11 ms·

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them. For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them. For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically a writeoff due for me due to seasonal affective disorder. Cold showers, exercise, no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. Vitamin d. I can still sleep 11 hours and feel like reheated cat shit. Enter citalopram. "It will take up to six weeks to dial in" they said. Within four days I felt like the inside of my head was designed by Apple in their glory days. My mind became an orderly, well lit, tastefully designed space... instead of a dimly lit crack den. I'm more emotionally available, no longer tired, less cranky. I felt cozy. I could cry with joy because I could finally understand emotionally why people like the Christmas season. I won the SSRI lottery I guess, the side effect are sweaty feet, vivid dreams and a dry mouth. That's all. This just goes to show that for me, they're extremely effective.

Der_Einzige 9mo ago
[flagged]
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  Yes only I wrote it while taking a shit. Sorry man. A kinda strained endeavor, I must say. It's not bad but the SSRI side effects make continuous hydration obviously important. A small price to pay.
- sarreph 9mo ago
  How would you prove that?
  - Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
    They don't, hence the suspicion instead of a definite assertion. And suspicions are easy, because what are the consequences if it's false? None. Anyway your comment smells AI generated, I can tell from some of the pixels and seeing quite a few shoops in my time.
  - Der_Einzige 9mo ago
    I don't need to "prove it", because all I have to do is link this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01754 https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01754 https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01491 https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01491 https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-short.47/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-short.47/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06166 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06166 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/wzveh_v1 https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/wzveh_v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-acl.987/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-acl.987/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.426/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.426/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.iwsds-1.37/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.iwsds-1.37/ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.14.24307373v4 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.14.24307373v... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21522715251379730 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21522715251379... https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21817 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21817 Either they used an LLM to write part of it, or the linguistic mind virus infected them and now they speak a little bit like an LLM.
    - myrmidon 9mo ago
      Relevant excerpt from your own wiki guideline: "Do not rely too much on your own judgment. [...] if you are an expert user of LLMs and you tag 10 pages as being AI-generated, you've probably falsely accused one editor." Never accuse people of LLM writing based on short comments, your false positive rate is invariably going to be way too high to be acceptable given the very limited material. It's just not worth it: Even if you correctly accuse 9/10 times, you are being toxic to that false positive case for basically no gain.
- WhyIsItAlwaysHN 9mo ago
  The OP just writes well. Also an llm is unlikely to write "thru"
- anonymous908213 9mo ago
  See, I'm all for calling out LLM spam, but because of people like you who have a terrible calibration and make false accusations against obviously human generated messages, I get all manners of people criticising me for pointing out things I know for sure are actually LLM-generated. You really think "Enter citalopram" as a singular instance you point out weights this more towards LLM-generated than "thru" and "reheated cat shit", among the entire tone of the message, weights it towards human-generated? Your heuristics are wildly miscalibrated.
- mk12 9mo ago
  It does not, at all. Forming that judgment because of “Enter X” is ridiculous. I recognize my friend Claude in disguise all the time on HN and this is not one of those cases.
- dmos62 9mo ago
  Your sense of smell is not something to write home about.
- funkyfiddler369 9mo ago
  If you spend a lot of time among some folks or talk a lot to LLMs, you are guaranteed to pick up manners, manners of speech, ways of thinking, behaviors (where applicable) ... Me and my brother just can't stop mixing English and German when we talk to each other. But we don't or barely do it when we talk to others. When I learned about code, logic, math, I started talking and thinking in different ways and from different and towards different perspectives. The more I read, which I haven't done in a long long while, the more massive and vast the info I pack into a few sentences becomes. The more I draw or play the guitar or work on game mechanics and story design or dialogues, the more annoying my speech and manners become but to my environment, that also means that I become "more" social and actually somewhat likeable and bearable. You smell like Non-evidence based arrogance. I was always surrounded by people who smelled like that. But they are good little copypasta soldiers who follow trends and mutually assure that they don't go completely off the rails. But if one does, they leave him on his real or imaginary battlefield. Nobody wants to evolve anymore. It hurts some people just a little too much, I guess. They'd rather poison others and have their code deleted before getting to live a second life. I hope I could get you on edge a little. I'm just fucking around. But you will probably think something the likes of ... "there's always some truth to it when ..."
deleted 9mo ago
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sheikhnbake 9mo ago
Same for me with buproprion. Night and day difference. Made me wonder how different my life would be if I had been diagnosed appropriately when I was a kid.
mvcosta91 9mo ago
“God, I see what you’re doing for others, and I want that for me.” I had a very similar experience, except it killed my libido, so I chose to endure the suffering of Winter rather than live with emotional numbness. Still, I strongly recommend it for people flirting with the abyss. It was life-changing for me while I was raising an autistic 2yo during the pandemic.
- rco8786 9mo ago
  > except it killed my libido Similar experience. Apparently pretty much ubiquitous with SSRIs
  - isoprophlex 9mo ago
    i'm sorry this happened to you, this was of the reasons i held off trying them for so long. ubiquitous indeed, also on this front I got lucky... please people, take my post for what it is: anecdotal evidence. SSRIs can basically give you any possible side effect, including destroying your libido.
  - bflesch 9mo ago
    hm
    - rco8786 9mo ago
      I don't relate at all to the latter part of your question, so by process of elimination it must be the former :)
- michaelsshaw 9mo ago
  Libido can be supplemented with Wellbutrin. Works great, even better than before.
- sixtyj 9mo ago
