- Date posted
- 3y
- Date posted
- 3y
I understand your hesitation; generally SSRIs have fewer side effects than other, earlier forms of antidepressants, but it seems like in select situations SSRI side effects can pose more problems for quality of life. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to know if they are right for you until you begin taking them. A family friend of mine found no benefit and later developed a dependency, but an acquaintance brought up that his antidepressant was very effective at reducing his anxiety and that he wished he had started taking it sooner. I imagine a lot of the efficacy has to do with where the depression/anxiety is coming from. If you really have a lack of circulating serotonin in your brain, then a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) may help with this. However, not everyone responds optimally...some develop dependencies and others experience side effects that make the benefits not worth it. It's for that reason that I almost always recommend therapy first, since it usually does not have side effects. For many individuals, medication is an absolutely critical part of their treatment, and there's nothing problematic about that. However, if you don't want to contend with potential side effects and you have the resources to pursue therapy, I would do that first and see how it goes - you can always start a regimen if it seems necessary.
- Date posted
- 3y
I'm scared of them too. I don't want to have to deal with their side effects on top of everything else... I want to try everything else there is and leave medication as my last resort.. I finally went to see a psychotherapist recently and explicitly told her I don't want meds for my anxiety and OCD but rather ERP or atleast tips regarding lifestyle or supplements or smth.. And it's like she didn't even hear me and prescribed meds anyways. I was pretty frustrated.
- Date posted
- 3y
As someone who is currently on them it helped me lots! I tried going down on dosage and it was way too hard and my ocd got really bad so I went back up. I do notice some side affects but for me it’s worth it! My side affects are I sweat really easily, get sick if I don’t drink water with it(almost throwing up), and I my throat gets dry quickly! The worst part is going off of it. I felt like crap while just lowering the dosage(missed work a few days), as well as bad anxiety! The medicine helped me be able to live a functioning life!
- Date posted
- 3y
@Anonymous Also it helped a lot with intrusive thoughts
- Date posted
- 3y
@Anonymous Do you have fewer intrusive thoughts since taking the meds or do the meds help stop the fear response you have to the intrusive thoughts? I'm curious about what it's like to be on meds..
- Date posted
- 3y
@Teresa1 Ask all the questions you want about it! I know it’s hard! For me personally it helped both. I have had a lot less intrusive thoughts since going on it! Also it helped me stop having as intense responses to a lot of the thoughts! I still will have intense responses occasionally, but nowhere near as bad! For example, before going on medication I wasn’t able to function well. I couldn’t stay in school the whole day, would have multiple panic attacks a day, and it was just a disaster! But now I can do all those things and can do things everyone else does! I still have l anxiety and ocd but it’s much better! It’s not perfect(still bad) but 1000x better then it was!
- Date posted
- 3y
@Anonymous Thanks for the info! I'm glad to hear you're doing much better than before. That's really great that the meds help you function. That's neat that they help reduce the intrusive thoughts and your response to them.. Did your doctor create some sort of plan regarding how long you'll be on them? I'd like to find a doctor who doesn't want to just keep me on meds but rather plans to wean me off of them once Im better at managing ocd with erp strategies.. I guess I'm scared of becoming too dependent on medication..
- Date posted
- 3y
@Teresa1 I have been on them for probably 12 years but if I wanted to get off my doctor would let me. If you are on it then you can definitely talk to your doctor and figure out a plan for you!
Related posts
- Date posted
- 21w
I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…
- Date posted
- 16w
So, I’ve had my OCD mostly “under control” for the past 10 years (I’m 44, battled this all my life). I’ve been on a high dosage of Luvox, but unfortunately it’s lost its effectiveness about 6 months ago. For the past five months I’ve also been doing therapy sessions on this site and have had a fairly good outcome. My main obsessions have mainly regarded around balance and symmetry. Anyhow, I’m in the process of switching to Prozac. It’s only been 6 days, so I obviously feel nothing yet. I made the foolish mistake of googling “What can antidepressants cause?” Unfortunately I found a very recent article of a study showing antidepressant users have a higher chance of getting ALS. There’s also older articles that say the opposite. But this one article FREAKED ME OUT. And I can only focus on the worst outcome. So, now I’m stuck in a repetitive thought pattern of getting ALS from the one medication that is supposed to help me. It’s absolutely terrifying and I haven’t experienced a health anxiety fear like this in years. I want to research more and more online, but I know this won’t help. It will only make things worse. Anyone with health anxiety have any advice on how to conquer this? I’m standing strong and not getting off my medication or doing any research.
- Date posted
- 15w
I'm new to NOCD and have been dealing with harm/suicidal, and Pure OCD for some time now. It started off being healthy related anxiety that led to compulsion where I would research information on an uncommon illness or something I thought I had. Now it has snowballed into intrusive thoughts and images of me killing myself in various ways or my wife. The former is what has been the most debilitating and hardest to shake. Recently I seem to find triggers almost every where I look. "What if I killed myself this way" if I see a kitchen knife or a bottle of pills. A friend talked about going to a gun range a while back and an image popped up of me being there and turning a gun to myself which is something I dont want to do. I love life and its so painful to go through thoughts that try to tell me otherwise. That particular image/thought has really stuck with me. I know about ERP and my therapist said I could rip the bandaid off and go to a gun range but it terrifies me. I don't own any weapons but I often think, "what if I buy one and im actually suicidal?" Just typing it makes me anxious. I'm wanting to start a low dose of Prozac which opens up another can of worms about worried my "overdose thought" will come true, on top of potential side effects. This is long winded but im looking for any advice to get through this. I know others are worse off than me but considering I've never been like this and it only started 6 months ago, I'm really struggling. Thanks everyone.
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