Venlafaxine increase causing panic?

Are you in therapy with NOCD (or any kind)? My suggestion would be to stay at the dose you’re on now and increase your ERP or therapy sessions until you feel more stabilized emotionally. Then once you’re doing a little better, work on VERY slowly tapering Venlafaxine and bridging/cross-taper to another medication under the guidance of a psychiatrist (rather than your PCP). A PCP is not generally trained enough to manage this level of psychiatric medication care. This is my suggestion as Venlafaxine is notably difficult to come off of, and since you’ve experienced this first hand in the past. You can ask them about Pristiq too as it’s similar with seemingly less side effects. After 3 weeks of being in the increased dose, it would likely not been at its maximum effectiveness yet. If you’re truly wanting to do to the higher dose now, I say go for it, you know yourself best. The higher you go, the further to taper back down (if you intend to attempt it again). It’s definitely a lot easier to go up on Venlafaxine than it is to come back down. Good luck, and I’m so sorry you’re really feeling it lately. 😢Hang in there, you’re doing an awesome job!!! 💕

I literally just went through this too! I was already taking Venlafaxine at 75mg and i've been on that for a couple of years. With my recent OCD diagnosis, my psych suggested we could up the dosage to 150mg. That was easily the two worst weeks of my life. I called in twice to work, had the dry mouth and sweats as well. I tried to stick it out but just could not get past that third week mark. I felt very disassociated, like floaty in my head (if that makes any sense) and super anxious/depressed. I messaged my psych and told her that I tried to stick it out but wanted to go back to my original dosage which she agreed with and immediately filled a script for the 75mg. It's such a hard decision to make, but my thought process was that I'll stay at the 75mg and stick with ERP and therapy. Once I feel like i'm in a better place with those tools, I'll reevaluate if I'm feeling that medication would still be helpful. I also appreciate you posting this because now I realize I might be able to ask for a smaller increase instead of jumping up to that higher dosage. I hope you're finding some input that can help. I know how tough that feels. 🩵

For me personally I should either decrease or maintain until more stable. But I am not a doctor. Sounds hard😔