  I have switched to lamotrigin, it helps to balance mood as I had bad mood in months with less sunshine. Lamotrigin is not an antidepressant, previously it was used for epilepsy stabilisation but now it is prescribed for mood swings. (This is not a medical advice.)
krzat 9mo ago
If a drug has an 1% chance of 100% effect, it will look pretty weak in those studies. IMO it's pretty clear that depression is a symptom of many independent issues, so it's really lame that we don't have a more accurate way of diagnosing it.
- compounding_it 9mo ago
  The goal is to tackle it in every way. The medicines are supposed to be supportive and not the solution. More often than not people treat it as a solution. Thats why they are eventually tapered and discontinued once you are able to be on your own.
petesergeant 9mo ago
Yah. Measuring the effects of these drugs with a single effect size number is ridiculous. They work exceptionally well for some people (myself included). It seems as well that SSRIs work much more reliably on anxiety disorders than on depression. Getting on them can be a ball ache (or entirely painless; escitalopram was easy on and easy off, Wellbutrin was a nightmare to get on, but also easy off), but entirely worth a shot for anyone symptomatic.
compounding_it 9mo ago
As someone who tried citalopram escitalopram and sertraline, along with venlaflaxine and fluvoximine, I would suggest doing a pharmacological test for psychiatric medications. I am an intermediate metabolized for the first three and the ones I was on most long. It did not suit me and made my orgasms go from ‘wtf’ to ‘that’s it?’ And they are still not normal 2 years after discontinuation. I am still depressed and anxious to the point of serious consideration of these medicines to save myself, but you can save yourself the experimentation by doing a simple test and avoiding those medicines. Anxiety depression panic attacks are something I wish more people studied along with sexual health.
- anonymous344 9mo ago
  look my other comment for niacin
  - compounding_it 9mo ago
    That’s B3 for nerve and dna repair if I understand correctly. I notice a difference after eating non vegetarian food but since I also have IBS, my absorption can be a hit or miss. A very balanced and nutrient rich diet with good sleep and exercise is the start to mental health recovery. People often forget how important all this is.
    - anonymous344 9mo ago
      for ibs: no coffee, milk (any milk), vegetable oils, wheats, soy, or anything from USA :D and no sugar or alco then slippery elm and probiotics, d-vitamin + c-vitamin. fasting, intermediate is also helpful. add berries and yes, beef meat and lots of greens. with strict diet ibs goes better.
ghusto 9mo ago
The hate on antidepressants is not because they're not effective, but rather that they're abused by psychiatrists. Ideally, a professional will prescribe them as a necessary helper to becoming (more) mentally healthy whilst tackling the root cause. Most of the time however, it's more of a "here, take these indefinitely". It's like if we took sleeping pills every time we had trouble sleeping. Having said that, I just realised I have the impression that's exactly what people do in the USA?
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  you're not wrong that pharmaceutical crutches are overused. but as an outsider to these problems my 'ambient impression' was always one of haha antidepressants are for suckers. well, in my specific case, so what if i'm a sucker... they're super effective in fixing what appears to be a defective winter brain.
- michaelsshaw 9mo ago
  > It's like if we took sleeping pills every time we had trouble sleeping. Having said that, I just realised I have the impression that's exactly what people do in the USA? I'm not sure if it is common but I've definitely taken my fair share of my dog's trazodone.
  - darvid 9mo ago
    after being prescribed Mirtazapine, then Trazadone I realized I don't think I've had restful sleep as long as I can remember. I need a sleep study done probably but until that the quality of life from taking something that has virtually no negative side effects for me is insane. meanwhile people are like "just take magnesium or melatonin lol"
    - larrywright 9mo ago
      Nobody should take this as medical advice, but from my own experience, nothing has made a bigger difference in my sleep quality than supplementing with magnesium glycinate. I didn't even start taking it for that purpose - I was taking it for something else and quickly noticed that it made the quality of my sleep significantly better. The only side effect from it is that sometimes I have strange dreams (not nightmares or anything, just odd). Everyone should check with their doctor, but it's an inexpensive supplement and the effects (if any) show up pretty quickly, so IMO it's worth a shot.
biofox 9mo ago
SSRIs saved my life. No exaggeration. They might be overprescribed, only effective is some individuals, and they certainly have their share of side effects, but they're still the gold standard treatment for clinical depression and anxiety.
graemep 9mo ago
If it is SAD have you tried bright daylight balanced lighting?
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  Yeah, I have an extremely bright lamp designed to tread SAD that I sit, or well used to sit, in front of every morning. Daylight responsive led strip in my home office. And a pair of glasses with blue LEDs for on the go. It did... 10%? of what citalopram eventually did for me.
  - graemep 9mo ago
    Thanks for the reply. Does the citalopram completely obviate the need for the extra lighting or do you find there is still a benefit to having the daylight lighting too?
    - isoprophlex 9mo ago
      I've stopped caring for my various lamps. I turn on the bright panel out of habit while working at my desk... but I don't feel "drawn" to it as before. I'd, for example, set my phone to the highest brightness in a dark room to motivate myself to get out of bed, or at least get to the light switch. Now I don't care, I just get up. And I can look at the dark world outside the kitchen windows in the morning and not feel oppressed. It's just a lack of light, no menacing presence.
  - wincy 9mo ago
    Have you tried more light? Like, a lot more light? Like, getting a light meter and aiming for 10-20,000 lux in your room? This blog was a good start for me. https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/ https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/
dizhn 9mo ago
I still think you should have tried eating a banana first.
luxuryballs 9mo ago
I experienced this but ended up getting off of them after developing some back/hip issues but I didn’t think it was related, it wasn’t until I quit the citalopram that my shoulders were suddenly relaxed and the hip “looseness” or constant need to be adjusted back into place went away, like everything tightened back up, it is really strange, then I looked up how SSRIs can impact this and even bone healing, decided I couldn’t risk my body falling apart.
kyleblarson 9mo ago
I had disk issues in my lumbar spine that caused nearly unbearable pain and terrible quality of life. Tried everything: PT, OTC painkillers, epidurals, massage, nothing worked. Was prescribed pragabalin and duloxotine. Duloxotine is an SNRI that also treats nerve pain. That combination helped some but I was sleeping 11+ hours per day and generally felt like my head was in a complete fog, was pretty much useless with work. I had been trying to avoid surgery but finally had 2 procedures in 2024 that helped immensely. Weaning off those 2 drugs was no fun: sweating constantly, anxious, headaches for about 2 weeks. Extremely happy I went the surgery route and stopped those meds. I can't imagine living day to day feeling like that.
