Starting Escitalopram for anxiety - positive experiences?

[User87890]

Hi all,

As the title says, I'm looking to hear if anybody else has found Escitalopram to be effective for anxiety.

I've been diagnosed with GAD for years, and suffer from the generalised panic, panic attacks, rumination, avoidance behaviours etc.

I resisted drug treatment for it for years but in 2019 went on Sertraline which helped for a while then seemed to lose effectiveness. Since that I've tried Fluoxetine (did nothing for me good or bad), Mirtazipine (felt like a zombie on it with the fatigue) and most recently Citalopram.

Unclear how much the Citalopram helped me but I've been off it for a few months and my anxiety has fully returned due to some big stressors in my life.

Anyway, I'm hoping Escitalopram is going to be the one for me that will help more than the others... Keen to hear how others who have tried other SSRIs before it have gotten on 😀

Thanks!

I found escitalopram seemed to increase my anxiety. Sertraline worked better for me.
however, it may have been hormones and not the escitalopram!
A lot of people have had great success with escitalopram.

It worked like a charm for me. I have chronic PTSD, and take 20mg ecitalopram every night. I have to drink more coffee to get going in the morning but otherwise I have no complaints. I’ve been on it for about 18 years? I can’t recall to be honest!

I have been taking it for over a year now - its a life saver. I never had any side effects apart from a bit of a weight gain.

It seems to work for me I take 20mg at night along with rexulti I've had no bad side effects 😊

I’m just starting on this journey. Pretty scared tbh. Right now experiencing all the initial side effects :/

How are you doing now? I'm waiting for an appointment with the GP to probably start it again, and I'm worried.

I’m 6 days in which have not been fun. Really heightened anxiety and muscles spasming everywhere. Trying to power through. Dr has suggested mirtazipine as an alternative if I can’t get through this.

supposed to go onto 10mg tmw but the side effects may delay that.

The emotional side effects went and were replaced by jaw clenching. Really do feel like I won’t get better I swear.

I’ve got on very well with Escitalopram. I have previously take. Sertraline which did work but I’ve had far fewer adverse effects from Escitalopram. I only take 10mg. I also briefly took Mirtazapine and hated it although it was great for sleep

I’m only on 5 atm. Supposed to go to 10 and was all ready to until the clenching happened.

Did you manage to go up? Did the anxiety come back?

My GP started me on Citalopram, so similar. Only 5mg to start, which is equivalent to 2.5mg of Escitalopram.

I had hellish anxiety for the first 4 days. That seems to be slowly subsiding, but I think I'm grinding my teeth at night, as my jaw is sore, and I'm struggling to sleep past 3am.

I'm supposed to increase to 10mg soon, and worried about the anxiety coming back. The med is prescribed for anxiety, so making it worse (even if only temporarily) is really hard to deal with.

Haven’t gone up. It’s been good for me in every other way but the clenching just isn’t going away, so I imagine I’ll be getting shifted onto something else sadly :(