Sertraline - please help

I like a calm life too and would be up for wrestling anyone who tried to take them away !!

I can honestly say that Sertraline changed my life and without wanting to sound dramatic it may have saved my life. I had had OCD and severe health anxiety for 15 years . I was very poorly with my mental health. I’d put off taking tablets and had the sertraline prescription in my bag for months. I took the tablets and within a few days my world changed. I remember driving around looking at trees and the sky and people and thinking is this how it feels to live without severe anxiety. That was 10 years ago and I don’t think I have any desire to stop taking the sertraline. I now have a successful business and manage my health anxiety which will probably always be with me.

This is so odd as to make it seem like I am making this up now, but I also take Sumatriptan at onset of migraine (not regularly, just when I need to) and I have noticed nothing untoward whatsoever.

You're understandably thinking the worst. I also take statins, and no problem there. I can only talk from my experience, but I hope you find the courage to take the step and that they help you. If they don't you have lost nothing, and if they do....

It was about 4 weeks. Feel I should add, I was (wrongly) very anti-taking these and if I am being entirely honest quite judgemental about them. But I am really glad I stopped being such an ignorant twerp and listened to my GP.

I think they would have to wrestle them off me now, I like my calm life. I'm only on 50mg, it has just made such a difference.

Honestly no one knows what causes anxiety disorders/depression. Chemical imbalance is one theory but is contested. No one knows hie SSRIs work either, there are theories and I think a PP posted one above. They work really well for sone people whatever the mechanism. What I would recommend is that, whether you go down the medication route or not, you try to access therapy which is recommended for your particular situation. If there’s trauma to unpack that could involve EDMR for example. For intrusive thoughts that might not be standard CBT but instead ERP (exposure and response therapy.) If you have any means of going private to find a therapist and therapy that works for you, I would really recommend this. Obviously it would be great if this sort of help were offered on the NHS, but in my experience it’s hard to get NHS MH support. My understanding is that for people with more severe anxiety, which yours sounds like, medication rarely solves the problems. Personally I found sertraline took the edge of my profound terror just enough so I could engage with the behaviour change as part of therapy. Feel free to PM me x

Just to reassure, as I have posted already, this is exactly what I have experienced. It has helped me rationalise the things in my upbringing that led me to such anxiety and obsessive behaviours.

For example, I would completely obsess about taking the washing upstairs. The whole time it was washing, I would think, I am going to take that up after, and then I would obsess with the same thought until I had carried out the action.

Things that ridiculous would send me into a panic. I actually couldn't give a stuff about the washing now. I'm still me, I still have the same opinions, but I'm not wasting 3 hours obsessing that I must take the washing upstairs the moment it is finished.

It's not fully understood how it all works, but the theory is that Sertraline boosts the availability of serotonin and to a lesser extent dopamine in the brain. These neurotransmitters help the brain move thoughts into actions. When you have anxiety your brain can be stuck on just the thoughts. This is how boosting these neurotransmitters might help obsessive or overactive thoughts

Well typically anxiety is a future scenerio - worrying about the future, which may or may not happen.

Stress is a reactive state - a response to things that happen to you, whether you worried about them or not.

They are not the same thing.

I have been on sertraline for over a year and it’s changed my life. My anxiety peaked to the point I couldn’t leave the house without having a panic attack and had health anxiety and chest pains constantly and had to be signed off work. Since being on medication I feel like my old self before anxiety took hold all those years ago.
please try it OP, you have nothing to lose and it really can make a life changing difference.

Honestly just take it don’t over think it. The first time I was prescribed it I didn’t take it because I didn’t understand how it could work, I was cared of it not working and I was obsessing about it working and having loads of side effects- I went on like that for another year. Then I got another prescription and took it from day one and I haven’t looked back.

How do stress and anxiety differ

Is this thread about stress? I thought it was about anxiety.

