After decades of health anxiety and trying counselling and CBT about three times each I finally decided to try medication to reduce my health anxiety. I have many intrusive thoughts daily about me dying or my daughter dying. Without a huge amount of detail I have Ben through four traumatic events linked to death and so I know where this is coming from. Point is, in early 2020 I started taking Sertraline and it worked amazingly well. I felt like myself again and could enjoy a family event without thinking ‘what if I’m not here this time next year’. However, I also put on 3 and a half stone and have never been so heavy in my life. I attribute it to Sertraline for the most part but also lockdown and drinking more in early covid days. It’s been hard to get any weight off so I decided to taper off Sertraline to see if I could loose some weight. The weight brings with it other problems like feeling like shit and not feeling healthy. So I’ve done this two times now and lost a small amount of weight but each time the intrusive thoughts would come back so much that o had to go back on Sertraline. So I’m now on my third attempt at coming off then but again I can feel the anxiety coming back. How long can I / should I realistically stay on Sertraline for? Anybody been taking it long term? Would be interested to se other people’s experiences. Thank you x