To ask if antidepressants made a difference to your life?

[marmite92]

I have been struggling with horrible anxiety and mild depression for a few years now. Antidepressants have been suggested to me in the past by a gp but as part of my issue is health anxiety I'm quite scared to take them, and one of my friends is in the psychology field and is against ADs so that's always been niggling in the back of my head as she thinks they just mask it and numb you then you can't get off them.

I've done cbt, I do all the self help stuff that they say but it just doesn't feel enough and I am exhausted, I want to feel happy and relaxed again but fear I never will. I have had a lot of big life changes in the past year but I was like this before all that too. Any positive stories? Or even tips on how to beat all this?

Transformed it when PND struck. Enable me to live a normal life.

I doubt your friend is highly qualified In her field. I couldn’t even face the CBT without them. With them I can tackle challenges that would have overwhelmed me without them. I take an inhaler for asthma. I don’t see AD as any different.

I do think sometimes antidepressanta are prescribed too quickly and without enoughfollow up, or therapy alongside, but there is definitely a place for them in helping someone cope.
Ive been struggling and avoiding antidepressants for a few years now after previously being on them, and i recently went on prozac/fluoxetine and its definitely helped me. I dont feel on a rollercoaster of heightened emotions and negativity and fear anymore.
Still not 100% but its helped

And it was 18 years ago - I talk half halfheartedly with my GP at every 6 mo review about coming off them but she always says I need to view them as a diabetic would view insulin. So I pop them every night and am happy. The black dog does sometimes start to loom but I can manage it.

No she isn't highly qualified you're right, she's just got her opinions about it after doing research in patients and thinks cbt is much better. But for me, cbt worked when there was one thing I was worried about, but the focus of the worry changes all the time and so it's hard to apply the same things I learnt in cbt if that makes sense

Oh, god, yes!! A hundred times, yes!!
I refused to have them for soooo long, whilst my anxiety and panic attacks got worse and worse... til finally, in desperation I agreed to try them.
I had a dodgy first couple of weeks while my brain got used to them... then I’ve never looked back.
I am comfortable with the fact that I may never come off them... but my quality of life is so much better - so I don’t care!
I have reduced my dose by 25% so I’m pleased with that.
I can only speak from experience. They totally improved my life.
I take 30mg of Seroxat a day, down from 40mg.
HTH x

Massive difference.

Ignore her OP. I did CBT and it helps me all the time. But without the Prozac to correct the chemical imbalance in my brain then I wouldn’t be able to.
Good luck OP. Anxiety is awful.

Have been taking escitalopram for depression & severe anxiety for 10 years - they took a couple of months to kick in - I have OCD & the meds work for that too - no way I would ever stop taking them

A big improvement compared to where I was. It's nothing revolutionary - no big side effects, aside from the vivid dreams and guaranteed good night's sleep - just maybe 10% or 20% better than before.

I now feel like I'm bobbling along the just under the surface like a cork - still mostly underwater, but gasps of air available. Before I was just sinking, sinking and never finding the bottom.

I’ve been on antidepressants for almost 10 years now (I’m late 20s) and I can honestly say that they saved my life.
They aren’t an immediate fix, and it took a while for me to find the correct dosage, but they now keep me on an even keel day to day.
Once or twice I have tried reducing my dosage (to see if I still need them), but I have immediately noticed a negative impact, so returned to my normal dosage. To me there is no shame in still being on the medication... it’s safe for me to do so according to my doctor, and if anything I feel much less numb taking them than I did when my depression was untreated.
I would say it’s like any other illness... If you had a bad infection you wouldn’t let it get worse and continue to suffer because you think your body should be able to cope, you’d get antibiotics! The same goes for ADs.
At the end of the day though, it’s about finding what works for you and what you are happy with. I have friends who have used antidepressants when needed for a short period, then came off them with relative ease. I also had a friend who had to try a few different ADs until she found one that really worked for her/didn’t have any side effects.
Best of luck to you getting through your difficult time

I’m not medicated for anxiety as mine is manageable but I do take an antidepressant for severe chronic depression. It has saved my life. I take fluoxetine and I couldn’t survive without it.

I'm been wondering about antidepressants lately too OP. I want to do CBT but I'm not keen to do it over zoom or whatever. It needs to be in person, but without knowing when that can happen I have wondered about speaking to my GP in the meantime about ADs. I hadn't given much thought to the fact it might take a few months to kick in.

