3 months on Sertraline and there've only been negative changes

Antidepressants - one of the biggest frauds of modern time.

OP if your medication is not helping STOP IT.

Just say Zoloft, OP.

Shouldn’t you address this in the follow up visit? After 3 months of no effect, you should try another medication. Psych meds are a lot of trial and seeing what works best for you. Most important thing is being open to trying and stay on it for a couple of months before calling it quits, and therapy of course.

OP, I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. Clinical anxiety can be pure agony. You are not alone.

I'm not in the medical field, but have you tried cognitive behavioral therapy or techniques? Might be worth a try.

You contact your physician on Tuesday and tell them to start you on Pristiq.

I was on Zoloft for 1 month once. It turned me into a mean bitch. All of a sudden I was mad as hell.

Stop taking it.

Wean yourself off gradually over six weeks. Normal dose today, reduce slightly tomorrow, maintain that dose for a couple of days, reduce slightly more, and so on.

All drugs don't work well for all people.

Zoloft works very well for me for anxiety. It makes me emotionally numb though, and that causes severe problems of its own over time. It also causes sexual side effects.

Wellbutrin works well for me as a 'happy pill,' but also as an upper and that freaks me out. Taking it is like taking amphetamines that make me want to clean and organize.

The psych med that made me feel much more balanced was Seroquel/quetiapine, which was totally unexpected and may have worked for an unintended reason. It is an atypical antipsychotic. My doctor put me on a very low dose, half a 25-mg pill, for better-quality sleep. The sleep and dreams were amazing, and it made me feel so emotionally stable. However, it caused weight gain and my doctor didn't want me on it over a long term because of side effects such as tardive dyskinesia. So I came off of it and went through severe physical withdrawal, including severe inability to sleep and itching like crazy.

AS IT TURNS OUT, Seroquel is a strong antihistamine. And as it turns out, I had an undiagnosed disorder called mast cell activation syndrome that causes severe allergic symptoms and anaphylaxis, which can cause anxiety and panic attacks from physical inflammation, and the Seroquel was probably treating the cause of that when I didn't know I had it. And it made my withdrawal a nightmare.

I weaned myself off all psych meds many years ago in preparation to take ayahuasca. Ayahuasca ended my depression almost totally unlike anything else. I took it five times. When I confessed to my psychiatrist that I stopped taking the medications, she was bothered. When I told her why, she was surprised and intrigued. Since then, she has told me it's the best thing I ever did for my mental health and she's really interested in psychedelic research now.

R8, how are you doing?

R8 I did Ayahuasca last summer, other than brief hallucinations, there was no effect.

My doctor suggested Wellbutrin. I took it a decade ago. I hated the sexual side effects back then, but I wouldn't care about that anymore.

R9 I am OK, thanks. I haven't felt suicidal since my second ayahuasca experience, and that was my go-to way of thinking when things got rough from about age 12 to age 35. I am 45 now.

I do get depressed/sad but only because of outside environmental factors—awful people at work, awful politicians, that kind of thing.

R10 That's interesting. I have never heard anyone who took ayahuasca say there were no beneficial effects. Did you take it more than once? The positive emotional effects tend to be cumulative.

My late mother gained soooooo much weight on Sertraline, and it had no positive effect on her dementia as was promised. Plus she was CONSTANTLY, insanely ravenous, and would prowl the entire house for food, poor thing. We had to start hiding every type of foodstuff she could conceivably grab and eat. I'd come home from work and find cereal, chips, cookies, crackers, fruit remnants, vegetables, and nuts all over the floors and furniture.

I fought like hell to take her off it, and within 6 months Mother had shed over 60 lbs.

With so many good options I don't see why Sertraline is still being prescribed, unless it's aimed at the underweight.

I don't think I really gained weight on sertraline. But then I never took it longer than 3-6 months because the emotional numbness distressed me.

Sorry to hear, OP. You can go as high as 200 mg on sertraline, so maybe your doctor will try raising the dose. Or try another antidepressant. There's tons of hope!

Saffron extract, 10g+ of inositol a day (put it in your tea or coffee twice daily, it's sweet), l theanine, SAM-e, learn to do EFT tapping, do acupuncture, Craniosacral massage, take large doses of DHA & EPA daily, liposomal curcumin, 5mg low dose lithium, EMDR, these all come to mind

I take 200mg every night...Try upping your dose

[quote]Just say Zoloft, OP.

