"i was on effexor xr for 8 years and i recently went off. i gave the drug 8 out of 10 because overall my anxiety and depression were greatly improved. i didn&#039;t have any sexual side effects and only felt dizzy when i did not take the medication at exactly the same time every night. i did lose a lot of my energy and was prescribed wellbutrin to help out with that. however, the withdrawal, as others have mentioned, is terrible. my doctor prescribed a low dose of prozac (20mg) to ease the withdrawal and it really helped. if you are going off effexor, do it with prozac. i tried without it twice before and it was such a horrible experience that i went right back on."