Im thinking about starting medication soon bc college is about to start and i don’t wanna be having these anxiety attacks due to OCD on top of anxiety from school stress. Im just worried about the side effects. If school starts at the beginning of next month, do you think it’s too late to start meds (like do u think the side effects will carry into college)?

Hey FruitLoop so here’s the deal, one of the rules of this community is not to recommend medication advice or anything like that. There is no way for any of us to verify that we are able to make those types of medical choices for each other, that is between you and your doctor/ psychiatrist. So keep that in mind when reading this that you should talk to them about this. I’ll give you my recommendation though. My recommendation is that if you’re worried about the anxiety of school starting and the OCD with all of that I’d say it could be a pretty good idea to go on a medication. From what my psychologist/ psychiatrist told me OCD generally takes a lot longer than other mental illnesses to have visible effects from medications. Generally a medication may start having it’s visible effects within a few days to a week of taking it but for OCD symptoms to become noticeably changed it could take upwards of four weeks or sometimes more in some cases. If you wanted to start a medication this would be the time to do so as you’d have plenty of time to see any bad side effects of the medication and may have a better timing impact on the OCD. I’d recommend you talk to you psychiatrist for options and take what I said with a grain of salt, I’m not supposed to recommend medications or dosages. I hope the best for your situation my friend, just hang in there

I mean some medication can take months to start working (SSRIs) and so you might not see postive effects when you start and so neither side effects so you might experience them during college but talk to your doctor about it because I’m not an expert yanno :)) x

What side effects do you anticipate having? SSRIs are mostly known for causing drowsiness and some stomach upset in the beginning. I think if you are thinking about medication, you should start now because it takes 6 weeks to reach maximum effect.

Lmao it took me so long to write that two other people replied first

@Ames Thankyou I will defintely talk to my doctor ?

I was terrified of starting meds, @FruitLoop. And of course everyone is different, but for me I got headaches for the first two weeks and then a few days of headaches each time I upped my dose. But that was it. If medication is the route you and your doctor think is best, just be patient with it. At first I thought it wasn’t working, but with giving it time to take effect and going back and looking at pre-medication things, it has actually helped so much.

Also tell your doctor about particular side effects you’re worried about. My doctor knows I have stomach issues already and knew that I would stop taking any medication that made me nauseous because I just can’t handle that. So he specifically steered me away from ones that tend to have stomach related side effects

@BlackSwan Ooo I will see what my doc recommends/says about the side effects!! Thankyou so much for letting me know about that?

Hi FruitLoop! I was worried about the same thing. I switched medications a couple of months ago and was really worried it would effect my concentration and make me lethargic. But actually, it gave me more energy and I could focus better in class! Everyone reacts differently to different medications, and I can’t say you’ll have the same experience, but if your doctor thinks it’s the right path to take it’s definitely worth considering :) d a i s y

Thanks SlyFox for reminding us of the guidelines!!

@daisy Thankyou so much That gave me hope and I’m glad you are focusing well in class!?

@WorriedDriver I am mostly worried about drowsiness during class. And thankyou for letting me know the maximum effect time?

@TheSlyFox Wow thankyou so much I understand that you’re not supposed recommend doses or anything and you gave me all the info I was wondering, thankyou for the help?