Stress has little impact on me. I excel at work in a deadline-driven, high pressure role. I perform very well in interviews. I've never worried about exams, I tend to ace them.

Anxiety presumably feels different for everyone, but for me it's a feeling like you want to rip your skin off and run for the hills. It's a creeping dread. A knot in your stomach. A panic that rises in you out of nowhere.

Why I experience it and someone else might not is, I presume, perhaps as a result of some aspects of my upbringing, and/or a chemical imbalance.

What exactly is stress - is it like going to the dentist or into an exam or job interview I feel lucky that I don't suffer from it in normal daily life but why is it so debilitating in some people and not others

I'm two months in and it's honestly transformed my thinking. Very few side effects and all gone in two weeks

Your anxiety will have a much greater effect than antidepressants. Honestly, get a grip and do what's right for your child.

@Yubaa OP, we've just put our young teenage DD on Sertraline (under a psychiatrist) for anxiety and OCD. She's been on them about 4 months. The difference in her is incredible, it's joyous to see what she can do now that she couldn't previously

OP I could have wrote this myself back in April 24. Early 30s. Suffered from anxiety my whole life. Had been prescribed multiple things to try in the past but never taken them due to worrying about side effects. Tried CBT etc which didn't work for me.
I found myself in a horrible place that was taking over my life (having a toddler, husband, house to run, full time work it was less than ideal). So I tried sertraline in a desperate state.
The first night it took me a little bit longer to fall asleep. Then no side effects at all. I've continued 50mg since then so getting onto 10 months and I feel like a totally different person. I can function at work, home and as a wife/mum. I find that the things I used to worry about, I don't worry so much about anymore. I sleep well. I'm eating well. I've gained weight. People have commented on how healthy I look.

I'm currently pregnant with DC2 and still taking it and I plan to continue until at least 3 months postpartum.
Honestly it was the best decision I made for my mental health.

My advice: if you have family (trustworthy and reliable) around that can help/be on-call if needed, take one tablet in the morning with breakfast (taking with food, no matter what medication helps digestion and absorption) and see how you get on throughout the day. If you get side effects that render you unable to care for your toddler then just discontinue and inform your GP. It may be that you could start on 25mg and slowly build up, side effects allowing.

There is no quick fix with this. It took me around 3 months to notice a considerable change in the way I reacted to things and the difference was also noticeable to others.

Good luck OP. Even if it doesn't work out for you, at least you can say you tried

Thank you.

I've actually tried hypnotherapy, talking therapy and CBT. I've had a full course of each over the years.
I'm booked in for another stab at hypnotherapy this coming week, so I'll see what effect it has alongside medication.

I was on it for a year when my anxiety was debilitating with lots of physical symptoms insomnia stomach ache alongside overwhelming negative anxiety. After a couple of weeks of weirdness - bit of nausea bit of flatness just feeling a bit weird it settled down. I'd say it made my feelings about 25% less strong and my ability to sleep about 25 % more. I did have difficulty habing orgasm while I was on it but wasn't impossible. Coming off was fine in a controlled way 2 weeks feeling funny
. Nicotine withdrawal was worse. It was a useful tool whilst I worked on root causes of my anxiety alongside counselling. My other advice is stay off the anxiety chat boards across the Internet. They always seemed to be full of people having an unsurprisingly misery fest rather than a proactive source of hope which is what I needed.

It was horrible. The actual designated mental health nurse was essentially putting me off them, when they knew full well I was prescribed sertraline already by a GP (equally pessimistic) as I was really struggling. Of course their reluctance was the excuse I needed to stuff the tablets in a drawer and not take them for a good two years, as everyone managed to scare me shitless about them. Honestly some people are just very bad at their jobs and/or cannot read the room.

Unfortunately this may not be true for the OP-please see my previous posts on the potential for serious side effects/withdrawal issues. We don’t know about the OP’s specific circumstances, what else they have tried, any risk factors so we shouldn’t be saying things like this, however we’ll meant