Also, I feel like antidepressants are for people who are genuinely properly unwell. I might not be a candidate for them anyway.

Good luck - I hope you get some help towards feeling better soon.

your friend's opinion is their own, even if they are from a psych background.
evidence is strong that CBT + antidepressants have better outcomes
there's no shame in doing something for your health
if your friend had a low opinion of insulin and you were diabetic would you not take the medication recommended?
speaking as someone who is also in the psych field

Sertraline saved my life.
I had severe anxiety and depression after my son was born. There was no way I could function enough to even consider CBT (was full rocking in the corner crazy).
I think your friend is an idiot for being so dismissive of something there is a huge body of clinical evidence to show makes huge improvements to the lives of thousands.

Changed my life for the better. They made me able to engage with therapy and other methods that I couldn’t have even contemplated beforehand.

My husband has them and I would say they have been great , they have improved life no end . Some people seem to need them to function properly . They haven't changed him , just his resilience to deal with stressful events without tipping into depression .

I have suffered with anxiety my whole life, my marriage broke down 5 years ago and I spiralled to levels I couldn't cope with, I went to the GP and they prescribed Sertraline and it has changed my life.
It took a couple of weeks to adjust to the medication, I had dizzy spells and nausea but this soon settled down and after around 4 weeks the constant on edge feeling, teeth grinding and restlessness had gone. I now have perspective on problems and I'm much more able to deal with them.

Two years ago I sat down and thought about all the different ways I could kill myself, thanks to an absolute mental battering as I started perimenopause. I didn't really want to die but the depression and anxiety were absolutely crippling. Prozac saved my life. I was only on it a year, and only a lowish dose, but it helped me see through the fog and get back on to an even keel. It also made me realise that things actually weren't alright, that I wasn't coping, and it took making me feel better to realise that I was in a pretty dark place.

I started sertraline this year aged 46 after a horrible divorce and some wierd trauma and PTSD

I have always used other MH aids in the past

But now I feel normal
Not drugged , not numb but normal

I didn’t even have any side effects , just felt normal again
I was having so much anxiety but worse than that was the dark thoughts

ADs took the edge off and at least reassured friends I was doing something proactive. CBT didn’t help really, but proper evaluation and treatment from a clinical psychologist was life changing. Took more than a year to get appointment due to waiting list, so took ADs whilst waiting. Did struggle with the withdrawal, there’s another thread running about that at the moment by someone else, but no long term I’ll effects. For me they were part of the treatment but by no means the key part. Also took a couple of tries to find one that felt like it helped any.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say no. The ones I had were supposed to be taken at night as they make you drowsy and I wasn't sleeping much (if at all), with the thoughts going around in my head. They didn't work and when I did manage to sleep whilst taking them (which wasn't very often), I had the most horrific dreams to the point where I would wake up crying. I was on the lowest dose but because of the dreams I wouldn't accept a higher one. I don't take anything now as I don't want to experience that again. I guess I'll just have to learn to live with my anxiety and depressive moods.

I’ve been on many over the years and I’m now on Sertraline. I was on 150mg but have recently tapered to 50.

It’s saved my life. Genuinely. A few years ago I was so unstable, in and out of hospital, suicidal, self harming, the whole shebang. It took trial and error with different meds but once I’d settled on the sertraline it was like night and day.

I’ve tapered off because I had started to feel numb and emotionless, but this was after five years or so on the same high dose.

Finding the right meds is life changing.

Thanks so much everyone, so pleased they have helped so many of you. To be perfectly honestly it annoys me a little that my friend has this opinion, and I am starting to think it's fine for people to say that but working in the field and actually experiencing it are totally different. I am so so fed up of being constantly on edge worrying and ruminating about things that I could have done differently in my life, which takes up about 80% of my daily thoughts. Maybe I should have a chat with a gp about them x

Asking a psychologist if they'd recommend antidepressants is like asking a builder if he'd recommend an architect.
It's not something that's within their abilities, they cannot prescribe so they tend to look at it with suspicion.
So they say Nah stay away from that you don't need it, I heard a fella once say he took antidepressants and he could never get off them. So says the psychologist.
No point paying money for an architect when an architect can't even build, leave it to me I'll make it look nice enough. So says the builder.