antidepressants - s&d, CoD, evil bitches, cash cows and saviours of sanity

I think I've made my feelings clear on the subject on a number of times, but I'm really trying hard not to start ranting.

I know that there are people who are vastly helped by them, whose lives are made stable, sane, etc. by them. I mean, yeah, there have to be, right, or Drs wouldn't keep prescribing them?

But to me, they were worse than fucking useless. I used to think that there was a period in my life when they "saved my life etc. etc." but looking back on it with hindsight, I realise that I was in an immensely painful position at the time, and the pills just *numbed* me for long enough to get the hell out of that position. Maybe that's useful, I dunno.

I think if they *are* useful, it's in the above scenario- as short term stopgaps till you get yourself stabilised. I know it's wrong to draw sweeping generalisations from your own personal experience, but in my experience, they are vastly over-presecribed, and for far too long a period. Anyone who tells me I have to be on some psychotropic drug for the rest of my life- I want to punch them in the face. Yes, I was told that I would be on lithium for the rest of my life. Taking lithium was like being punched in the kidneys twice a day, in terms of physical effects, and in terms of mental effects, it was like being wrapped in a huge, soft barrier of cotton wool, with an annoying radio playing low-volume symphonic hum just out of reach of your hearing. it also *really* destroyed my creativity for a year and a half. Not a trade-off I am willing to make.

That's not even mentioning the awful side effects of the anti-depressants- the throwing up, the mealy mouthed dryness, the sedative effects, the passing out and falling asleep all the time- I even had one medication which made me unable to tolerate sunlight. Seeing how so much of depression is caused by seasonal things- yeah, *that's* gonna help me.

So for me, dudder than dudder than dud. I religiously do the daily routine things that I know keep my moods stable. And I do just live with a great deal of just plain eccentricity that my doctors used to term "symptoms" or "insanity".

As to the stigma of taking them...? Don't get me going on why mental illness is stigmatised in a way that no other form of illness is stigmatised. The stigma is attached to the illnes, not to the medication. My hatred of the medication has far more to do with hatred of the medical profession than it has to do with any sort of stigma.

JEEZ!!!!!!!!! Talking about the mental health profession = MORE VITRIOL AND BITTERNESS THAN A ROOM FULL OF DOOM PATROLS!!!

Don't even get me started on your job...

Re 'stigma'. Yes, but its symptomatic (ho ho) of the completely f**ked up attitude we have to mental health. In da UK 1 in 8 women, 1 in 12 men, will spend some time in a psychiatric hospital. Swept under the carpet, people feel embarrassed to talk about it. You broke your leg and needed operating on ? Tea + Sympathy, you had a 'breakdown' ermmm is that the time? 'Stress' has become a catch- all term, to the point of meaningless, as its easier to talk about than depression, unhappiness, inability to cope etc. I think the right term is 'denial'.

The joys of clinical trials. College campuses are a gigantic petri dish, as far as I'm concerned.

I've had horrible experiences with friends who have gone completely nuts while on prozac. A boy I knew back in upstate NY- a very creative, intelligent and, well... slightly eccentric musician and artist. He was put on prozac for some reason or other, and first off, he ballooned up about 100 lbs in weight, and then he started to talk about how electric fields were controlling his thoughts. Next thing, he started moving furniture around the house because he claimed the noise from the electricity in the walls was keeping him awake. Then he smashed up my sister's flat, throwing shit around and destroying everything in sight.

As soon as he went off the prozac, he returned to his normal zany, creative, eccentric, but completely well balanced self.

So this is why I believe prozac = very, very bad thing.

Oh, and lithium does produce low level auditory hallucinations. I thought I was going mad! Well... maddER. I have never seen it listed in any of the side effects booklets, but both my brother and I both had exactly the same experiences with it. It nearly drove me insane, because I've spent the rest of my life looking for music that approximated that sound. It was quite lovely, actually.

Hallucinations, in lawyers, are worrying. I could be one step away from dancing babies, bad scripts and Vonda Shepherd.

Dan's Joei story = genius. No wonder he married her. :-) Out of curiosity, what *did* they say after that devestating quip back?

No, seriously, Paul, in your case, I know that your hallucinations were caused by SLEEP DEPRIVATION. This can cause hallucinations as real and as terrifying as any drug. I've seen the sky swimming with killer paramecium paisley after being up for two days, with no drugs involved.

Probably not the most gentle of responses, but considering that she started the conversation from the perspective of "If you don't need, this stuff isn't good for you and you shouldn't be taking it" and got attacked, I don't blame her for letting loose with both barrells.