- freedomben 9mo ago
  Duloxetine was indeed a beast to get off of. It got so bad that I would open the capsules and count the number of beads to taper as slowly as possible. It was hell
Esophagus4 9mo ago
Tangent… but for sweaty feet, try a ski boot dryer! You can get them for $50… they dry out my shoes which makes them last a lot longer before they get so smelly I have to throw them away. Plus, who doesn’t like warm shoes in the morning? That, and there are some creams called Sweat Block or whatever you can rub on your feet which reduce sweating. Those work as well.
- aweiland 9mo ago
  You can also 3D print them: https://www.printables.com/model/194340-60mm-radial-fan-boot-dryer-usb-powered https://www.printables.com/model/194340-60mm-radial-fan-boot...
- larrywright 9mo ago
  Also try wearing merino wool socks. It seems counterintuitive to put wool on your sweaty feet, but they're quite comfortable and they help you avoid that "clammy feet" feeling when you are sweating in cotton socks. They also don't develop odor the way that cotton does.
maximedupre 9mo ago
Imaging the number of people that this comment could inspire to get on SSRIs lol I'm not saying it's a bad. But I'm also saying there are no magic pills...!
setgree 9mo ago
I’m glad to hear that. Another frame is that your depression turned out to be “math hard” rather than bodybuilding hard [0]. Your disciplined, methodical approaches were steady applications of effort, whereas what you actually needed was easy to implement but hard to envision. [0] https://www.alexcrompton.com/blog/2017/05/26/hard-is-not-defensible https://www.alexcrompton.com/blog/2017/05/26/hard-is-not-def...
lr4444lr 9mo ago
They've been losing ground to placebo in more recent research. Plus, most of the more serious side effects take a lot more time to manifest than the typical length any given patient remained in the older clinical trials that secured FDA approval and grounded the official manufacturer literature. I am glad we have these tools, but I suspect they are vastly overused, and patients not well informed.
welshwelsh 9mo ago
How do you know it was the SSRI? To cherry-pick a quote from a review of SSRI studies: >the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants and about 30% with placebo. That tells me that antidepressants have some effectiveness, but placebos work shockingly well. You can give someone a sugar pill with no medical properties whatsoever, and a good portion of people will recover, likely crediting the pill for their recovery.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
ncasenmare 9mo ago
Hi, author of the blog post here! Thank you for sharing your experience with antidepressants, I'm really glad it worked for you & made your life better. I did mention the following at the end of the "antidepressants" section, but reading your comment convinced me to move it further up. The intro now reads: > The "standardised effect size" of antidepressants on depression, vs placebo, is around 0.4. (On average; some people respond much better or much worse.) Also, I wasn't expecting my article to do well on Hacker News; thank you everyone for the comments & critiques! I'll edit the blog post as I go along, to refine it in response to your comments.
- marcd35 9mo ago
  Thank you for the blog post! I live in New England and always had the winter blues, always just assumed it was because of the weather but never acted on it. About a week ago, there was a reddit post claiming it's actually geographically impossible for anyone where I live to produce enough Vitamin D naturally from the sun alone, due to the shorter days and lower angles throughout the day. I had no idea.
  - ncasenmare 9mo ago
    Thank you! I relate; I live in Montréal, close to New England, with similar climate. The current UV Index for Montréal is... 0. And the current UV Index for Boston is... 0.6. (1.6 later today) I can't find a rigorous academic source right now, but the top web results all say we need at least UV Index 3 for our skin to be able to make enough Vitamin D. I guess summer may work for us, in the Montreal/New England area, but other than that, yeah, you and I will need to get Vitamin D from diet and/or supplements. And fish is expensive, so supplements it is.
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  My personerino let me be ridiculous and fawn a bit, and tell you that you're one of my internet heroes. Don't take it as criticism, more of a personal take on figuring out what antidepressants do for me. Furthermore, since posting that parent comment I've converted my vit. D dose to IUs and I realised i'm only taking 800 IUs daily. So a thank you for clueing me in on that, and who knows what happens if I up that. Maybe you were right all along and all i DID need was a heroic dose of vitamin D. (... thats what she said)
Aurornis 9mo ago
> I won the SSRI lottery I guess, From reading internet comments you’d think so, but your experience is more typical than anything. Depression is deceptively common. As a consequence, SSRI use over a lifetime is also more common than most would assume. Any drug will come with negative side effects for some portion of its users. Multiply that by the high number of people who have ever taken an SSRI and it starts to become obvious why there are so many Internet anecdotes about SSRIs not working. Meanwhile, most people who take SSRIs successfully aren’t going around and advertising the fact that they’re on psychiatric medications. There is less stigma now than there was in the past, but it’s still not something most people like to broadcast to the world. For patients on long term SSRIs in stable states, the SSRI is just a routine thing they take in the background and don’t really think about. There’s no reason for it to come up in conversation.
- zigman1 9mo ago
  To add to this discussion as someone who had above experience this winter, after (literally) years of mood fluctuations, fatigue and brain fog. I have started taking SSRI after a harder-than-usual body collapse, and after no matter what I did my mood hasn't improved for a month. Regular running, meditating, writing, crafting, coding etc were my antidote to my mood swings but this time it didn't work. Started taking SSRI and continue doing all this things, and I was reborn. My therapist said that a big chunk of why i am feeling better is also because I kept doing things that are good for me. That she sees with a lot of her patients that they think a pill will magically change the situation. It doesn't work on itself, you need to show up and do things that release serotonin in your body. But seriously, unbelievable, years of frustration and friction in my life disappeared and I have never felt better.
  - butlike 9mo ago
    Why were you getting body collapses?
- steve_adams_86 9mo ago
  > Depression is deceptively common I didn't even know I had it, but when I was diagnosed, my psychiatrist was very concerned and made a point of encouraging me to keep in touch, making sure I worked through things and engaged with the problem. I initially thought something like "I'm fine, just a little down here and there, I wonder if this person is inventing work for themselves?" Same with anxiety. I would have told you something like "I'm not an anxious person at all. I don't even know what that's like, though I can sympathize with people who suffer with it". As it turned out, I was suffering pretty severe anxiety. In retrospect it's as clear as day, but at the time it was just... The way life was. The thing is, all of my assessments remarked that I demonstrated relatively high self awareness and openness. My experience being diagnosed with ADHD and depression made me seriously concerned for people who 1) can't afford this process and support, and 2) will just continue to grind like I was, living half-dead without knowing it can be any other way. I suspect there are a ton of these people—I think I notice them quite often—and I was arguably accidentally pulled from that stupor and would likely still be there, unaware, if it weren't for a chance encounter that caused me to think slightly differently about the possibility of having ADHD.
