This is too broad of a question. There are many SSRIs and the people giving answers have not tried them all.
And each affect people differently.
I think the question was meant as, “what do/did they feel like to you, the person answering this question”
Everything felt lighter. Depression for me felt like someone had increased the effects of gravity just for me. It took immense effort to get out of bed or to make myself move to accomplish anything. The meds turned gravity back to normal.
The sexual side effects were more depressing than the depression.
Like the first ten minutes after waking up from a really hard, hot, nap, all day, every day.
Like all of the bad parts of a very low dose of LSD without any of the fun.
My experience with Zoloft: or the greatest thing that has ever happened to me:
I have autism, which led to crippling, crushing anxiety and depression. It wasn’t until my mid twenties that I broke down. I could barely hold a job, talk on the phone, I couldn’t even get a drivers lisense because I had panic attacks behind the wheel so no one was willing to even TRY to teach me anymore. Zoloft changed everything. Within a few days of taking it I was less depressed sure, but the reduction of the anxiety was a miracle. I could take phone calls! I got a drivers license! I was able to get a good paying job and get my life together. It enabled me to get therapy and a diagnosis of autism which really helped me to understand a lot of my underlying problems. I remember asking my friend, after my first successful trip DRIVING to the store, is this how normal poeple feel ALL THE TIME!!??? Not crushed 24/7 by fear so bad it would make me puke!??
Side effects: I gained a lot of weight and my sex drive took a huge, huge nose dive. If I miss more than three doses I get terrible brain zaps, and can’t do anything until I get my meds. Even moving my EYES felt like lighting through my skull.
Hopefully my mini novel here was helpful, I feel like one of the few lucky, lucky poeple who had such a good reaction to SSDI inhibitors.
TLDR: took zoloft for depression, instead it ended up being the best anti- anxiety medication I have and I am still taking it. 10/10 would Zoloft again.
Zoloft gang here too. I had some mild symptoms of serotonin syndrome when I first started taking it, but they were gone within a couple weeks and it’s making a huge difference with my anxiety. I’m also autistic & ADHD
Marginally happier for a few weeks and then absolutely nothing
For me it felt like an uncomfortably mild head high. Some slight anxiety spikes, mild SI, quicker to anger.
I want to add another “everyone is different.”
As in, my major depressive disorder is comorbid with ADHD. Which means my particular brain is wired like someone insane put it together.
The ADHD diagnosis didn’t come until my mid-30s but the depression came before I was 10 years old, so I was trying everything on the market all those years. (Reminder to those of you still working on it that if there’s even one day of genuine joy to be found, all the misery will have been worth it, yes, even if it takes 20 years.)
SSRIs for me are treating a problem with a solution I don’t have. My brain refuses to make serotonin. There isn’t any of it, so controlling it’s uptake is pointless.
So it was just a massive variety of different types of numb, and different negative side effects. Of course, numb was preferable to misery, so I stayed on one or another for long stretches until I got the urge to try and find something that actually worked again.
For me personally, it didn’t really feel like anything. Kind of like taking an over the counter pain medicine, it’s not an obvious change but the pain that was there before is numbed or even entirely gone. Not noticeable unless consciously thinking about it.
It took a while to find the right dosage (roughly a year, multiple hospital visits, and a divorce from a toxic marriage), but I went from being obsessed with suicide and doing multiple attempts every day to being horrified at the thought of suicide and wanting to live as long as possible.
Do you ever think it might have been getting away from the marriage that was the ultimate antidepressant? I’m starting to think 99% of the problem is environmental (like home life) and antidepressants are medicine’s way of modulating a status quo that is otherwise not economically changeable or feasible to change
Honestly I don’t think I would have filed for divorce before the medication. I was convinced that I was not only the problem, but that I was an evil villain, and that I was making the world a better place by killing myself. Suicide was the noble and heroic action in my mind at the time, and it’s only with the benefit of hindsight, continued medication, regular therapy, and reassurances from my family that I’m able to recognize how toxic my former situation was.
Less anxiety. For a bit there I felt like “nothing” and then I realized that’s what it feels like when I’m not constantly ruminating on all the crap that brings me anxiety.
It made it a shade easier to overcome OCD - BUT a decade on I feel drowsy, oversleeping, dulled intelligence and creativity, difficult to feel pleasure “driving with the handbrake on” These meds need to have a yearly review factored in - 10+ years of use make it almost impossible to come off (even with good advice and the liquid form (that can taper 1mg change at a time) I had to BEG for in the UK. The standard advice of splitting pills for moving doses means a change far too large to handle (2.5mg is a massive drop). The brain and all its systems get very used to having more serotonin and resist this change with terror, confusion and upset. I’m on 7mg after starting with 10mg then 9, 8… and it gets tougher with each drop (no professional had any advice to give except try to come off in a few weeks :0 ).
i forget what exactly i had but it was in drops. This is from a perspective of someone for whom the meds didn’t work, rather, did the opposite of what they were supposed to
First week i felt nothing, second week i thought my anxiety was getting worse and really started hoping the meds kick in soon (let’s call it foreshadowing). Week three… well i noticed that in the mornings i feel alright, then i take the prescribed amount of drops, then i feel terrible, and in the evenings i feel alright again. My doctor told me effects fully kick in after around a month of treatment, and there can be some bad side effects at first, things getting worse before they get better kind of stuff, so i kept taking them hoping they start working as intended but the thing is- it didn’t stop there. Past week three my anxiety was constant, usually it gets triggered by something i have to do and then fades but when I was taking those SSRI it never stopped. I constantly felt like i was on the edge of a panic attack. I spent my days paralysed, just sitting before my PC trying to distract myself with comfort games & comfort videos, i didn’t even feel like i could play something more challenging or unpredictable than picross or tetris. It drove me to the point where i decided that i’m gonna risk it, do some ill-advised and understudied drug mixing and smoke weed
After 3 days of being nearly constantly high I decided to stop the meds. Though i was close to the elusive month of treatment i just couldn’t keep going like that, some people can stay high for weeks on end but not me, i do actually like being sober. And at that point being sober felt like hell. I gave it a quick Google and when i read that i can quit cold turkey (you can only do it if you haven’t been taking them for longer than a certain amount of time) i did.
It was fucking terrible, 3rd type of anxiety meds in a row that made me so much worse than normal. I’ve just been rawdogging my normal anxiety ever since, well, with some help of weed, alcohol and occasional psychedelics. It’s strange that so far the only “meds” i’ve found to be helpful are uh “self prescribed” so to say
this is obviously not something that happens to everyone, majority of people react fine to SSRIs, i’m apparently just not one of them :(
What do you think your anxiety is rooted in? When you get home, are you calm and laidback?
it’s mostly rooted in my fear of failure, disappointing others, or accidentally characterising myself as someone who’s incompetent or worthless. I have no idea when it spread so far i feel anxious about catching a bus but here i am
calm would be a big word hah, mostly relief, and then i need to take some time to fully relax because it doesn’t happen instantly
Like putting a fence around the spiralling pit of doom.
They feel nauseating at first, but then it feels like something that stops your brain from wandering into the wrong place.
Even though sometimes I feel I should be anxious about something, it’s just too relaxing to really think about it.
I also feel sleepy. Better than not sleeping lol
