Anti-depressents

[DanielBrown]

I got some anti-depressants when I struggled with social phobia and anxiety.
Out of my own experience I really can't recommend it. I wasn't depressed before I started eating the damn things and I wasn't able to break from my depression and anxiety until I decided for myself to stop taking them.

My mood got extremely affected as I had serious troubles separating dreams from reality and I also became unable to tell the passage of time. Twenty minutes could often seem like a whole day or even a week. I ended up starting lots of fights with my friends because of those things and eventually had none left.
On top of that I also got extremely tired, which made me lose all motivation. Ended up sitting on my ass in front of the computer for roughly four years.

A friend of mine is currently eating anti-depressants and has similar experiences. She can't stay up past 8 pm, she hardly ever remembers anything we talked about and she's still depressed as fuck.
No, can't recommend them personally... If possible, I suggest you try to sort out your emotions in other ways, but if it's really bad maybe you should give it a try. :/

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Body chemistry being different for everyone, my experiences and anyone else's can't ever give you an impression of how things would work in your situation. Best advice I can give you is try the things your doctor gives you and keep record of the changes or lack thereof that happen once you take the meds. Then share these things with your doctor and it will help them find proper dosages and what meds actually work and which are doing more harm than good. Plus it takes about a month for your body to adjust to meds, barring major side effects, so give them a bit to actually start kicking in before you (as a non-medical unprofessional) declare them ineffective.
And I can't stress enough being honest with your doctor, and moreover asking questions of them. You'll find out really quick if you've a shit doctor who's clueless as to what they're doing or one who gives a rat's ass.

 

[Fox12]

Thanks everybody, I think this has given me a better picture to work with. I don't know anyone whose ever taken them, and I knew they were probably a lot more complex then the magic "happy pills" that Hollywood likes to portray them as.

 

[Michel Henzel]

I've been taking Effexor for some 7 years now and am quite content with them. However I take them in a relatively low amount and for anxiety rather than depression. Most of the time the side effect will dissipate within two weeks or so though there can be exceptions. Effexor is quite addicting in the sense that if you forget to take them you will start noticing it real quick, so you can't just stop taking them if they don't work for you.

Meds are no exact science and one drug can do wonders for one person but be crap for another, even if they have the exact same symtoms. There just isn't a "one drug that fits all" so you might need to try a few or a lot before you find one that works great for you.
I have tried about 4 different AD's before I got on Effexor and will probably be on them for the rest of my life.

Personally I'm not bothered by that fact, I would rather be stuck on these meds then try and do without them as my "problems" aren't really fixable with therapy.

As for what the meds do for me. Well they keep me stable emotion wise. Otherwise feelings of anxiety, panic and such keep spiking into extremes, resulting in regular panic attacks, causing massive amounts of stress (which my body reacts really badly to, any stress related ailment you can think of, I tend to get) and is likely to put me back into a depression. So yeah, I'll take the meds for the rest of my life over the alternative.

I will say though, that taking those types of meds for treating depression, then I will say that they are not a means of treatment, but a supplement to your treatment.

 

[kris40k]

I've been taking Bupropion (aka Wellbutrin/Zyban) for about a month now which is an anti-depressant, however I'm taking it for smoking cessation.

As a smoking cessation aid, its pretty damn awesome; I've been off nicotine for 3 weeks now when all my attemps before I could barely last a week without cracking. I really think I got it beaten this time.

Side effects I have experienced include increased heartrate and kind-of insomnia. I can fall sleep, but instead of sleeping until my alarm clock wakes me (and wanting to go back to sleep), I now wake up at like 4-5am and can't get back to sleep. So I started to work out with my additional freetime, ya know, making lemonade out of lemons /shrug.

Anyhow, as always with all drugs, YMMV.

 

[Shraggler]

I've documented every medication I've been prescribed & taken over the past 13 years in a nice little document with tables, journal entries, comments and summaries. I've been prescribed 10 different antidepressants in that time.

What were they like?

They varied from doing absolutely nothing to endless side-effects and sudden mood shifts.

Were there side effects?

Common (~80% of the medications)
Nausea - Not the "omg, I'm gonna hurl", but the upset stomach type. That splorky, gross, pre-stomach flu feeling.
Fatigue - The kind of fatigue that comes after sleeping too long, i.e. you slept for 12 hours and are still tired.
Irritability - This was either present or absent depending on the specific medication. Basically always on tilt.
Headache - Pretty common side-effect. Not migraine level by any stretch, but more an all around pressure headache that made it feel like one's brain was trying desperately to hatch from one's skull.
Insomnia - Again, varies. Most of the time it was easy to get to sleep, but staying asleep was challenging, if not impossible.
(Massive) Weight gain - Many antidepressants are touted as stabilizing weight, as serotonin (among the other neurotransmitters) plays a role in appetite. Not for me, however. This was a major factor in my refusing to take antidepressants ever again. I gained 70 pounds/27 kilos/5 stone in 7 months. On top of that, I haven't been able to reverse that effect and it's been nearly 10 years since that happened.

Uncommon (~10-20% of the medications)
Painful urination - This didn't occur often, but can be a problem. Since I'm physically predisposed to this regardless, it made little difference to me. Normal people who get this, however, seem to immediately cease their medications.
Dry mouth - Less of an issue, since it's physical and only slightly discomforting.
Muddled thinking - This one's a bit harder to clarify. Simple planning was difficult, thought processes didn't follow, a goal would be set and yet its purpose forgotten. While seemingly not as detrimental, any task beyond "eat", "drink" or "poop" was a toss up.

