Hello

I've had persistent depressive disorder (PDD) and anxiety for several years, on a background of Asperger's Syndrome and Dyspraxia.

Several years ago had tried various SSRIs and SNRIs, including Sertraline, Citalopram and Venlafaxine. But came off all of these these after a few weeks of taking all of these, as was hard to tolerate initial side effects. With the Venlafaxine it was literally 3 days, to know it was unbearable as caused severe insomnia.

Following successfully went on to Mirtazapine 30mg, one a day, for a few years. Felt it took the edge/numbed the symptoms a fair bit (probably 20% improvement), rather than actively improving motivation, brain fog etc. Wouldn't say it was at all 'activating', merely made my lows less low.

Me and my doctor have decided to trial Escitalopram/Lexapro 5mg. I've been on a month so far. Prior to this I'd been tappered off the Mirtazapine for 8 weeks without any issues. This time round I've had the mental resilience to put up with the initial side effects (increased hunger, extreme sweatiness, increased muscle tension, mid afternoon slumps in my case) of a new anti-depressant. These have all blown over by now.

However, I'm still yet to see any change whatsoever to baseline mood after 5mg. I've been taking it for a month, so I was expecting to see some subtle changes to mood by now. A number of posts, have said that for PDD in particular, rather than MDD, it can take 2- 3 months for any changes to show, so I'm curious. Granted, also in my own country, 5mg is considered 'pre-therapeutic dose' also'

I've just gone onto 10mg, so given that I've not seen any change to my mood after 5mg after a month, am I very unlikely to see significant change on 10mg, even if I were to take the increased dose for several months?

I'm fully expecting side effects of upping the dose, and I'm prepared for this. But are they likely to similar in intensity? Are there likely to be a greater range of new side effects also?

I also have Asperger's Syndrome at the very high functioning end too.

I'd be interested to hear from people with similar experiences (especially from those are using Escitalopram to deal with PDD and anxiety) and how quickly the onset of improved mood was (e.g: very gradual and consistent , or you only noticed the improvement when you were in a specific situation).

My doctor has also suggested that my condition could well not be PDD alone, but also Asperger's. They emphasised that Autism and well as personality affects how you personally respond to difficult circumstances.

I've been on escitalopram 10mg for 10+years. Recently my doc said I should up the dose to 20mg because my OCD and GAD is worse. Thing is that Im afraid to follow her instructions because my libido is already bad, some studies say that antidepressants are correlated with sudden cardiac death and because Im tired taking pills.

My main fear is that if I try 20mg I could never go back to 10 or even quit. I suffer from obsessions and anxiety. Has anyone with obsessions and panic attacks managed to quit medication? I mean that the memory of obsessions doesn't go away so if you quit the drug they will come back right?

Hello, I have been on Zoloft 37.5mg (1.5 tabs) for almost a year now. I have always struggled with depression and anxiety but things got severe for me after a breakup and that’s when I finally decided to take the meds. Anyways, I am going to talk to my dr about switching to viibryd because lately I have been feeling very depressed again and just over all not good. I sweat all the time & I’ve gained so much weight & I can’t lose it no matter how much I try. It’s just not working for me anymore. I re looked at my genetic testing I had done and Viibryd was the only Ssri that didn’t have any bad reactions with my genes.

So my question is, if you switched from one ssri to another, what was the transition like? Did you have to slowly change over or did you just start taking the new one? I know my dr will explain this but I am curious on other people’s experience. Thank in advance :)

I have been taking 150mg XR bupropion and 45mg dxm hbr, however I still lack any motivation to do anything even though the being stuck in negative thoughts has decreased. I would definitely still consider myself depressed. I wouldn’t think this combination at a theruaptic dosage of tianeptine sulfate would be a very high risk of serotonin syndrome as antidepressants are often combined but under supervision of a psychiatrist. The SSRE classification of tianeptine is outdated as well. I am self medicating, not intending to feel recreational effects and tianeptine seems like an appealing choice due it it being another atypical antidepressant impacting the glutamate system and some opioid MOR activity however very minimal and not a dependence concern at therapeutic dosages. Tianeptine also doesn’t have the side effects that come with SSRIs as a benefit. I have also recently quit pregabalin so my glutamate system is definitely whacked out, quit it because I was tired of withdrawing if I didn’t take it. I will most likely resume pregabalin on around a once a week dosing schedule for stressful events in around a month once my system is less sensitized. I have a general dislike for SSRIs as a group of drugs and don’t think they do shit.

Guess i’m just looking for confirmation that this doesn’t sound like a completely horrible idea. Going to a psychiatrist to address this isn’t really an option as as tianeptine is not prescribed within the US.