Dude, I am so tired. Supposed to fo the final inspection of our condo today. I can barely keep my eyes open. I need caffeine (the only socially-acceptable upper).

On the other hand I was and am a hobby writer, not a working writer, so I don't have the discipline of writing or creating daily anyway, which might well get you through.

She sounds like someone who is not interested in learning anything new for the rest of her life, because thinking is hard, but being a credentialed 'expert' lets you off the hook for doing any new thinking ever again.

haha, thanks guys! my friend knows someone who takes my insurance so I will try and get an appointment with someone else. she's young too! like in her 30s...

The book Rabbits for Food has some pretty funny commentary on psych meds...the character says no to the exact same thing my psych prescribed to me.

I am a fan of psych nurse practitioners (and NPs in general). For most stuff I would take an NP over an MD every day of the week. Nurses rule.

She is an NP :( Just a very stubborn one. Hi Q!

Paxil seems like bad news, in a new way.

Coupland et al, 2019. Anticholinergic drug exposure and the risk of dementia: a nested case-control study. JAMA Int Med.

Hi VP! Sorry ‘bout your bad NP :(

^^ haha, I mentioned that study to my NP (I had read it in the NYT). She hadn't heard of it, but got very annoyed and said that she didn't know why Paxil should be linked to dementia, unless you ate so much that you got lethargic and didn't move around very much--hence leading to dementia.

oof

boy that is an unfathomably stupid response from a medical professional

So the NP just called me bc my therapist tried to intervene on my behalf and she said, “So, I don’t want your therapy sessions to be taken over by discussing medication.”’ And then she said she would up the Paxil if that’s what I wanted and I said yes and then she said she was on the train and basically implied she was not available to discuss further so I said thank you. She has the worst bedside manner! Hopefully insurance will cover this latest dosage. I feel like she is threatened and angry that I am questioning her judgment. She said nothing about if
or when or how I should taper off the abilify.

I have been taking sipralexa for years. Afraid to go off it. The issues which caused my anxiety have been solved (more or less) but I’m afraid to go off it. :-(((

So I saw the psych nurse for the last time. I have an appointment with a doc who takes my insurance in a month. I stopped taking the Abilify due to side effects and now she recommends Lamictal and Ativan. Thoughts?

Careful with the ativan is my only thought. Benzo addiction is no joke.

Good news for once: Met with a psych my coworker recommended who takes my insurance and he questioned everything the NP prescribed and told me stop taking the Lamictal and to start taking Wellbutrin on top of the Paxil and see how it goes. If it goes well he said we can lower the Paxil and up the Wellbutrin. He's still ok with me taking benzos to sleep, even though I asked him about the danger of it. Glad to be back in the land of on-label usage. The best part about it: my copay was $15. Hopefully my summer of experimentation with legal drugs is coming to a close. Good luck to everyone dealing with this bs! And thanks to those who listened to me whine and offered advice.

Lexapro/Cipralex turning out to be utterly insufficient so far; I felt better for a few weeks and experienced some of the common side effects at the initial dose, but before long both side effects and intended ones fell away entirely. Got my dosage upped and felt no change. Took the step of upping it again and once again feel no different. (We're talking 10mg->15mg->20mg here.) I have a (virtual) consultation with a new doc next week, we'll see how it goes I guess. Did other folks experience a similar arc?

(At that first uppage I asked my clinic doctor if my brain was simply "too powerful", which he did not seem to find amusing.)

friendship ended w lexapro, now zoloft is my best friend*

*remains to be seen actually

zoloft and i are currently friends with benefits, i also went to it as a rebound from my most recent breakup with lexapro

we're doing ok for now but navigating ltrs with antidepressants is really challenging, i just feel like a lot of them aren't able to make a long-term commitment

as mentioned previously lexapro was nice for a bit but became both emotionally and physically absent very quickly, oh well

time to find out if I get insomnia OR sleep like a log, I love brains

Anybody ever get a feeling like you've missed a pill but you haven't? A few times in the last couple of weeks I've had a low level spacey, zappy feeling, just like I'd missed a day really. Just wondering if this is a thing?

yes get that quite often, slightly wobbly in head. I got one of those pill dispensers with a different compartment for each day so that I can keep it straight (although other health problems contribute more to my day/time confusion)

I definitely took it this morning tho. I hear even a few hours can make a difference and tbh I may have a bug, can't tell what's physical and what's not at the moment

oh I meant that I got the dispenser so I can tell that I did take it that morning even though I'm feeling the wobble. it tends to go away by the next day though. do you get it lasting more than a day?

