I've had personal experience with this med (Effexor) due to post partum depression. It is no more addictive than high blood pressure meds or thyroid medication.
If you were to suddenly stop taking either of those and you have some negative physical symptoms...does that mean you are addicted? Of course not.
Those types of meds (SSRI's) have to be started gradually and stopped gradually. Anytime you change the level of chemicals in your brain radically, you can be sure to expect some nasty symptoms. Migraine headache is how I'd best describe it. Heroin withdrawal? lol You have to be kidding.
It depends on the dosage you were on and for how long I think. I got a lot of symptoms that were similiar to what has been described as heroin symptoms. Shakes, vomitting,, dizziness, tunnel vision, crying fits and so forth. And I did taper slowly.
Do the Google search and then decide if the Pharma companies would tell you if it posed a threat. Did your doctor, before prescribing, find out if you were just a little "blue", or had you threatened to drown your babies like the Houston mother did? Most women feel a let down after childbirth until their hormones adjust. Women have gotten along just fine for thousands of years without SSRI's after childbirth. The woman in Houston that drowned her children was just off her SSRI's. How many of these stories did we hear about before say, 1980? How many now, after SSRI's?
To just believe that somehow people are just different today, is naive. Is there any government agency keeping track of murderers and suicides are on or off meds at the time?
Whether you believe it or not, don't you think it's worth looking into before we ban the second amendment? I'm 56 years old and when I was growing up, I took my guns to school to hunt after school. I walked downtown with guns over my shoulder many times walking from the Army-Navy Store( where I bought ammo) to home and to the Texas City Dike and the city dump. Nobody ever thought a thing about it. I belonged to a gun/shooting club when I was 9 years old and carried my gun to the ice house to shoot competition. Nobody ever shot anybody and suicides were few and far between. Today, I'm frightened to even put a gun in a car in case someone may see and call the cops on me. If you see your neighbor putting his gun in his car and it's not hunting season, do you secretly wonder if he's going to a school or a mall to get even with his wife for a cold dinner? Times have changed, but I think people have changed more. Just like the Freeper that had Oxycontin offered for pain, in the old days, you just took some asprin and maybe a hit of Black Jack for good measure. Now, when you walk in the door, you walk out with a scrip for SSRI's because you don't "feel" good.