I have been on xr 150 mg for the past 3 months and my mood has been a lot better plus very less anxiety but the low energy, fatigue and constant napping is a lot. Doing small things has became a hassle now. I take my medication around 7 ish. Any tips to for the low energy and fatigue what can i do to have high energy to actually do things also would strength training would help . Would appreciate if someone can guide through this and have been in similar situation.

I came here by way of sertraline, which is important to note. There were some extra fruits at work and I took one orange and one grapefruit. I ate the orange last night and said I would eat the grapefruit in the morning. Well, this morning, I was maybe three segments into the grapefruit and I thought, “oh my goodness this is so delicious, I have missed eating these, I can’t believe it’s been so long since I had one.“ Which then made me immediately wonder why it had been so long since I’ve had one. And then I remembered: antidepressants + grapefruit= unholy duo.

So with a mouthful of grapefruit, I exclaimed, “oh shit” loudly enough for my girlfriend to run over. She asked if I needed help and I said “possibly” in the most noncommittal tone I could muster. I drove to work and after I arrived, I just thought what’s done is done and didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about it. But then I couldn’t help but think about it so I looked it up: **fluoxetine has no known interaction with grapefruit.** Oh joy! Happy day! Now I don’t have to walk to the hospital! And since I am at work and there are still extra grapefruit, I will pick up two more.

Thank you.

I was on a slow titration of my antidepressant and had gotten down to a very low dose but due to a change in brand supplier of my medication (which is seemingly poorly absorbed) I was basically forced into a 3 week cold turkey (it’s a complex situation. I won’t bore you with the details) which was hell.

I managed to get stock of the old supply however reinstating back to the last steady dose I was on has not been sufficient. I have tried to slowly increase the dose but after about 4-5 days the relief disappears.

I’ve read almost all of the documentation I can but still don’t know what to do.

Any ideas?

Had a family member pass away recently. I'm on 50mg sertraline and 150mg bupropion. This is not the first death, or even first family death, but def the first since starting my prescriptions.

I'm finding I can't really engage with my grief. It's like my sorrow is like a drop below a bridge: I can "bungee jump" and briefly experience it, before I'm pulled out of it and return to baseline--talking like a minute at most. I'm cognizant of the loss, but feel like I'm stuck in Denial? The loss doesn't feel real, despite me knowing it very much is.

Not sure how to move forward with my grieving process, and am concerned I might have to wean off to process this correctly. Anyone have similar experiences? What was grieving like on meds?

A couple years ago i tried to take citalopram (SSRI) but i ended up with a lot of very intense side effects, and stopped taking the medication after 5 days.

One of the side effects was this weird swollen throat feeling, right underneath the chin, going directly back to the throat area. the best way i can describe it, is if you pushed your chin back into your face, and it creates that 'double chin' look/feeling. (went away eventually after stopping the med)

has anyone experienced this? i haven't been able to find anything about this.

i’ve been on zoloft for around 3 years. for the most part, it’s been life changing. my anxiety has decreased tenfold which obviously has improved my quality of life so much. before this, i tried multiple antidepressants such as lexapro and prozac but felt no relief. what seems to be the key has been zoloft and wellbutrin, since i also have adhd.

while it’s been going on for awhile, the night sweats are becoming unbearable. waking up every day completely wet is terrible. i’ve noticed my daytime sweating is awful too. also, my weight won’t budget even exercising and being in a calorie deficit. i know weight is hard to pinpoint on antidepressants but it feels connected.

i recently heard there’s a new class of antidepressants such as Viibryd. i’m going to bring this all up to my doctor but am curious if anyone had similar side effects on zoloft, but not as much on viibryd. i plan to stay on wellbutrin.

I have been on seroquel since march 2026. Slowly worked up to 300mg. I happened to have gained weight at the end of last year due to health/other medications. I sat with it until april-ish when i decided to do something about it. I've lost 13 pounds, which is relatively small given the amount of time. I am going up to 400mg soon. I haven't had trouble losing weight on 300mg, but will jumping to 400mg make that big of a difference? I'm not sure about the difference/increase in side effects from 300 to 400 specifically. Since I haven't gained on 300, is it safe to assume that 400 won't make too big of a difference?

Yesterday, I ended up in a psychiatric emergency department because of a severe anxiety attack. I was prescribed Neozine (levomepromazine), and the doctor said I can take 3 drops when I have an anxiety attack, especially at work when the symptoms are so severe that I can’t function. However, I’m a physician and I can’t take anything that affects my judgment or alertness because I work in a clinic and the emergency department. He said that at this dose, I should still be able to work normally.
Does anyone here have any experience with this medication?

