Can you tell me your positive experiences of medication for anxiety?

[trunumber]

What worked for you? I'm considering asking the doctor - my friend is on sertraline but the possible side effect of insomnia puts me off (I realise the doctor will recommend but like to have personal opinions too)

Citalopram did absolutely nothing for me, Sertraline gave me hallucinations but Venlafaxine literally saved my life. I'm am on the absolute maximum dose (I've had psycs want to transfer me to other drugs as a result of the dose) but there is no way I will entertain a change in meds. Strangely I find my GP to be the best for managing my meds and I have at various points tried stepping them down under his supervision but he has always put them straight back up at the first sign of issues. I think its vital that you have a solid trusting relationship with whoever prescribes your meds and that you remember that meds are often only part of the solution. My meds enable me to access counselling support more usefully for example.

Mirtazapine has helped me in many ways.

I've never had depression but am on Citalopram 40mg for anxiety (plus the occasional diazepam). Works wonders. Only side effect were initial extremely vivid dreams, which were great

Definitely Venlafaxine. Fluoxetine worked for a while, Mirtazipine turned me into a zombie.

I have found they see you quickly with psychosis. Other times not. Maybe they have some kind of quick pathway for those with psychotic symptoms.

I’ve only recently begun taking citalopram for anxiety, but am starting to feel the positive effect. I’ve had very few side effects other than slight nausea in the morning. I’m a wee bit worried as my GP has now upped my dose to the standard 20mg from Friday so I’m crossing my fingers that the change doesn’t have too many side effects.

I take a very low dose of mirtazapine as both sertraline and citalopram gave me insomnia. It worked almost immediately with no real side effects. I did find that it made me a bit dozy during the day at first but this quickly wore off. I now sleep eight solid hours at night without waking and worrying in the middle of the night. And a proper sleep means that my anxiety is kept under control. I think I possibly did eat more at first but this settled down fairly quickly and I find that the extra energy I have from not being tired means I move more anyway. But as others have said everything works differently for people and it's worth persevering to find the right one.

I took citalopram for anxiety (and depression, but the anxiety was much more dominant/concerning) for about two years, by which point I was well enough to stop. It made a huge difference. I put on quite a bit of weight while taking it and had a couple of other odd side effects (for quite a while after I started taking it I'd have this feeling like I 'skipped' a second in time; I also smelt different while taking it - not unpleasant, but different) but it was 100% worth it.

I have a stash of beta blockers to take when I need it. Used to take citalopram when I was in a really bad patch of anxiety and depression with recurring panic attacks. Citalopram had a load of side effects unlike the beta blockers which just calm me down in a few minutes so I can deal with things better.