roody15 9mo ago
Same I am in outstanding physical health and my diet / exercise is excellent. Taking Lexipro has made a massive improvement on my emotional bandwidth. I take vitamin D / fish oil and bits of other supplements. At least for me no question this medication even at a 10mg dose has made a major positive impact.
raffael_de 9mo ago
Bessel van der Kolk also mentions in his excellent book "The Body keeps the Score" that the effect of antidepressants is correlated with the source of the depression. If the depression is a comorbidity from early childhood trauma then antidepressants are limited due to trauma-related reshaping of how the brain is organized. Cases like yours or those that a related to traumatic experiences as an adult are more the result of a shallow neurochemical imbalance which antidepressants are able to impact beneficially.
- anthonyrstevens 9mo ago
  >> "The Body Keeps The Score" Such a great book. Highly recommended.
  - greygoo222 9mo ago
    [dead]
wafflemaker 9mo ago
I'm guessing you can afford spending $300 on light therapy glasses. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, but saw 4 seasons of dr. House. Moreover, few hours of Huberman Lab on sleep and light and most importantly, this episode of Additude Mag Podcast on curing SAD and ADHD day-rhytm shifting with light glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu4mLgkNc6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu4mLgkNc6I What happens in the seasonal affective disorder season is the sunlight pattern diverges from 6-18 that we evolved with. Without daily reminder of getting enough sun (or sun-like) light at the 6 o'clock⁰, your body clock will drift. It can start by feeling groggy instead of refreshed in the morning, even if you've slept enough. And can escalate into loosing the will to do anything or even live. No wonder. You're still an animal. You need to be fed, put to bed, etc. at a specific time. If you try to make your body sleep during the day, and eat and work during what body expects to be night, you won't really sleep and won't really live/work. Enough of not really sleeping and not really living - you mess up your body, your gut biome, your hormonal balance and your brain chemistry. You kind of should get depressed when you do it. You can steer your body clock with light. Most of us do it, by exposing ourselves to strong (strong enough it won't matter if it includes blue wavelength or not). But you can do it consciously (and in a way good for you) by putting on light therapy glasses (I'm using Lumiere 3¹, and they are not the only ones, find your own) at 6⁰ everyday, or right after you wake up if you're trying to readjust your rhythm. Or if you have time and want to save $200, use a stationary lamp and just sit in front of it doing nothing. I don't have the time. When readjusting, small doses of melatonin (0.5mg) 1h before sleep will accelerate body clock shift. But don't listen to me, if you have SAD, you should really listen to that ADHD experts episode. I feel for you, struggling with that stuff for a long time. Vit D, fish oil (lot of). All lights at home set to reduce intensity after 18. Strict going to bed routine. Still sleep poorly once in a while, but can do things in winter again. Hope it will help :) 0: choose whatever suits you. With small doses of melatonin and discipline in using light glasses you can even flip day and night. Just stay consistent, good farmer always feeds his cows at the same time. 1: at the time of buying ( fall '25 ) they were cheapest and best overall in norway. Solid build, ok battery, can have them on during yoga using attached rubbers and kind of can have them over glasses. Mine are very large and have blue light filter, but I manage 20min without eyeglasses. Medical certificate. Few leds, holo strip, battery and some plastic - my inner Scrooge says it's not worth $285, but everything else was worse and more expensive.
Noaidi 9mo ago
Re "citalopram" and "SSRI lottery I guess"...in fact, citalopram is not a true SSRI and in fact no SSRI is only an SSRI as they also on, at increasing doses, many other neurotransmitters like norepinephprine and Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. However, citalopram specifically has a big effect on the histaminegma the sigma-1 receptor. I will focus on the sigma-1 receptor: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861314000176 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S134786131... Never heard of it? Yeah, don't be ashamed, it is the biggest secret in depression. In fact they are finding that many "SSRIs" are sigma-1 agonists, even prozac. https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/1691987/fnins-19-1691987-HTML/image_m/fnins-19-1691987-t001.jpg https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/1691987/fnins-19-... It tunrs out that Sigma receptors modulate glutamatergic dysfunction in depression, and glutamate, being excitatory, well, you can. make your assumptions from there. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2025.1691987/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/1... It seems the main function of the Sigma-1 receptor is Calcium release. And calcium ion channels are one of the most studies ion channels in mood disorders. By increasing calcium release you increase neuronal activity, hence, the uplifted mood. It is too bad that the sigma-1 receptor is just starting to be studied and there is limited evidence of how omega-3 and Vitamin D effect it. But I do know that Vitamin D has a huge effect on SLC6A4 (SERT). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79388-7 I have Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type (disabled) and have been on no less than 14 types of meds. I knwo how they work better than my psychiatrists, which I why I no longer take them. I also know my genetics which gave me clues to what is happening in my body. Now I eat a mostly seafood diet and my needs for meds has mostly vanished. I am still an odd old fellow, but at least I am not ranting in the streets or trying to kill myself anymore. Meds saved my life, but a diet high in Omega 3, D, and a bunch of other things has removed so much suffering from my life, more than any medication has. (Also, if you want to get into the weeds of depression, you might wat to look at ATP and depression https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cns.14536 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cns.14536)
- anonymous344 9mo ago
  have u ever tried niacin?
throwforthings 9mo ago
The things that keep me away from SSRIs are the potential for addiction and not being able to take psychedelics. I had a friend on SSRIs not tell us they were on them when they hit a DMT vape pen at a party years ago and they got serotonin syndrome. Had I known I would have warned them not to.
- nerdsniper 9mo ago
  It's more "dependency" than "addiction". No one's waking up jones-ing for another hit of their SSRI. Dependency works well because some people are dependent on it like I am dependent on glasses/contacts.
  - wincy 9mo ago
