Of all antidepressants, venlafaxine is among the hardest to come off
It ranked third in a worldwide database of withdrawal reports. Its short half-life is the likely reason: fast-clearing antidepressants draw about five times the withdrawal reports of slow ones.
What the study found
Venlafaxine is third for withdrawal reports, and clears in five hours
In 31,688 withdrawal reports to the World Health Organization's database, venlafaxine ranked third, behind paroxetine and duloxetine. Its blood level halves in about five hours, and across 338,498 reports, short-lived antidepressants drew withdrawal 5.4 times as often as long-lived ones.
The caveat · A count of reports, not a rate
A report count is not a rate: it says withdrawal made up a large share of a drug's reports, not how many users had it. The drugs with the strongest signals were also the most reported and most talked about, which the authors say may inflate their ratios. Among 19 people who had once stopped fluoxetine, a drug that lingers for weeks, remembered withdrawal was as severe as after venlafaxine.