###Human: Stopped taking medicine Effexor. Now having dizziness and brain zaps. ###Assistant: Hi. The sudden discontinuation of Venlafaxine (Effexor) particularly seemed to cause discontinuation symptoms during the first three to seven days. Ideally, it should not be stopped abruptly. It should rather be decreased sequentially over two to three weeks. And, another strategy is to consider switching to Fluoxetine, which may suppress the discontinuation symptoms and it has little tendency to cause such symptoms itself; and then discontinuing that. My advice is to wait for a few more days and if the symptoms still persist, meet your physician again and suggest to put on Fluoxetine. Revert back for further queries to a general medicine physician online -->