    Whatever the word, getting off of them is not fun. It took 6 months after getting of Paxil to stop feeling like I was being dropped down an elevator shaft at random times day and night.
  - throwforthings 9mo ago
    Yeah, that's fair, there's not really a loss of control so dependency is probably the better term. Still, if you go off of them I've seen people get rocked with physical symptoms. I really try to avoid anything that would have such an affect on me physically.
shevy-java 9mo ago
> This just goes to show that for me, they're extremely effective. I am not so convinced. Perhaps your case was simpler, but people can feel chronic depression. They may take some drugs to modify that, but what if the external factors won't change? You can see this issue for some people who have a disease that only gets progressively worse. I think we can not unify all this as "dislike on antidepressants" as a one-size-fits-all formula.
YeahThisIsMe 9mo ago
I had pretty much the same reaction after two days of taking it. Took a while longer to get the dose right so that my anxiety also mostly disappeared, but the difference in quality of life it made for me is hard to put into words.
quotz 9mo ago
Have you tried SAD lamp light therapy? But not those lamps you get on amazon or other marketed SAD lamps, those are a scam. Just buy a 2 floodlights that are pretty powerful, say 100 watt each. Works like a charm. 15-30 mins a day its all it takes
dghlsakjg 9mo ago
As someone that falls on the side of “depression is real and antidepressants can help” it is very clear that there are people in this thread that need to hold their tongues because they know not of what they speak. (Not you OP) There are some forms of depression that you cannot think or act your way out of. If you haven’t experienced that, I promise that you do not understand what it is like. You cannot really understand unless you have experienced it. Your opinion on it is irrelevant, and frequently offensive. The same is true for people that say that antidepressants are mostly placebo. They are not. When people say that antidepressants saved their life, they aren’t joking or exaggerating in the least. Yes, I understand that other therapies are also effective, and that some people are non-responsive to some drugs. Keep your pet theories to yourself if you are not a subject matter expert or someone who has experienced it first hand. Edit: I understand that the placebo effect is still an effect. My point is that there are a lot of people being incredibly dismissive of real lived experiences and outcomes on a VERY serious issue.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- monero-xmr 9mo ago
  Lexapro saved my life
  - wincy 9mo ago
    Lexapro made me feel like I was randomly being dropped down an elevator shaft for 6 months after I stopped taking it. I’m glad it worked for you, and am not minimizing that, but these medications have a side effects profile a mile long and should be a therapy of last resort in my opinion.
    - htek 9mo ago
      The problem with antidepressants are that while we know, more or less, what they do, we don't know why they work for some and not for others. Escitalopram (Lexapro) was a vast improvement for me over Citalopram. Then it plateaued and a year later, left me anhedonic. Tried an SNRI that would give me brain zaps every day a few hours before my next dose and it was horrendous to quit using. It also messed with my ability to meditate for a long while. Basically, I could put myself in a mental state that would trigger the same kind of painful brain zaps that withdrawal from the SNRI caused.
throwaway314314 9mo ago
Thank you for saying this, I wholeheartedly agree. Antidepressants have an excessively bad reputation. I'm sure they have their problems too on occasion, but for me the decision to start taking Escitalopram was one of the best things I've ever done. The side effects were totally negligible compared to the benefits. I've stopped taking it a year ago or so and... it's basically cured me. I'm not saying antidepressant are a literal pharmaceutical cure for depression, but in my case it simply put me in a position mentally to change habits and patterns of thinking in a sustainable way. My only regret is not doing this 10 years earlier; the poor reputation contributed to that.
wojciii 9mo ago
It takes a 10 min talk with a doctor to get antidepressants around here. Perhaps a test which looks like multiple choice score of symptoms with some weights. I had an old gf receive two different drugs each with terrible side effects. To me it looked as poison. I decided that I would rather hurt myself myself than fuck with my brain chemistry this way. During the dark northern Winters I lack vitamin D (your doctor can measure this using a blood test). The symptoms are some physical issues and probably something that can be described as light depression which goes away if I remember to take the vitamins. We are all different. Some people might need anti-depressants. I just need some vitamins.
chasd00 9mo ago
I had a similar experience except instead of antidepressants it was when i started taking Adderall as an adult. A sense of peace and serenity in my mind that I had never felt before, it was almost overwhelming.
QuantumGood 9mo ago
What dosage of Citalopram? 40 mg/day? (Roughly equivalent to Lexapro 15mg/day; Saffron 30 mg/day if Crocin+Safranal properly standardized)
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  10 mg a day, down from 20 but that made me feel wired, like I ate a bunch of 9V batteries for breakfast. Big pupils, trouble sleeping, manic thoughts, the works. I'm a small, generally sensitive guy so ymmv...
  - QuantumGood 9mo ago
    Thanks. Ever try Saffron extract standardized to crocin content (typically 2-3% crocin, dosed at 20-30 mg/day)? One meta-analysis showed an antidepressant effect size around 1.2-1.6 , and unlike pharmaceutical antidepressants, saffron with standardized crocin has no well-documented or commonly reported withdrawal syndrome in clinical studies or reviews.
wincy 9mo ago
I had severe SAD to the point of having a mental break where I told my wife I was flying that very day to Miami to get away from the cold. I didn’t end up flying to Miami, which is likely why I’m still married… So I ended up spending $300 on LED bulbs, both corn bulbs and 200W equivalent, bought some 7-Way splitters for my ceiling fan so it’s holding 28 light bulbs (people have joked I have a “biblically accurate ceiling fan” because it’s so bizarre looking, like a weird glowing biblical angel), and get about 10,000 lux in my home office now. As a bonus, I don’t have to run a space heater in my home office (since I only need it in winter, I’d have been using that electricity anyway via a space heater). Solved the issue completely for me.
bossyTeacher 9mo ago
sweet feet seems so random, maybe some serotonin receptors down there? are they noticeably sweety?
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  something's fucking my hydro balance. i've done my fair share of psychedelics, and i have to keep drinking water on shrooms too. i dont know, something highly idiomatic haha. i also sweat more in other places, but my feet are the moistest. right now i just change socks often, it's hardly a debilitating side effect...
randusername 9mo ago
Same story here, but different drugs. Every year Nov to Mar means no lapses whatsoever in diet, exercise, sleep, supplements, clutter, lighting otherwise the SAD will seep in and erode me. I tried udosing ADHD meds this year and suddenly subsistence is easy and I have gas left in the tank for worthwhile things. I feel like I speedrun Maslow's hierarchy of needs. No anhedonia so far this year and my creative output is at all-time high. Hope that helps someone get over their own biases about prescriptions.
