I was on venlafaxine for 2 years. I’ve been off it for 1 year, but it’s been the worst year of my life. I’m afraid my brain is destroyed.

I’m just putting this together. I was on venlafaxine for 2 years, and loved it. It was like it “fixed” my anxiety and depression. I was doing better in life than I ever had. Then I had a breakup that sent me into crippling depression. I decided at that point that the venlafaxine wasn’t helping anymore, since I was deeply depressed anyway, I might as well get off it. I quit cold turkey. This has been the worst year of my life. My memory barely functions, I feel I have the emotional capacity of a teenager. I fluctuate between the darkest depression you can imagine, being completely blank and unable to focus or execute a single plan or task, and having bursts of mania like joy or rage. I have no energy. I have no will to live. I don’t experience happiness or pleasure. I feel like whoever I was as a person is gone. It feels like all that’s left of me is having a phone addiction, crying, and wasting all my money to get a short second of dopamine in my system. It took me this long to realize it might be brain damage from the venlafaxine.