You need to be careful with the pill holiday thing. When I was taking venlafaxine, the withdrawl happened very fast and was miserable... if I missed two days I was in trouble.
My "discontinuation syndrome" was coming off desvenlafaxine. My access to it was suddenly taken away so I had no choice but to sit through the brain zaps for probably a week or two. You can't be sure how long it's going to last and that shit is as unpleasant as it gets.
This is why you need to taper off the drugs over 4 weeks. If it takes 4 weeks to start working, it makes sense it should take your brain the same amount of time to work properly without them.
Coming off venlafaxine is considerably more unpleasant than going on venlafaxine, even with correct titration up and down.
If I had had the choice I would have tapered, but I had an adverse reaction to it and it wasn't handled very well.
Even with tapering I get severe sides from ssri/ssri drugs.