It's known by other names outside the United States, I believe.

So you’re an addict? We can’t help you here. You need to decide if you want to help yourself, or die a slow death…that’s on you, not anyone else.

I take 200 mg of Sertraline every morning and it's had the opposite effect on me. I was a shut-in, too afraid to go out anywhere. Now I'm able to go anywhere and I consider myself even outgoing - all because of these pills. I haven't noticed any weight gain on it, but it did lower my libido to about zero. That hasn't bothered me so much, because I'm over-the-hill anyway. Maybe you do need a higher dose, as someone else mentioned.

I'm not pushing the idea of trying psychedelics (although evidence suggests they are the best treatment for many), but research into psychedelics has revealed a lot of new important insights about depression and anxiety.

It used to be that any doctor would just put a patient on Prozac or Zoloft if they seemed depressed and that was that.

Now, it's understood that about a third of people with severe depression are resistant to all known pharmaceutical treatments. The other 2/3 of people feel better to some degree when they take psych drugs. The remaining third do not improve at all.

But that doesn't mean there is no hope. It means that pharmaceutical SSRIs and MAOIs and benzos don't work on them.

Psilocybin, ketamine and ayahuasca work for many. Most people respond well to just one dose of ketamine prescribed and taken during a clinical session.

MDMA originally was used as an in-office treatment for PTSD and therapists reported that it was very effective. And then it was suddenly banned when it became popular for recreational use. Now it is recognized as being a useful PTSD therapy.

There's now also electroconvulsive therapy, eye-movement therapy and different clinical means of treating patients.

OP, if you have been taking prescription drugs and they don't work on you at all, then you are treatment resistant. That only means resistant to standard pharmaceutical drugs. Investigate other therapies.

I also just went to a book reading of a woman who wrote a memoir about living with "double depression." I had never heard of that but it is a clinical diagnosis.

Basically, it refers to people who have a chronically depressed physiology that makes the person low energy and low mood all the time, and they also cycle through periods of deep despair. It's sort of like bipolar disorder but the inverse of it. She said when she took an antidepressant, she felt a lot better, but then when she was diagnosed with double depression and given an anticonvulsant, it was like being given eyeglasses and seeing life clearly for the first time in her life.

So look beyond the obvious if you are really suffering and are resistant to treatment.

R20 I micro-dosed psilocybin mushrooms last year. That made me able to easily focus and very productive.

I have a couple of spore syringes in the fridge and may grow again later this summer.

Electro convulsive therapy

Seroquil is a nightmare medicine. It is a "mood stabilizer" and that mood is ZOMBIE.

R23 No, it's not. Seroquel is an atypical antipsychotic, not a mood stabilizer.

I used to go to DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance), a support group. I think it's now called Re:Mind. At any rate, it's a great place to discuss medication issues. The meetings helped me be a better patient; I learned what and how to report symptons to my docs.

R24 = sigh. Of course. Another poster who wants to fight over nothing......."Serotonin is involved in a range of functions in your body and acts as a natural mood stabilizer". But okay. You're right. You win. Happy?

Emailed my doctor and she recommended increasing my dose to the standard dosage of 100mg or changing to Duloxetine, Wellbutrin or Escitalopram.

We chose to increase my daily Sertraline dose to 100mg and check-in in a month.

My psychiatrist initially prescribed both Zoloft and Wellbutrin concurrently. She's from another country and so her translations can be interesting, and she said that she wanted me to take Zolofy to calm me and that "with Wellbutrin, you can still see colors." She was responding to my reluctance to take Zoloft because of emotional numbing, which always makes me stop taking Zoloft.

Wellbutrin and Zoloft are not interchangeable at all in my experience, OP. It's a curious idea to replace one with the other.

At least for me, Zoloft "turns down the volume" on anxiety, including social anxiety and obsessive worry.

Wellbutrin is what I imagine amphetamines to be like. It gives me a big rush of energy that lasts all day and for some reason makes me want to clean and organize things. I actually stopped taking Wellbutrin because it caused physical tremors and nervousness. Not the same as anxiety and panic, but like physical shakiness and a feeling of overstimulation.

Op your doctor actually replied to you on a holiday? Interesting.

