This first week on Zoloft has actually gone a lot better for me than the last eight weeks on Prozac however, the dreaded SSRI dreams are back super strong and because of my current OCD theme, which is kind of existential ocd mixed with psychosis OCD. I’m really in the weeds. I’m in DPDR and remembering all these vivid dreams all day is really causing me stress.
Hi, first of all— I cannot emphasize how much I can relate to this obsession. I started Zoloft a year ago and didn’t know that vivid dreams were a side effect of SSRIs. They have been a huge obsession for me. Not because of the content of my dreams, but because of the vividness & blurred line between reality and my dreams. The first minute of me waking up I think I actually am still “in” my dreams. Throughout my day I’ll remember something and it’ll freak me out because I’ll be like “wait, is that a real memory or from a dream?” I have the fear of psychosis, losing my memory, schizophrenia/existential themes too and it’s HARD. I’m not really sure how to even communicate this with my therapist to come up with exposures
@oatmilklatte It’s SO hard especially when your trailing meds that’s are supposed to help you but I’m the side effects are making my theme crazy bad. I have memory flashbacks of my dreams all day even random ones from years ago. It’s horrible.
@sophiag96 I totally get it. The memory flashbacks are hard. When I mentioned the dreams to my psychiatrist & how they make me uncomfortable, he suggested I switch to Lexapro. That was like a month ago. I’m too scared to switch, but I’m also scared I’m missing out on a better med that wouldn’t cause these dreams, although it seems like all SSRIs have this side effect. Do you notice any difficulties waking up or falling asleep on it so far?
@sophiag96 Talk to your doctor and tell him about side effects you are experiencing. I take 100 mg zoloft daily and 100 Desvenlafaxine. I'm not having those side effects. Some dizziness not sure if it's related
@Kim27 I see her on Monday I’ll deff tell her but I do know vivid dreams is a super common side effect I really think it’s just affecting me more bc I have ocd. When I didn’t have ocd I don’t think it would be so distressing tbh
I take hydroxyzine every night for sleep, and I haven’t really noticed any issues getting to sleep more than usual I guess but waking up is definitely harder because I’m coming out of such vivid dreams. I’m pretty positive that the dream side effect is across the board for most SSRIs because I also dealt with them when I had been taking Prozac. I’m banking on it subsiding in a couple of weeks.
@sophiag96 Yep— when I talked to my psych, he wasn’t concerned about the dreams. He only offered to switch me to a different one because it bothered me. He said instead of adding another med and playing wack-a-mole with side effects (as someone who’s anxious of meds) I could just try a different one. It’s not a dangerous side effect or really anything I think others without OCD would be overly concerned about. Since I’ve been obsessing about this with the whole year I’ve been experiencing it, I know it’s an OCD thing lol. I’ve heard others say they just treat their SSRI dreams like a movie they get to watch every night.
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