kranner 9mo ago
Similar story here but for ADHD and Atomoxetine. I finally went and got diagnosed at age 46 for what had been an childhood-onset issue in retrospect. All the signs were there: inability to start work until enough challenge or novelty or a state of crisis had come about, etc. When I spoke to friends about considering treatment, they said they thought of me as a hyperfocus kind of person. But they didn't see how many support systems I had put in place to function normally, how I saw others around me just doing things while I had to work myself up to start and then keep checking and double-checking for the silly inattentive mistakes I knew from experience I would keep making. I've had a meditation practice for a long time and it has helped with anxiety but it hasn't really helped with getting started on tasks, especially those perceived as boring. I even had to psych myself up to sit down and start meditating, even though I knew I would enjoy it. I didn't know until a year or two ago that non-stimulant medication existed to treat ADHD. I always thought it was only Adderall and the like, and I couldn't risk anything that would ramp my anxiety up, or take additional treatment for the anxiety with SSRIs because I have severe hemophilia and any additional risk of bleeding from SSRIs was an untenable proposition. After sitting on the idea for some time and just hoping that I could fix it with more meditation, I finally decided to see a psychiatrist. The doctor suggested Atomoxetine, but said it doesn't work for most people and even then takes 3-4 weeks to take full effect. I started on the absurdly low dose of 10mg/day for the first month to be sure it wouldn't cause additional bleeds. By day 3 I could see a huge improvement in my working memory and ability to perform tasks. It gave me insomnia for a bit but I would wake up at 3 AM, sit down happily to work and write the best code I've written in years. I could not believe the difference it made. There were quite a few side effects initially but I was willing to put up with them because of how smoothly my brain was functioning. I became a nicer person to deal with. I felt this sense of possibility and freedom that I haven't felt since my 20s. My only regret is not having done this sooner. So yeah, please don't avoid medication based on internet reading.
- MisterTea 9mo ago
  Similar. I was on stimulants as a kid and hated them as they did nothing but make me feel high then taper off leaving me exhausted. Nevermind the total loss of appetite. Later on as an adult I obtained adderall from a friend and experimented with it and it seemingly worked for a few days but it never stopped the intrusive thoughts or help with the anxiety. In fact all I did was chase a high with cup after cup of coffee when coming down. That put me off to meds for a long time. More recently I was on a vacation where I took mushrooms and had a nice trip. Two days later at work I felt very relaxed driving in and sat at my desk BUT something was wrong, my head was dead quiet (the GP explained this exactly like I would.) So quiet that for a second I had a bit of panic as I thought something was wrong. Then something wonderful happened: I realized I was able to just do my work. There was no stress, no worry, no nothing. Just a calm quiet confidence to get the job done. Best day of my life. After that I called a mental health center and connected with an ADHD specialist who has been working with me. I am also on Atomoxetine myself and while it has not brought me back to that zen head space it brings me close enough. My only gripe is at a higher dose it gives me sensations in my head. However, I learned that eating a proper breakfast helps a lot as I was taking it on a near empty stomach. Overall my life has been slowly improving and I feel more confident at work. > So yeah, please don't avoid medication based on internet reading. This - 100%
bjourne 9mo ago
> I won the SSRI lottery I guess, the side effect are sweaty feet, vivid dreams and a dry mouth. That's all. Yes, you did. Had the same medication and got tremors and stiffness so bad I thought I had early-onset Parkinson. Could hardly unlock the door without dropping the keys five or six times. Fortunately, it ceased when I stopped the SSRI.
ericmcer 9mo ago
Same for me with Adderall. I do wonder if being highly functional and feeling capable is normal though, like as a species it seems almost dysfunctional to happily plow through 8 hour workdays and bills and appointments and all the little bureaucracies we have to navigate. Sometimes a little voice screams "Run to the woods!" when I sit down and look at a long todo list for the day, but with Adderall I can generate some semblance of enjoyment from ticking off the boxes. Granted our world is what it is, and we are mostly helpless to enact large changes. Finding some kind of peace with reality is probably better than bashing your head against why you don't fit into it well.
qxxx 9mo ago
and then the effects wear of. You just feel "normal" or the same as before. I used to take ssri meds too. It was nice in the beginning. Stopping was a nightmare, I needed to taper down foe like half a year..
jollyllama 9mo ago
Do you take the citalopram year round, then?
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  This is my first year, doc told me to wait until at least march, April to start talking about tapering. I have zero symptoms in summer, so I'm inclined to get off them outside the darkest months... we'll see how bad the discontinuation syndrome hits.
  - jollyllama 9mo ago
    Here's hoping it goes well, whichever path you take.
drukenemo 9mo ago
Thank you for your comment. I think that can help many people.
thewebguyd 9mo ago
Similar story for me, but with Bupropion (Wellbutrin). None of the SSRIs/SNRIs worked for me, spent years trying different medications, Wellburtin was finally the one that worked, and oh man what a difference.
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pavel_lishin 9mo ago
> Cold showers, ... no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. I feel like doing those three things would make me feel like reheated cat shit, regardless of the weather outside.
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  They do for me too. Alcohol gives me a huge downer the next day but the party itself is amazing so I just waste the day after with a pillow over my head. And I hate strict rules and rituals, I love chaos. So that also gets me down. I often stay up till 6am (the parties I mentioned above only start at midnight) So yah it might make some people better but for me the times I break it are the ones that are exceptionally good.
someothherguyy 9mo ago
> I could cry with joy because I could finally understand emotionally why people like the Christmas season. SSRIs are known to induce a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_affective_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_affective_state I seriously messed up my life early on by not being able to recognize the difference between being happy and manic. One of those manic symptoms was often feeling like crying out of joy, and another was feeling way more cognitively capable that I was.
theshrike79 9mo ago
I described SSRIs like this: When you're depressed, you're in a hole that's too deep to get out of. The SSRI basically shovels stuff from the top of the hole to the bottom of the hole so your head is above ground level. You are still in the hole though and you need to climb out of it.
sizzle 9mo ago
The side effects are suicidal ideation and brain zaps