So many addicts… yet y’all are the same folks to bitch down on meth users, coke freaks, and street people…

…just another folks who pretend not to be junkies because they have insurance or docs writing multiple scrips.

R30 get off meth

Right after you get off your psych | ADDH meds

TIA

[quote] …just another folks

Oh, dear.

Poor grammar and usage < dependence on substances.

Or a typing error…you know: an error that any sober reader, who understands context, would skip right past and treat as an immaterial mistake.

“…just some folks…” FIFY Happy now?

If you thought that was bad, don’t try mirtazipine. I’ve gained 30lbs in 5 months. I’m going to taper off it.

Yes, R35, and it causes the most vivid, terrifying dreams.

Oh, yes, and it can also cause the same kind of horrid total sinus blocks as Trazodone.

R29 I was surprised too, especially since the email was via her office's portal and not her personal email.

Although she's an APRN, so maybe I shouldn't refer to her as a doctor.

R36 I forgot to mention the dreams. Omg, it’s too awful.

OP, maybe someone has said this already, but 50mg is a VERY low dose and unlikely to be therapeutic at all. It’s just prescribed at the beginning of a sertraline regimen because it would be too much for you take the standard dose of 100mg+.

I’ve been on 100mg for about 13 years. It does absolutely nothing at this point, though during the first few years of it, I definitely noticed it helped my depression, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. I would just quit taking it, but I know that withdrawals will make my anxiety way worse, and I’m already VERY anxious at this point. My brain needs a whole rewiring to unlearn the terrible anxious, disorienting reactions I’ve developed to stimuli in public.

What R1 said. And this is from personal experience.

Why can’t you fucking take Pristiq???!!

I put on a lot of weight with it. Huge fan of Wellbutrin although it could increase anxiety. Wellbutrin plus therapy worked for me after struggling for many years.

Big pharma sucks ! Look into CBD or microdosing mushrooms 🍄

Pot causes depression

Sorry, fatso.

Time to taper of that medication. Lexapro works well for my anxiety. 5mg a day.

[quote] Wellbutrin works well for me as a 'happy pill,' but also as an upper and that freaks me out. Taking it is like taking amphetamines that make me want to clean and organize.

Everyone has a different brain chemistry. Wellbutrin doesn't even touch my anxiety but it keeps low moods from going lower and it had the pleasant side effect of helping me shed 15 lbs. It dulls the part of your brain that craves food to make you feel better, I noted that I was less hungry after I started Wellbutrin.

A lot of drugged out head-cases on the DL….puts many of the threads in perspective: men under the influence.

It absolutely doesn't R44.

R49 Like every food, drink and drug, different people respond differently to marijuana.

[quote] Regular cannabis use can be linked to an increased risk of anxiety and depression. But most research seems to have a focus on the link between psychosis and cannabis. Using cannabis can increase the risk of developing psychotic illness, including schizophrenia.

I tried two different marijuana tinctures to treat nerve pain, and both worked amazingly well. Better than any painkiller I've taken.

Both also made me feel uncomfortable and verging on crazy. The one that was very low in THC still made me crazily paranoid. For no reason at all, I felt terrified police were going to knock my front door down. I knew it was irrational but I couldn't not freak out about it for hours.

There was also a bizarre time distortion that I did not like at all. I can't really articulate it well but it was as if time would almost freeze for sections and then slide by in big slices all of a sudden. It made me very uncomfortable.

The shop told me to try one with higher THC, which they said would not make me high but would make me sleep. They said that would be good to take at night. I took half a dose with tea. I got sleepy and my pain went away. I went to bed, closed my eyes, and saw ridiculous neon goblins making funny faces at me. They were not there when I opened my eyes but were there when I closed them. It was kind of funny but the idea of hallucinating scared the hell out of me and I sat up in a panic of falling asleep for hours.

Friends insisted smoking is different and told me to try that. So I did. (I didn't like the idea of smoking, so that was a deterrent. I have health issues including airway and breathing issues.) I got giggly and felt happy. They were like, "See! SEE?! It's AMAZING." I went to bed after a while and I couldn't turn off my mind. I felt like my thoughts were unfolding in all directions like mechanical flower petals (it was visual in my mind's eye) and it was overwhelming not to be able to turn off or catch up with my thoughts.

