds of things you are, and there's nothing but support that comes from that community. I still feel pretty isolated in the whole thing, but I already feel better than I did, and I'm less afraid of my own anxiety and tinnitus than I have been in 8 months.