Der_Einzige 9mo ago

[flagged]

isoprophlex 9mo ago
Yes only I wrote it while taking a shit. Sorry man. A kinda strained endeavor, I must say. It's not bad but the SSRI side effects make continuous hydration obviously important. A small price to pay.
sarreph 9mo ago
How would you prove that?
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  They don't, hence the suspicion instead of a definite assertion. And suspicions are easy, because what are the consequences if it's false? None. Anyway your comment smells AI generated, I can tell from some of the pixels and seeing quite a few shoops in my time.
- Der_Einzige 9mo ago
  I don't need to "prove it", because all I have to do is link this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01754 https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01754 https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01491 https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01491 https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-short.47/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-short.47/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06166 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06166 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/wzveh_v1 https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/wzveh_v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-acl.987/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-acl.987/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.426/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.426/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.iwsds-1.37/ https://aclanthology.org/2025.iwsds-1.37/ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.14.24307373v4 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.14.24307373v... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21522715251379730 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21522715251379... https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21817 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21817 Either they used an LLM to write part of it, or the linguistic mind virus infected them and now they speak a little bit like an LLM.
  - myrmidon 9mo ago
    Relevant excerpt from your own wiki guideline: "Do not rely too much on your own judgment. [...] if you are an expert user of LLMs and you tag 10 pages as being AI-generated, you've probably falsely accused one editor." Never accuse people of LLM writing based on short comments, your false positive rate is invariably going to be way too high to be acceptable given the very limited material. It's just not worth it: Even if you correctly accuse 9/10 times, you are being toxic to that false positive case for basically no gain.
WhyIsItAlwaysHN 9mo ago
The OP just writes well. Also an llm is unlikely to write "thru"
anonymous908213 9mo ago
See, I'm all for calling out LLM spam, but because of people like you who have a terrible calibration and make false accusations against obviously human generated messages, I get all manners of people criticising me for pointing out things I know for sure are actually LLM-generated. You really think "Enter citalopram" as a singular instance you point out weights this more towards LLM-generated than "thru" and "reheated cat shit", among the entire tone of the message, weights it towards human-generated? Your heuristics are wildly miscalibrated.
mk12 9mo ago
It does not, at all. Forming that judgment because of “Enter X” is ridiculous. I recognize my friend Claude in disguise all the time on HN and this is not one of those cases.
dmos62 9mo ago
Your sense of smell is not something to write home about.
funkyfiddler369 9mo ago
If you spend a lot of time among some folks or talk a lot to LLMs, you are guaranteed to pick up manners, manners of speech, ways of thinking, behaviors (where applicable) ... Me and my brother just can't stop mixing English and German when we talk to each other. But we don't or barely do it when we talk to others. When I learned about code, logic, math, I started talking and thinking in different ways and from different and towards different perspectives. The more I read, which I haven't done in a long long while, the more massive and vast the info I pack into a few sentences becomes. The more I draw or play the guitar or work on game mechanics and story design or dialogues, the more annoying my speech and manners become but to my environment, that also means that I become "more" social and actually somewhat likeable and bearable. You smell like Non-evidence based arrogance. I was always surrounded by people who smelled like that. But they are good little copypasta soldiers who follow trends and mutually assure that they don't go completely off the rails. But if one does, they leave him on his real or imaginary battlefield. Nobody wants to evolve anymore. It hurts some people just a little too much, I guess. They'd rather poison others and have their code deleted before getting to live a second life. I hope I could get you on edge a little. I'm just fucking around. But you will probably think something the likes of ... "there's always some truth to it when ..."

deleted 9mo ago

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sheikhnbake 9mo ago

Same for me with buproprion. Night and day difference. Made me wonder how different my life would be if I had been diagnosed appropriately when I was a kid.

mvcosta91 9mo ago

“God, I see what you’re doing for others, and I want that for me.” I had a very similar experience, except it killed my libido, so I chose to endure the suffering of Winter rather than live with emotional numbness. Still, I strongly recommend it for people flirting with the abyss. It was life-changing for me while I was raising an autistic 2yo during the pandemic.