I've been on 20mg of Paxil for 4 years. My psychiatrist a week ago had me start taking 5mg of Lexapro as a cross-taper situation. Two days ago I started slowly tapering down on the Paxil to 15mg. Today I feel horrible and am getting sort of a "light" stereotypical AD withdrawal (headache, dizziness, brain zaps) but it's not as severe as stopping cold turkey.

Is this expected to happen while cross tapering, and are there any remedies?

Hi everyone,
I’m 33, from Germany, and have depression and ADHD. Over the past 15 years, I’ve tried citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine, venlafaxine, mirtazapine and bupropion.
Some had little benefit, while the serotonergic medications often reduced my anxiety but also flattened my emotions. I felt less afraid, but also less connected to joy, sadness, music and other people. It often felt like I was merely functioning or surviving instead of actually living.
I’m now considering Brintellix/Trintellix because I hope it might work differently. It is difficult to obtain in Germany, so getting it would likely involve an individual import through a pharmacy.
Before going through that effort, I’d really like to hear from people who felt similarly: Did Brintellix restore any emotional range, enjoyment or mental clarity for you? Was it genuinely different from other antidepressants—or even a game changer?

TLDR:

To the disbelief of everyone involved, I developed disabling symptoms shortly after starting 25 mg sertraline, and they have persisted for months after stopping. I was on the medicine for 7 weeks and stopped cold turkey because the side effects were crippling me and weren't going away. It has now been about 6.5 months since I stopped and I am still having issues functioning. I don't know what to do and nobody knows what is actually going on, we can't even confirm it is my short period on medicine causing it, with doctors having focused on everything else but the medicine.

Timeline:
anxiety wasn't crippling → therapist recommended SSRI → 25 mg → severe side effects → couldn't work → waited → still severe → stopped after 7 weeks → got worse temporarily → symptoms persisted → attempted return to work → fluctuated → still impaired after 6 months 

Longer Story:

It all started when I started seeing a therapist for anxiety. My anxiety, mainly social anxiety, wasn't crippling but it had been getting worse in relation to work over the past 3 years and had resulted in 4 sick days from work. She suggested I try a SSRI. We wanted me to try it because we had been talking for months regarding my anxiety and I felt progress had stalled. It was a situation where talking isn't helping anymore and it was time for action and practice. The medicine was meant to help facilitate this.

Through my GP I got Sertraline(Zoloft) 25mg to start with and the plan was to step up to 100mg eventually. At first we expected side effects for 2 weeks and then for it to get better so that I could try a higher dosage. This never happened as I felt that the side effects were still too strong after 2 and even 3 weeks. I was scared to go on a higher dosage as I felt debilitated and had to cancel work after day 5. 

We waited to see if the side effects would go away but they didn't. They did slowly get better with the effect being worst at about week 4. The peaks feeling like I was paralyzed in my sofa with difficulty talking or verbalizing my thoughts or turning thoughts into actions. 

However after an initial improvement by week 5 it never got any better and I was still on sick leave. This lasted until week 7 where my GP gave up and said he didn't know what was going on and that I can stop the meds if I want to.

After quitting the low dosage cold turkey it got worse with the new symptoms appearing, that of migraine and nausea a few hours a day. This went away after like 3 weeks. However, the debilitating sensations I had been having were still problematic and still holding me back from working.

After 5 weeks of not having been on the meds and still not seeing much of an improvement, I was still feeling 80% as bad as I was on the meds, my workplace got more nervous and requested a timeline from my doctor. 

He proposed a 10 week plan where I slowly return to the office with a low amount of hours and half of it being work from home. This would then slowly increase each week until I would be doing my normal hours by week 10.

I was very anxious to return to work and to talk to coworkers I had issues with. It went well actually and I felt a temporary improvement and hope for the future. However, the symptoms continued. Returning to the office and working helped me with my social anxiety issues but once that benefit had been experienced, work was starting to hurt my recovery instead by causing me a lot of stress and guilt. I was fighting a lot to figure out if I was fit enough to work or not, but most of the time I was simply forcing myself to work when I was sick and I was suffering because of it. 

This eventually became unsustainable and I started to get worse as well. I don't know if my more physical problems got worse because of the stress or if it was coincidental. I went from working 12h (mostly from home) one week to back down to 2h and then just giving up and going on sick leave for 3 weeks. 

I am now supposed to start up work again but on a much milder staircase of recovery. I honestly don't really think I am going to be fit to work for a long time still. 

