What has been your experience with Lexapro or Zoloft? My therapist mentioned how potentially taking one of these could be helpful but I’m hesitant on medications.

I’m glad it worked for you! Are you still on Zoloft or are you off it now? If you’re off, how has that been compared to when you were on? Sometimes I get worried that a medication might actually be great but then you’re scared to get off because then it’s back to the anxiety before

@Evelyn4416 I'm still off it. I actually didn't do what I suggested and treat my OCD at the time because I didn't know it was OCD so I just did regular therapy. It took around 6 months of being off it before I had another descent into bad OCD symptoms. I've since learned how to cope with it better since I've been off the meds, so it's definitely possible to do it without them. But they really help prevent things from getting to a dire point and they can pull you out of it if you're in a very bad way. It sounds like my suggestion of doing OCD treatment while you're on them could be a good solution for you. Coming off them doesn't need to mean going back to how life was before, it can mean more intrusive thoughts and more general anxiety but if you've learned how to get through those things, coming off meds can be a challenge but can be done successfully. I really prefer to see meds as a useful tool obviously. But it can be tempting to stay on them because of the relief they can bring you, my sister has been on the max dosage of Zoloft plus an epilepsy med for anxiety for a couple of years, she largely avoids therapy and prefers to rely on the meds to keep her stable. I don't approve of her doing that to her brain or avoiding resolving her problems by using meds to get rid of much of the anxiety rather than learning to cope with it. And doing so has meant she keeps needing to raise her meds as her brain gets accustomed to them and the anxiety comes back. But I can't tell her what to do.

She never prescribed me anything but after talking about how much anxiety keeps bothering me in certain areas she said it was something to consider discussing if I felt the need to with my doctor. Since December I been taking supplements my doctor recommended that promote relaxation and for the most part they seem to work with the physical affects of anxiety (like I’m able to have an appetite, sleep throughout the night, etc.). I used to be on buspirone and while it worked very well, I later started experiencing lightheadedness as a side effect and was told by my doctor to stop. I’m just worried that if I do need to take medication again but a different one that it’ll have worse side affects or make things bad, since I have heard horror stories of people having to try different medication to find the one that worked for them and some made their anxiety worse it added things they never had previously

Also what was your reasoning for deciding now to be on medication this time around?

@Evelyn4416 *not

@Evelyn4416 I took prozac and it didn’t fit me well. But I had taken it years ago and it did work. That’s important to understand. Medication is unique for everyone! I wish I learned that because many of the things I experienced this time around were probably because I was deep into those horror stories too. It was even different for me the second time around, so I would do my best to stay away from other people’s horror stories if I were you. Medication will help if it works but that’s not what gets rid of ocd. Lots of hard work does. And it’s possible for all of us to get better.

@lulu23 That’s a great point that it can be different experiences with the same medication at different times even!