Mental Health

I don't know. That's the problem. I have never felt like anything had much of an effect beyond some obvious intitial negative side effects. I think because mental health medications are so slowly acting that I just cannot for the life of me me tell anything.

Here are my experiences:

DAILY MED TRIALS:

Escitalopram (Lexapro), an SSRI, 10 mg - Initial intense fatigue that sucked major ass. After about 1-2 months, the fatigue faded and my mood got a bit elevated and my anxiety lessened a little bit...but I'm not sure how much of that was the medication versus natural mood cycles. A major life stressor happened though and my mood and reactivity started to go all over the goddamn place again, but even worse than before because of the greater stressor. I discontinued the medication after several months.

Lamotrigine (Lamictal), an anticonvulsant, 200 mg - The titration process is incredibly, painfully slow so you don't have a dangerous reaction to it. I experienced very intense itching almost every time I would step up the titration process, but after a while on any given dose, it went away. And then when I had bigger step ups near the end, I didn't get the itching side effect any more. I was in the depths of my major life stressor and found that it didn't seem to help a ton with my mood fluctuations and reactivity. It is really hard for me to tell what sort of effects it may have had if at all...sometimes I would think that I felt a lot calmer, but other times not at all. I was on it for much longer than escitalopram, and am almost off of it. The step down from this takes a while too, but not as long as the step up.

Quetiapine XR (Seroquel XR), an antipsychotic, 50 mg - This one scares me and I don't like the idea of being on it long term. I am on a very low dose... generally at this level it is only used for sleep and anxiety, so the negative long term effects are mitigated a bunch. Like escitalopram, I noticed initial fatigue on this which really sucks, but it went away after a while. I also experienced intense hunger initially (which is how many gain weight on it), which again seems to have gone down after a while. I have been on it since late January and I have been objectively way more stable than I have been in the past year. I am less reactive and am baseline a bit more chilled out and less anxious about some things. But I'm not sure if that has to do with more distance between the life stressor and having gone through more intensive therapy while on it. Needless to say, I guess I'll be sticking with it for a while, even if I'm not sure about the long run.

Many people comment on sexual dysfunction with SSRIs and antipsychotics. I had sexual dysfunction before these meds, so this has not impacted me to my knowledge, but it's something to think about. Lamotrigine does not affect sexual function.

"AS NEEDED" (NOT DAILY) MED TRIALS (taken for anxiety and acute distress):

Propranolol, a beta blocker/high blood pressure medication, 10 mg - I found it useful before a job interview once, but otherwise I did not find it of much benefit or noticeable effect.

Hydroxyzine (Atarax, Vistaril), an antihistamine - I was initially given 25 mg but found it way too sedating. I now have 10 mg pills which aren't very sedating, but I'm not sure how helpful they are.

Clonidine (Catapress), an alpha agonist/high blood pressure medication, 0.1 mg - This is incredibly sedating. I split the pills in half to 0.05 mg, but it still can be pretty sedating. I found the sedative effect a bit desired when I have been freaking out, but other times it makes me more depressed when I am already not feeling good.

Overall, I have not found "as needed"/prn medications too useful to me. If I am having an acute anxiety attack, they take too long to "kick in" to have much benefit. (Can be like an hour to start noticing an effect). And if I take one at the wrong time, I can get depressed from them tbh. They are useful if you can anticipate when you are going to be anxious (like the job interview I said).

Good luck out there.

When I was younger, I tried a few SSRIs for major depressive disorder, and they mostly made me want to kill myself. Turns out anhedonia is far and away worse than feeling sad/depressed.

20 plus years later, I take an SNRI for emotional lability caused by a disorder of the nervous system, and it's done wonders.

It was only mindfulness that saved me from depression, though. Took a while.

Edit: Also, alprazolam is a godsend if you have a doctor who prescribes it responsibly. It's severely addictive and should be used on the rarest of occasions.

I quit SSRIs. I have anxiety and depression and there’s like a 80% chance I have undiagnosed ADHD.

At first the meds were great (after the initial two weeks of extreme suicidal thoughts and stomach issues), literally everything was more enjoyable. But it was weird. The food I enjoyed changed, I put on weight, lower libido, and I didn’t find I was happier overall. The lows were definitely less low though.

Making real lifestyle changes and therapy actually helped me, which took time and some big changes.

I quit my corporate job, took a smaller gig where I don’t have to deal with bullshit management. Therapy helped me recognize what I was feeling and understand my feelings, and that’s turned into me curbing some behaviours and dealing with things more constructively.

I’m very awful at forming habits, so taking medication consistently was not easy for me. I had to have multiple systems to make sure I had taken my meds and not double take them, I didn’t like that.

Depends which meds, most of those have rather subtle effects, especially ones ment for psychological issue, it's oftentimes even questionable whatever those work or not. Ones ment for physical ailments do have more noticable effects.

Like, long release ADHD med(concerta) was rather useless against ADHD, but max dosage did rise heart rate and gave me sweati palms.

Fluoxetine for depression didn't do anything.

Pain meds are obvious enough.

Testosterone has some mental effect from hormonal fluctuations and long term physical effects are good, within medical dosages.

Cialis has a minor physical effect, but no mental effect.

Rocutane has no mental sides and minimal physical side effects.