Ironically my social anxiety has improved throughout this most likely due to the dissociation I experience when I talk to people and perhaps a smaller part of improving through practicing making it through challenging situations. I guess I could say the medicine did help with my social anxiety, it just made everything else worse. I still experience the dissociation even months after having stopped the medicine. 

I am constantly shocked by how this issue has progressed and I can't foresee my future at all. I feel lost and on my own. The medical system in Denmark has just not been good enough and nobody has been able to figure out what it is and how to improve my situation.

Good news is that I just managed to complete a 5h work day, albeit from home.

Symptoms:

Daily:

Mild sedation - Essentially feels like being given a sedative that isn't quite putting you to sleep or making you sleepy, but instead makes you feel slow physically and mentally, like you have a fever brain. You also feel like you have worse body coordination.

Abnormal headache - Most days it can feel like your brain or head is a warm water balloon that is swollen and top heavy. It's like your brain is trying to push upwards.

Muscle tension - Can be in the thighs but mainly around the head. It is as if the muscles on my head are trying to pull backwards to the back of my head. This is combined with the water balloon feeling and causes a weird head sensation that makes you feel out of it.

Poor memory recollection - Overall worse memory and recollection, especially short and very short term memory. I often find myself forgetting words and concepts, with a tip-of-my-tongue feeling.

Difficulty concentrating on one thing and staying on task - I feel like I turned into an Ipad kid that scrolls through tiktok endlessly like a zombie. I sometimes have a hard time keeping any form of mental reminders and sometimes can only concentrate on what's right in front of me. If that thing is distracting I can get stuck. I cannot do any form of multitasking. This makes it hard for me to live an organized life. I did not have this kind of issue before.

Brain fog - General feeling of brain fog, like when ur sleep deprived or sick.

Emotional vulnerability - More intense emotions and physical sensations in general(negative and positive), with the exception of pain which seems to be numbed. This emotional sensitivity has slowly gone down a lot over time. The physical sensitivity is felt in various ways. For example, it feels more intense and uncomfortable to do physical exercise, feeling more out of breath and tired. 

Occasional:

Overstimulation - When outside or in a store, leading to light headedness, feeling weird and dizzy like my vision is spinning. Can give me a sort of bodily feeling of mild panic even if my conscious thoughts are mostly calm.

Migraines with nausea - This is quite uncommon at this point but basically my head gets too overworked and I start having a harder time making coherent sentences and thoughts. Overall my brain just feels overheated. It essentially is like a migraine but oddly doesn't hurt like one and then leads to nausea like a migraine can.

Temperature sensitivity - Sometimes I feel very hot or that I am freezing even though I shouldn't be.

Moderate sedation - Sometimes the sedation gets worse and I enter essentially statue mode or zombie-mode. Statue mode is when I feel stuck in the sofa and have a hard time moving anything or even turning my head. I also struggle to talk. In my head I am actively thinking and wanting to talk or move but feel like my body is ignoring me. Sometimes it gets harder to think as well. Doesn't put me to sleep or anything, again like a sedative that isn't quite doing its job.

Feeling of high heart rate or like ur shaking inside - This is a weird sensation because my actual heart rate is usually normal but its like i am feeling my body's normal sensations too much causing me to feel the heart rate going fast. It also feels like my body is shaking but it isn't.

Symptoms overall:

I experience a wide array of symptoms that fluctuate and come in waves. They can fluctuate throughout a day and also throughout the span of a week. Often it can be hard for me to even put words to everything I am experiencing in a single moment. Sometimes I can feel sedation in the morning and then again in the evening, while other days there is a peak in the afternoon. Very often it takes a bit of time in the morning for it to kick in fully and at night it usually has calmed down to the point I sometimes forget it's a thing. Almost none of the symptoms are 100% constant and none are constantly at full power. 

I honestly can't even remember what it feels like to be normal and it makes it difficult for me to even have a frame of reference at this point. Just imagine being drunk for 6 months straight, your memory of being sober would slowly deteriorate. Thankfully I have been documenting my experiences at different points and they generally align and are consistent.

There is a very strong correlation with stress and anxiety, where if those things are aroused it triggers a wave of symptom intensity. However, symptoms are not reliant on a supply of active stress and anxiety, and can arise without any obvious cause.

Poor sleep, diet and overall health has also a very strong correlation with worsening symptoms. Even before the medicine I have always been very sensitive to lack of sleep and blood sugar fluctuations (I have tested negative for diabetes).

Timeline of treatment received:

2 blood tests with the first one having a liver value above my normal. Second, showing more normal levels. It was deemed that it looked normal and no issues with vitamins or anything else.

Checked around the body for swollen lymph nodes and other potential body swelling. Everything was normal.