Nah, just happening on odd days, maybe for a few hours

I could use a dispenser like that

Yes, but as far as I can tell it’s totally random, no idea why it happens

That's why I asked really, not alarmed but good to know other people have experienced similar

Yeah, I get that all the time. I can never remember if I actually did miss a day or not

Same over here. My memory's so bad that I should probably start using my dispenser again but, er, I forget to fill it. (I always thought pill dispensers would make good band merch, I think at least a couple of people have done that but more people should do it.)

I used to get pills with the days printed on the packet but thattlonh gone

Cymbalta? why not? my doctor thinks my fucked up head might like it. just a low dose at first. nothing scary. we shall see...

i'm willing. kinda losing my grip a little. not ALL the time but enough of the time. little things can really make me miserable. i do miss my beloved nicotine. it did all the tricks. kept me calm. stimulated me. made people easier to deal with. made life a little easier. i'm willing to try medicine some more - after i quit smoking i went on a double whammy of wellbutrin/lexapro and it was very very rough - but if i have to i will just go back to nicotine lozenges. if worse comes to worse. they can't be that bad for you. at least i know they work. right now i only take gabapentin during the day and clonidine at night which are baby medicines for babies.

i just need to get out of the loop. i want to want to go places. do things. be outside. i am so in an indoor loop. work/home/work/home/etc. i never want to go anywhere. the idea of going anywhere fills me with dread and discomfort. knowing beforehand i am going somewhere makes me a wreck until the time comes to go. i had to tell my doctor that i have been obsessing about our visit today since i made the appointment which was...4 months ago? almost every day i would think about what i might say to them or how i would answer questions...its so dumb. they were very nice. never actually met them in person before.

i have been better at dealing with things that totally would have freaked me out in the past. so that's good. that's stuff that i work on on my own. i feel like my overreactions to things don't last as long as they used to. the adrenaline dies down quicker. maybe that's just age. my brain is tired of freaking out.

Cymbalta has worked really well for me - I hope it does for you as well! It took a few months to dial the dose in, like most of these things.

Fluoxetine (Zoloft) helps, but it’s murder on your ability to have an orgasm, and you need to take a breather from it and cannot spontaneously have sex

Fluoxetine (Zoloft) helps, but it’s murder on your ability to have an orgasm, and you need to take a breather from it and cannot spontaneously have sex

― beamish13

i still don't cum from sex

i've read about something called "PSSD", "post-ssri sexual dysfunction", but in all truthfulness i got no idea. things are... complicated with me

Codine. I stick to the soft stuff.

― Sterling Clover

i saw a meme talking about lean moms. as in not wine moms, lean moms. no idea if it was a troll or not. when i think of moms, i still think of miltown (more like milftown amirite)

at my work stand-up today we were talking about ways to improve sleep. i said "i take prazosin for the nightmares, i think it works ok". everybody got really quiet and awkward. i guess i'm at that point where i have trouble talking about my life in a socially appropriate way. i thought i did ok. i didn't say anything about my tendency to wake up screaming.

Fluoxetine is Prozac not Zoloft. Zoloft is sertraline. I didn't have that problem on Prozac but I did have it on mirtazapine until I lowered the dose then it went away. Mirt seems to be working for me, I've been on it about 6 years and doing pretty well tbh

The problem with psych meds is they’re so unpredictable. If you’re extremely lucky, the first one you try will work well and have few serious side effects. When I tried Zoloft it gave me really bad anhedonia and suicidal ideation, but it’s been pretty (positively) life-altering for my husband.

The other annoying thing is how looooooooong the process is. Unless you get serious side effects immediately, you have to give a new drug like 8 weeks before you truly know if it’s helping. And then you have to figure out if any moderate side effects are balanced out by the efficacy of the drug.

Next! that Cymbalta just made me so dreadfully sleepy for 2 months. i couldn't really work and i can always work no matter how depressed i am. it made me so spacey. i could stare at a wall for hours. it gave me no motivation to do anything or go anywhere. if anything, it reinforced my already quite strong inertia and ocd. it wasn't as bad as the time i took lexapro. that was the worst. my person was kinda leaning toward prozac or one of those and i got scared and talked about my bad time with lexapro. i did ask about stimulants. why not? i'm old and not looking to be an addict or anything. nicotine was such a perfect thing for me because it was a stimulant AND it calmed me down. gave me focus. she had me make an appointment with a med person for a consult in november. the first time i've seen one of those. in the meantime she gave me a prescription for the generic of STRATTERA which sounds nice and Italian. its for ADHD and i'm curious to see if it helps. i do need focus and some pep. we shall see. i don't know why the three antidepressants i have tried haven't worked for me. they zone me out. if i had a trust fund and didn't have to work maybe it wouldn't be so bad. but man i was coming home early and napping for one or two hours. it was too much sleepiness. i would have been fine just being in bed all day. and unfortunately i can't do that. and i still wasn't interested in anything. oh well.
pluses of Cymbalta: i had no desire to smoke or do anything like that. drink. drugs. which is how i felt on wellbutrin. and my mood was a little better. less bleak. but that's about it. and the other side effects sucked too. i got hot and sweaty a lot. i don't usually sweat. when i ate i got so hot. but i also ate a ton and gained weight. sexual side effects. you know the drill.

