Welcome to part three of my series of articles on changing to a new antidepressant. Today is day three on Venlafaxine. You can read about why I decided to switch here and how I felt on the days coming off Citalopram here. I’m going to be completely honest, changing to a new antidepressant is hard. The last few days have been the hardest of all.

The Side-Effects

The listed side-effects of taking Venlafaxine that are most common are:

• feeling sick
• headaches
• sweating
• dry mouth
• trouble sleeping
• feeling dizzy
• feeling sleepy
• constipation

For more info you can check out the NHS website here.

My Experience

Feeling sick, check! I have felt sick as a dog for the last two days. I barely ate yesterday, although once I was sure I wasn’t actually going to be sick, it got a bit better. I’ve also had headaches, but over the counter painkillers have kept them at bay. I’m not particularly sweaty. I have had a dry mouth, but I always do, so I can’t say if this is down to the meds. I haven’t had any dizziness or constipation, but I have had trouble sleeping and feeling really sleepy throughout the day. All of the side effects have been annoying but manageable. I was still able to go to work and act normally.

How I’ve Been Feeling

My anxiety has levelled off a bit, thank god. Unfortunately, I’ve had a really awful couple of days where my mood was in the toilet. I worried I wouldn’t be able to make it through work. When I coupled a very low mood with feeling exhausted, it was extremely tough to keep going. However, I’ve only been in my current role since January, so I didn’t want to go off sick. I also like the people I work with a lot, so I thought it was better to go in and try and keep busy. I estimate it was at least ten times harder than even my worst-case scenarios, but I persevered, and I’m glad I did. It helped show me what I was made of, which made me feel stronger and reinforced my belief I could cope.

Please let me stress, though, that this is just my experience of changing to a new antidepressant. Every person is different. If you switch medication, you could experience different side effects due to your body chemistry, type of antidepressant, degree of depression, home life, work-life, and a million other factors. Just because I managed to keep going to work doesn’t mean you’ll be able to. That is ok. You aren’t weaker than me or a failure. You’re just different. The critical thing is to take care of yourself and do what’s right for you. For more information, I put together a mental health resources page right here.

Going Forward

Now that I’ve started the Venlafaxine, it’s going to take a few weeks to take effect. Antidepressants are not a quick fix, so if you’re considering them, you need to know that going in. A fact many people don’t know is they can make your symptoms worse initially. Eventually, your mood should improve, but your doctor may need to adjust the dose to find the right level. A lot of it is trial and error, and there’s no substitute for it. As for me, I know the next few weeks aren’t going to be a picnic. It’s not my first rodeo though, I’ve gotten through changing to a new antidepressant before, and I will again. I may have to white-knuckle it some days and even take time off, but I need to address my mental health as my number one priority. I’ve accepted that it won’t get better on its own. I do have faith it will get better, though, because of my husband, sister and my mental resilience. Stay tuned.