I don't begrudge anyone using marijuana, but it really is not compatible with my physiology and my psyche. And I think that's fine. I took ayahuasca five times and it felt like a perfect match, like I had a kind and loving compatibility with the spirit of the plant. Marijuana felt like a total antagonist to me. Not monstrous, but sort of akin to a trickster.

R50, I totally understand what you’re saying about your THC experiences. Did you ever try it with CBD? They make gummies now that are like 2.5 mg THC + 5 mg CBD + 5mg CBN. Gummies like that are so incredibly low in THC, they’re unlikely to cause any kind of high at all, even if they were THC-only. But with the addition of CBD (anti-anxiety; sort of the ‘antidote’ to THC’s psychoactive properties) and CBN (a sleep aid), I can’t imagine they’d cause you any psychic discomfort.

R50, stay away from the Sativas and go with Indicas or Indica leaning hybrids and decrease the amount you are doing. Friends may have more of a tolerance. Don't use cannabis and then just sit there analyzing how it makes you feel. Do something else while you are high. I suspect you live in your head too much. I used to do that too. I found a combination of cannabis and Lexapro daily keep me humming along. I am heavier than I would like to be though. Working on that.

Thanks for the advice but I really have zero interest in further experiences with cannabis. I think we just have incompatible personalities and I am totally fine with that. I don't begrudge anyone enjoying it, but there's nothing else in life that I don't enjoy at all and voluntarily repeat, so why would I do that with cannabis?

People are always telling me to try it this way or that way and I don't understand why. Not everyone has to want to take drugs recreationally, and IMO no one sane keeps taking a drug that makes them feel bad repeatedly in the hope that it may be enjoyable at some point.

I’ve got to marek at the pharmacological expertise here…but it’s not from medical professionals—it is from users.

I cannot fathom the amount of prescribed drugs many of you rely upon. I almost feel like this thread is a never ending loop of Pharma ads during a COZI binge or even a morning news program.

*marvel at

R54, true, why would you want to hear first-hand accounts from actual users when you could just listen to “medical professionals” who get most of their information from pharma shills?

^ which is not the point of my post. But, thank you—thank you very much.

Hmmm. Didn’t all of these actual users have first-hand accounts only because their medical professionals shilling for pharma PRESCRIBED their cornucopia of drugs?

I’ve been on and off Zoloft for 15 years… with my psychopharmacologist’s approval.

I feel MUCH better after about 6 weeks on Never experienced weight gain, but I’m a hummingbird, as far as my metabolism goes.

But it helps with my anxiety, my depression, and of course, destroys my libido.

So…

Every year or so (I stayed on it all though 9/11 because of NYC panic, until 2003,) I wean off on a regular schedule; my highest dose ever was 150 mg, and I get my boner back. I have some great sex for three or four months, then I start to cry at Hallmark commercials, get angry at EVERYONE and I ramp back up again for another year or so…

So it worked for me. Sorry you have the weight gain. Give it another week or so. I didn’t know it was working until I started laughing for no reason. I truly do believe in its efficacy, but I also feel people who are helped by it need to take an occasional break. Hope it kicks in for you. Because when it works, it really helps.

I’m seven months off this time, and I’m HOPING I won’t need to go back on. Warmer weather helps. But I absolutely will if I need to.

Best of luck, my friend. You’re a brave soul to have gone this far.. ❤️🙏🏻👏🏻

And so it goes…the zombified state of America.

R59, during your weaning periods, how long does it take you to get to 0mg? And which—if any —side effects do you experience?

R61, I take a week to go from 100mg to 0, and the same to ramp up; only up to 100mg; 150 was way too much for me.

Never had any side effects from going off. Only side effects when I went back on were fatigue (hit me mid-afternoon, and took a 90-minute nap almost every day,) and the loss of wood, which hits me very noticeably when I get to my full dose.

Wow, that’s very surprising, R62. I’ve had friends take a year to get off of 100mg. My boyfriend went cold turkey, however, and didn’t feel a thing.

The one time I tried (and failed) a taper-to-quit, the “brain zaps” (really more of a twinge of dizziness than a ‘zap’) were awful, and I became extremely irritable. It happens in the evening whenever I forget my morning dose.

I’m so sick of Sertraline; it does nothing, and I am in between psychiatrists right now and feel like I should just quit.