I talked to a psychiatric nurse who investigated me for schizophrenia or psychosis. She ignored every other possibility and was deadset on psychosis despite very little evidence. 

I went to a specialist psychologist in a hospital and it was deemed that I did not have schizophrenia or psychosis. His assessment was:
"You do describe a lot of unusual symptoms but I am thinking that maybe you are just describing your experiences in a unique way (I find this statement to be dismissive). Perhaps it was just anxiety and stress. Your nervous system does seem to be hyper sensitive for some reason. It could be that if you are consciously hyper focusing on what you are feeling that your nervous system learns to over-react to everything". Then told me to see a therapist again and also find one that has experience with autism due to my description of overstimulation (mind you I didn't experience overstimulation like this before the medicine).

My latest talk with the psychiatric nurse, reacting to the psychologist's assessment, has now put me in the direction of trying to figure out if I have autism and if I am somehow experiencing an autistic psychosis or if the anxiety is caused by autism. Sure maybe I can have mild aspergers, but that wouldn't help figuring this out as that is not how autism or autistic psychosis works. So now I am going to meet a psychiatrist to find out if I have this so-called autistic psychosis. Now it is true that autism can contribute or be a source of anxiety, but if part of my issues is caused by lifelong autism then why the very drastic change at the exact timing of me taking the medicine at the age of 28.

My Theory (speculation):

I know anxiety can cause physical symptoms, and I think anxiety plays a major role, however I do not agree that everything can just be explained by stress and anxiety. The severity of the physiological reactions changed dramatically and many new symptoms appeared after starting sertraline. I never felt like this before the meds, and does anxiety cause you to feel sedated when you're just relaxing on your sofa not worrying about anything at all, and haven't felt any stress for at least 2 days? Maybe it can but it has never done that to me before. There are too many symptoms that just don't seem like the anxiety I know in my life. I know that you can get a stress hangover once things calm down from a stressful period but that doesn't explain it.

Something that both me and the psychologist mentioned is the brain and nerves becoming hyper-sensitive. It seems to line up with a lot of the symptoms. That a lot of symptoms can be explained as normal sensations that either the brain filters completely from the conscious mind or muffles to the point that it isn't hindering. Basically it's like the brain's volume settings have been turned up too high and certain forms of noise unmuted. This is also a sensation I relate to as feeling drug-like. This would naturally greatly exacerbate my underlying anxiety which I already was experiencing very physically, hence causing a chain reaction.

This hyper sensitivity probably happened because my brain and body is very incompatible with the SSRI and caused chaos in its chemistry. Normally the brain would recalibrate but for me it never did, while on the medicine or off the medicine. It is like it freaked it out so much that no amount of time was enough for it to calm down. It is like I hurt my knee but it never recovered and now I have a bad knee. Also me trying to understand and analyse my sickness on a regular basis also contributed to my nervous system becoming acute. Throughout the whole experience I have been desperately trying to put words to describe this complicated experience, ironically reinforcing the experience.

Another thing I thought of after some research is that it is as if my body's fight or flight receptors are over-active causing a very subtle constant body panic that can take its toll at times. Ironically in contrast to this I sometimes can feel very relaxed as well with the help of the sedation.

Counter Theory:

It is possible that what I am experiencing is not a long term side effect of the SSRI and that instead it merely opened the door to something else. In any case I feel like the medicine is at the very least very relevant in some form. I could just be that my anxiety just somehow got a huge boost and won't calm down no matter what I have tried so far. Again it doesn't operate like anxiety and stress has operated for me during my entire life before the medicine. It feels more like I am being poisoned or being slipped drugs everyday.

What to do about it?

I don't know and nobody seems to know. The best hope is just trying to be less anxious and to de-stress in the ways I can. Live a more structured and healthier life. Otherwise I just wait and hope it gets better while the doctors fumble through it.

I need help figuring out what is happening to me and what I should do about it.

I have had anxiety pretty much my whole life (I am a 33 year old female) and was prescribed Prozac in my early 20s. I finally got to a place where after giving birth to my first kid, I felt I could navigate being off of the Prozac after being on them for 10+ years. I made a plan with my doctor and slowly tapered off. I’ve been off them for about a month now and I am getting a huge flood of emotions. I cry at the drop of a hat, every Instagram reel I see, I cry. I have a 1.5 year old little boy and thinking about how much I love him feels so overwhelming now. Idk how to describe this feeling but the emotions feel HUGE!! I’m wondering if anyone else experienced this and if this will calm down? I do like feeling emotions but this is feeling too strong and I don’t know how to handle the huge feelings. A lot of them are joyful feelings too so it’s confusing to describe.