[CW: DEPRESSION]
spoiler
I’ve been at a really low point with my mental health, I’ve lost the motivation to do most things save for personal hygiene and grooming. I wouldn’t say that my situation is severe thankfully, but it is seriously hindering my academic, physical health, career prospects, and personal relationships. I want to talk to my doctor and get started on antidepressants before I really lose control of my life.
One of my close friends is on antidepressants and that gave me enough courage to actually seek help from my primary care physician. But right now I need some more information.
My question: Those of you who are on -or have been on- antidepressants, what were your experiences? I’m really worried about side effects (mainly CNS, Autonomic, and especially the risk of serotonin syndrome) while taking these kinds of drugs. But I’d also like to know about your experiences first taking them, how you’ve adjusted to doses, and how you overall felt. Experiences with other therapies are also welcome!
Please don’t be shy, and share as much as you feel comfortable! Thank you!
Thank you to everyone who posts, it means a lot to me!
i’ve tried so many different SSRIs and SNRIs
they have all had 0 useful effect on me. i’ve experienced side effects; digestion issues are the most common. i got uncontrollable leg shaking from one of them. i’ve never experienced any withdrawal symptoms coming off them, but for most people they are quite bad.
when i was a kid i was put on fluoxetine, and it was just as unhelpful. i wanted to stop and they wouldn’t let me, so a few months in, i quit them myself. some months later, my mother commented on how much better i seemed, how well the medication was working. i told her i hadn’t been taking it, and she didn’t believe me.
i’m now at a point where i absolutely refuse to touch them. the only thing that has actually had an impact on depression for me is ketamine.
Most of them mainly made me sleepy. Of the ones I’ve tried, Cymbalta kept things in check but also nuked my sex drive.
I went through a whole list before I got to cymbalta, the only thing that worked. Yeah sex drive was non existant and still isn’t the same years later, and it made me have to sleep 12 hours a day, but at that time in my life I could very well have died and I have to look at it that way.
They tried to switch me to Mirtazapine after that, which made me put on 40 lbs in less than 6 months and I have never felt so awful in my life.
Might be experiencing bad ones right now. Recently got put on buspirone and I’ve been having really vivid and painful nightmares in which I’m tortured, killed, or subjected to a harrowing traumatic event. They’ve gotten increasingly frequent over the last few weeks to the point where for the last few nights, I’ve been waking from nightmares in a cold sweat every 40-90 minutes.
It might also be entirety unrelated to the medication. Worth noting that it’s an anxiolytic, and neither an SSRI nor an SNRI.
Huh that’s interesting. I wonder if I’m hiding the buspirone dreams with the copious amounts of weed I smoke
I honestly don’t know if it’s actually buspirone related.
Having said that, I stopped taking it the day before yesterday and last night I actually got a full night’s sleep and don’t remember having any nightmares at all. Just a weird dream in which I drove a go-kart and was running for joint-mayor of a city with a close friend the dream made up, on a platform of curing diseased trees by taking them out of the ground and bringing them to a plant hospital and raising the ceilings of all multi-story buildings somehow.
Zoloft: First antidepressant I ever took, it kinda worked but I didn’t feel good just less bad. Also destroyed my sex drive. I went up doses over a long stretch of time before adding Wellbutrin and then stopping Zoloft.
Prozac: Made me super nauseous and felt like my brain was very loud. Did not like. Stopped on the lowest dose because of the side effects. My partner was on it for years and it worked well though, with just a couple weeks of nausea that ended.
Wellbutrin: Not actually an SSRI or SNRI, it’s an “atypical antidepressant” which basically means “idk but it works.” Works so so well. It’s what lets me operate on a daily basis. I feel like I have the normal range of human emotions. Side effects: Increased libido, increased sweating, and mild tinnitus. Oh and I cry really easily at tv and movies now. I’m currently on 300mg, I started on 150mg and then went up, at 450mg my anxiety got worse so took it back down. 300 seems to have me in a good place.
I also take Buspar along with Wellbutrin, because Wellbutrin helps with depression but unlike SSRIs and SNRIs does nothing for anxiety. I think I’m taking 15mg twice a day of that.
Wow wellbutrin sounds amazing. One of my biggest challenges is how hard it is to cry,
One of my biggest challenges is how hard it is to cry,
What do you mean by that? Do you want to cry more?
Yes. I feel very blocked up when I want to cry and I wish I could just cry a lot. For me, crying is very rare and cathartic but I can imagine how it would be otherwise if you could do/did it too much.
