Effexor completely, and I do mean completely, turned my brother's life around and he is doing incredibly well, is happy and extremely productive now (for 14 years) in part due to the help he gets from effexor. It is an absolute life saving, incredible miracle drug for many people.
Let me give you a bit of advice that may save your life. Never, ever, decide to not even give a med a chance at helping you based on the negative experiences of others. You will never have the slightest amount of useful perspective on how helpful or worthless a med will be for you *until you try it*. I have even talked to bipolars who's moods were balanced by SSRI/SNRIs. Every single SSRI and SNRI will most likely have noticeably different effects on you and it is foolish to skip any one unless you would just like to put it off for a later time. In fact, I think I am going to make this paragraph my sig because I am getting pretty tired of having to repeat it for all the people in the same situation.
This is coming from 10 years of psychotropic med experience with nearly every med prescribed. I was exactly like you at first in terms of reading peoples experiences in order to decide what I thought would work for me but I eventually realized: the only way you will know if a med will help you or not is if you try it for yourself and do not let others experiences influence the perception of your own. Amazingly, I have even seen this in the reverse sense where a person hears from many others that a med WILL work for them, turns our it doesn't, and they refuse to come off it even though it is just making them feel like crap. Others experiences mean little to nothing in this situation unfortunately and you must put your trust in yourself.