Any advice or info on experiences with either Lexapro or Effexor?

I took Celexa a couple of years ago, but understand these 2 work better and have fewer side effects.

Thanks for any input!!:)

i took lexapro and it worked well for a while but it then it kinda pooped out on me. i then started on effexor and it really seems to be working very well for me. i had to drop the effexor to 75 though due to a side effect and my IBS condition. i take effexor with prozac and the combo are great together. there really arent many side effects with either of the meds, but for side effects lexapro is the best in my opinion. and both are weight neutral. hope this helps
-heather

Effexor is known to have some of the worst withdrawl effects of any SSRI or SNRI medicines. So, unless you take it for the rest of your life, you will eventually have to deal with the withdrawls. I only took Effexor for a couple of months for anxiety. When I stopped taking it I felt the infamous "brain zaps." I can't imagine what the withdrawl symptons would have been like if I had taken Effexor for a few years.

Also, I should mention that while the Effexor helped my anxiety, it did nothing to help with ADD. I currently take Xanax for anxiety and Adderall for ADD and this combination is working reasonably well.

I'm on 5mg of Lex with 40mg of Ritalin LA --- I can't be more pleased with the combination. I was on Rit alone then added Prozac. Prozac completely counter-acted my Rit so we switched to the Lex and I'm extremely happy with the results.

I'm taking Lexapro 20mg and I'm very happy with it. I get zero side effects from it. Many people from crazymeds.org and crazyboards.org tend to agree that it is one of the better SSRIs with the lowest side effect profile. Effexor supposedly has the worst withdrawl of all SSRI SNRI type drugs. I've also heard Effexor can have harsher side effects, but have no experience with it. Lexapro can be bad from what I hear but mainly because the dosage mg is so low and it is hard to titrate off. You end up having to cut pills up into tiny tiny portions or switch to another SSRI and titrate off that.

I'm considering Lexapro myself but I'm wary of going on another SSRI because I had bad experiences with Paxil and Celexa.
I was on Effexor for a while. It worked ok but I ran out once nad was useless within 48hrs until I could get more. I mean could not leave the house completely useless and horrible feeling. Once I decided to come off it about six months ago I went through hell. Zaps, blurred vision, slight halucinations, anxiety, all kinds of horribleness. Seriously, that stuff is like heroin.

I would have to say that in my first two weeks of taking Effexor (37.5mg first week, 75mg 2nd week) I have never been closer to wanting to put a bullet in my skull. And the scary thing is that it wasn't because I was still depressed, it was the 3 day long HELL I went through when increasing the dosage 2x as per my doctors instructions.

The first week on 37.5mg made me feel way too happy and like I was constantly under the influence of a low dose of MDMA (ecstasy). I dunno if any of you have ever used MDMA, but that's exactly how I felt. I was insanely happy, no anxiety and in dark rooms or when I was outside at night I would get some really interesting open eye visuals.. patterns and such.

It all changed when I increased to 75mg on the 8th day. A little while after taking the dose in the morning I got incredibly anxious, every muscle in my body felt like it was tensing up to the point where I could literally feel the soreness all over my body. I would get minor electrical zaps that people always talk about during the withdrawl and later on in the day I actually started losing a lot of coordination and fine motor control, most noticably in my hands and fingers. It was hard to walk, I couldn't eat and I just laid in bed all day, writhing in agony, every inch of my body restless and sore, and completely unable to sleep.

It was terrible!

I took one more dose the next day, only because of my mother and her persistance. It was a little bit better, but still for the majority of the day I laid in my bed, tired enough to not want to move, but so restless, edgy, anxious, and filled with pain that I was wishing to god for either the ability to go to sleep or a loaded handgun. My friends managed to get me out of the house later that evening to go down one girls dock on a lake near us to watch the sun set.

The whole time I just sat there, unable to really formulate anything complete enough to make sense and just basically depressed out of my mind because I felt like such complete and total ****. And to top it off the girl that I had been seeing at the time showed up later on and the whole rest of the night she was making an enormous amount of effort to sleep with me that night. It only made it worse becuase I had absolutely zero sex drive and couldn't seem to get it across to her...


So, to sum it up... Effexor is a HORRIBLE drug in my opinion. I'd rather become a junkie and go through horrible heroin or meth withdrawl than ever take effexor again. But do keep in mind that it might work well for some people, but it's pretty much guranteed that they are going to want to die if their script runs out and they can't get a refill soon enough.


Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, lexapro is working great for me. I'm on 10mg a day and my depression has been greatly alleviated. There were some side effects the first few days I took it, but after a week I could barely notice them.


I'm not going to tell you what I think you should take, but I feel that after reading my post you should know what the best choice to start with is. Good luck! :)

i took lexapro for a while but stopped because it causes me to clench my teeth to the point of making my jaw ache.

Celexa/Lexapro made me numb to the world. Sure it controlled the depression and anxiety.. but at the cost of my sex life and emotions.. everyone reacts differently though. I'm now trying Wellbutrin.