Did they help you with your depression? If so, how? How did it affect your mood and lifestyle?

I was prescribed most of them for anxiety. The way it was put to me, depression requires a smaller dosage range to be effective, with anxiety it's much larger. I was taking anywhere from 2-6x the dosage one would for depression.

Didn't help at all. But I "stuck it through" like a good little, obedient child. Months of each, no positive results.

My opinion: Doctors rely too heavily on & over-prescribe antidepressants. There are a lot of reasons why I believe they do so. Overall I've been damaged infinitely more than helped. Good luck.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Frankly, I don't like how run-down they make me feel. Sure, there's less depression by I also find I have less creative thought and an oddly shorter temper.

My counselor later helped me figure out that anxiety was a bigger part of my problem and eventually I started taking Xanax to help with that. That worked a lot.

I wouldn't dismiss medicines outright - they can really do wonders for some people and frankly, I have a lot less anxiety these days even without having to take a pill as often as I used to. The trouble is sometimes it can be a nightmare getting bounced from one medication to the other while they try to figure out which one is going to work for you. And sadly, they don't prescribe some of the best ones at first, because they like to prescribe some of the not-so-great ones first and see if you respond to those. It's a hassle, but it's worth it in the end.

Best of luck to you!

 

[Yopaz]

Based on my knowledge of how they work and how people I know have felt on them I would advice you to consider why you need them.

I've heard people getting sleepy, not feeling like doing their normal activities, gaining weight and statistically there's an increased likelihood of committing suicide compared to those who get a placebo in double blind trials.

What happens when you take the classic SSRIs is that you prolong the time it takes for the concentration of serotonin to decrease after being secreted. This is supposed to make the signals transfer more efficiently, but over time your neurons will respond by decreasing the number of receptors activated by serotonin which means you will have to increase the dose. When you increase the dose you will get a stronger effect, more reduction in receptors. If you ever are to stop taking the drugs this will be a very bad experience as you will have to restore the normal amount of receptors over time.

I'd say you should follow your doctor's advice, but you should also keep a mind on the fact that while depression does have physical effects and is a physiological process you should also think about what you can do in addition to taking anti-depressants.

Depression is hard. I wish you the best of luck

 

[Creator002]

For me, side effects were nausea and irritability after about 3 days of starting. They also don't fully get into your system for about 2 weeks. After about a week, the side effects go away. I didn't really feel much different, but definitely a boost in quality of life. I took them for anxiety though, so it's a bit different.

 

[Buckets]

I was on anti-depressants for a number of years after bereavement and work related issues. The tablets I was on worked fine overall but for the first month until they were fully in my system I suffered what could best be described as memory shorts, I could be in the middle of doing something and just forget what I was actually doing even when it was right in front of me, I also had very potent headaches which made me quite sick and lasted for 3 days at a time(almost to the second) during the entire period on the tablets . I eventually came off the tablets and suffered vertigo as a withdrawal symptom, so a generally horrible entry/exit, but for the most part I just felt emotionally stable.

 

[JimB]

I've been on three anti-depressants in my life. I forget which ones and it doesn't matter which they were because, as Something Amyss has said, effects and side-effects are so idiosyncratic my experiences really can't be used as predictors of your reactions to these drugs. The first one was fine, but sexually frustrating in that it severely dampened my capacity to feel sexual arousal but not my desire to be sexually aroused, if that makes any sense; if I may use a simile, I'd compare it to trying to inflate a swimming raft by mouth while the raft has a tiny puncture so it's constantly leaking. Except instead of a raft, it's a boner.

The second one was fine.

The third one was awful. It worked to prevent my depression, but instead of muting the depression as the previous medications had done, it felt like it left the depression at full strength but forced me to fight back against it, which was exhausting to the point of agony, and I went off it because nothing my depression makes me do, up to and including the attempted suicides, felt worse to me than being endlessly tired from endlessly fighting inside my own head.

 

[Old Father Eternity]

Was on some for about a year, felt a tiny bit more energetic but at the end of the day that was cancelled out by trying really hard not to smack some random joe over the head with a metal bar. Coffee does not exactly agree with my system at the best of times but at one point made a mistake of consuming them together ... what a lovely migraine that was. Other than those, I could not notice anything different really, all in all in the end however I was no better or worse than before(aside from having had wasted money on stuff that eventually proved worthless).

 

[Glongpre]

Try physical exercise.

Makes you feel better physically, gets good chemicals flowing in your body, lots of good stuff.

There are tons of anecdotes about how it changed peoples lives like The Rock, but there are also studies that have said exercise is better for depression than any medication.

I am very disturbed that drugs are given so frivolously in the medical profession.

 

[EeveeElectro]

I've been on them for nearly a year and it's been a bit up and down. My moods aren't as bad as they were and I don't feel as miserable/suicidal as I used to but I still have a few dips. I started on 20mg and there have been a few times where I've wanted to up my dosage but that feeling usually passes. I'm now on 10mg and I'm trying to wean myself off them; it's going okayish so far. Still having a few dips but they aren't lasting weeks at a time like they used to.

The side affects I got where incredible tiredness. My whole body felt tired and sluggish, I had no energy and ended up sleeping more. I nap during the day most days too. My energy levels are a bit better now and I've realised an increase in my productivity.
Near the start of using them my sex drive took a massive dive and I found it a LOT harder to actually reach orgasm to the point of it frustrating me so I didn't really bother with it anymore.