took this for the first time yesterday but i felt crappy due to a covid shot the day before so i really couldn't tell if i made me feel okay or not. BUT took it this morning and i felt fine all day. had energy. worked a lot. wasn't all spacey and dizzy and out of it. man, if i could feel like this every day i'd be a lot happier. don't want to jinx myself though. i've always felt like i could benefit more from something that was more for ocd/adhd then something made for depression/anxiety. i just didn't know there was something similar to the antidepressants that was specifically for adhd. i just need a boost. you know? i feel like i've been dragging forever. i could always work - i probably worked more hours during and right after the pandemic then i have ever worked - but it was getting to the point where i was feeling a lack of...point. so tired of everything. i kept waiting today for some antidepressant crash that i usually felt in the afternoon on cymbalta and it never came! #knockonwood

dudes, for real, this is my jam. better late then never! i'll try not to think about how if i had had these pills 8 years ago i might have saved myself 8 years of misery. or decades of down for that matter. oh well. nothing i can do about that now.

know that "feeling" well. great to hear, friend

<3 <3 <3

So happy for you. I have a cousin who aiui spent her whole life thinking bad things about herself bc her ADHD was so bad she couldn't even finish thoughts in her own head, failed school, etc, and found "her" medication in her college-aged years and had to basically start her education over again. You can only go forward. Hope you have another great day!

thank you, friends.

i feel hopeful. i feel like i want to be closer to people again!. its nuts. i was at the store all day by myself yesterday because maria was working a record show at wesleyan and i talked to people all day and had a really good time. awesome writer/rock crit icon/poet karen schoemer came in and we had a nice talk about writing and stuff. people like her inspire me so much. she has a band with friends of mine. i felt engaged and not weird or brittle like i'd been feeling for fucking ever. i realized how detrimental hiding in the back of the store for the last year or more and having maria out front has become. i never wanted to see anyone. it just perpetuated my depression.
the biggest miracle was Sunday afternoon. i went to a house party/show at my friend beverly's house and her awesome band Stella Kola played and other cool people played and then...i read! some of my stuff. in public! with a microphone! in front of, like, 20 people. for about 25 minutes. and people really liked it and i liked it and i was in a garage and the weather was nice and there were dogs and little kids and maria near me. and i wasn't drinking or anything and i felt fine and happy to be with friends who i never see because i never ever leave the house. i asked Beverly if i could read too. about a week ago. i knew that would make it so that i had to go. but i didn't dread it or stress about it. i had a very long and stressful and emotional week last week too. family death. my uncle's memorial and my sad beautiful cousins. my birthday that always makes me feel sad for unknown reasons. just thoughts of family. the people i love who are gone. my mom. my sister. i also worked a ton physically. so much that it hurt. but i got through it all. its not a black cloud covering me or following me. its something i just worked through.
i'm really ready for more of this. i really was working so hard to make myself better on my own for years and it wasn't working. its hard for me to ask for help. i'm so glad i did though. next stop...therapy.

scott I don’t know you but you sound like a fckn legend, I’m very glad you have found a window of sunlight and I hope it persists forever

Reading this thread to soothe my anxiousness about starting SSRIs for the first time, and this 2020 joke between Simon H and their doc gave me the biggest laugh I’ve had in a minute, much-needed:

(At that first uppage I asked my clinic doctor if my brain was simply "too powerful", which he did not seem to find amusing.)

Miss that guy

Good luck One Eye Open, even a low dose has been life changing for me

Fascinating article. (gift link)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/magazine/antidepressants-ssris-teen-sexual-side-effects.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E8.EXOE.y0H_Qw9K0zFk&smid=url-share

I was on Lexapro from age 21 to age 24, and while I was functional, it took me forever to reach orgasm. PSSD seems like a much bigger problem than previously thought, and while I do believe that SSRIs and SNRIs can be lifesavers, I also worry about the side effects being possibly worse than the symptoms being treated

I had almost no sex drive from age 19 to 21, I was not on any antidepressants then but I was talking quite a lot of MDMA, plus various other things.