rco8786 9mo ago
> except it killed my libido Similar experience. Apparently pretty much ubiquitous with SSRIs
- isoprophlex 9mo ago
  i'm sorry this happened to you, this was of the reasons i held off trying them for so long. ubiquitous indeed, also on this front I got lucky... please people, take my post for what it is: anecdotal evidence. SSRIs can basically give you any possible side effect, including destroying your libido.
- bflesch 9mo ago
  hm
  - rco8786 9mo ago
    I don't relate at all to the latter part of your question, so by process of elimination it must be the former :)
michaelsshaw 9mo ago
Libido can be supplemented with Wellbutrin. Works great, even better than before.
sixtyj 9mo ago
I have switched to lamotrigin, it helps to balance mood as I had bad mood in months with less sunshine. Lamotrigin is not an antidepressant, previously it was used for epilepsy stabilisation but now it is prescribed for mood swings. (This is not a medical advice.)

krzat 9mo ago

If a drug has an 1% chance of 100% effect, it will look pretty weak in those studies. IMO it's pretty clear that depression is a symptom of many independent issues, so it's really lame that we don't have a more accurate way of diagnosing it.

compounding_it 9mo ago
The goal is to tackle it in every way. The medicines are supposed to be supportive and not the solution. More often than not people treat it as a solution. Thats why they are eventually tapered and discontinued once you are able to be on your own.

petesergeant 9mo ago

Yah. Measuring the effects of these drugs with a single effect size number is ridiculous. They work exceptionally well for some people (myself included). It seems as well that SSRIs work much more reliably on anxiety disorders than on depression. Getting on them can be a ball ache (or entirely painless; escitalopram was easy on and easy off, Wellbutrin was a nightmare to get on, but also easy off), but entirely worth a shot for anyone symptomatic.

compounding_it 9mo ago

As someone who tried citalopram escitalopram and sertraline, along with venlaflaxine and fluvoximine, I would suggest doing a pharmacological test for psychiatric medications. I am an intermediate metabolized for the first three and the ones I was on most long. It did not suit me and made my orgasms go from ‘wtf’ to ‘that’s it?’ And they are still not normal 2 years after discontinuation. I am still depressed and anxious to the point of serious consideration of these medicines to save myself, but you can save yourself the experimentation by doing a simple test and avoiding those medicines. Anxiety depression panic attacks are something I wish more people studied along with sexual health.

anonymous344 9mo ago
look my other comment for niacin
- compounding_it 9mo ago
  That’s B3 for nerve and dna repair if I understand correctly. I notice a difference after eating non vegetarian food but since I also have IBS, my absorption can be a hit or miss. A very balanced and nutrient rich diet with good sleep and exercise is the start to mental health recovery. People often forget how important all this is.
  - anonymous344 9mo ago
    for ibs: no coffee, milk (any milk), vegetable oils, wheats, soy, or anything from USA :D and no sugar or alco then slippery elm and probiotics, d-vitamin + c-vitamin. fasting, intermediate is also helpful. add berries and yes, beef meat and lots of greens. with strict diet ibs goes better.

ghusto 9mo ago

The hate on antidepressants is not because they're not effective, but rather that they're abused by psychiatrists. Ideally, a professional will prescribe them as a necessary helper to becoming (more) mentally healthy whilst tackling the root cause. Most of the time however, it's more of a "here, take these indefinitely". It's like if we took sleeping pills every time we had trouble sleeping. Having said that, I just realised I have the impression that's exactly what people do in the USA?

isoprophlex 9mo ago
you're not wrong that pharmaceutical crutches are overused. but as an outsider to these problems my 'ambient impression' was always one of haha antidepressants are for suckers. well, in my specific case, so what if i'm a sucker... they're super effective in fixing what appears to be a defective winter brain.
michaelsshaw 9mo ago
> It's like if we took sleeping pills every time we had trouble sleeping. Having said that, I just realised I have the impression that's exactly what people do in the USA? I'm not sure if it is common but I've definitely taken my fair share of my dog's trazodone.
- darvid 9mo ago
  after being prescribed Mirtazapine, then Trazadone I realized I don't think I've had restful sleep as long as I can remember. I need a sleep study done probably but until that the quality of life from taking something that has virtually no negative side effects for me is insane. meanwhile people are like "just take magnesium or melatonin lol"
  - larrywright 9mo ago
    Nobody should take this as medical advice, but from my own experience, nothing has made a bigger difference in my sleep quality than supplementing with magnesium glycinate. I didn't even start taking it for that purpose - I was taking it for something else and quickly noticed that it made the quality of my sleep significantly better. The only side effect from it is that sometimes I have strange dreams (not nightmares or anything, just odd). Everyone should check with their doctor, but it's an inexpensive supplement and the effects (if any) show up pretty quickly, so IMO it's worth a shot.

biofox 9mo ago

SSRIs saved my life. No exaggeration. They might be overprescribed, only effective is some individuals, and they certainly have their share of side effects, but they're still the gold standard treatment for clinical depression and anxiety.

graemep 9mo ago

If it is SAD have you tried bright daylight balanced lighting?

isoprophlex 9mo ago
Yeah, I have an extremely bright lamp designed to tread SAD that I sit, or well used to sit, in front of every morning. Daylight responsive led strip in my home office. And a pair of glasses with blue LEDs for on the go. It did... 10%? of what citalopram eventually did for me.
- graemep 9mo ago
  Thanks for the reply. Does the citalopram completely obviate the need for the extra lighting or do you find there is still a benefit to having the daylight lighting too?
  - isoprophlex 9mo ago
    I've stopped caring for my various lamps. I turn on the bright panel out of habit while working at my desk... but I don't feel "drawn" to it as before. I'd, for example, set my phone to the highest brightness in a dark room to motivate myself to get out of bed, or at least get to the light switch. Now I don't care, I just get up. And I can look at the dark world outside the kitchen windows in the morning and not feel oppressed. It's just a lack of light, no menacing presence.
- wincy 9mo ago
  Have you tried more light? Like, a lot more light? Like, getting a light meter and aiming for 10-20,000 lux in your room? This blog was a good start for me. https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/ https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/

dizhn 9mo ago

I still think you should have tried eating a banana first.

luxuryballs 9mo ago

I experienced this but ended up getting off of them after developing some back/hip issues but I didn’t think it was related, it wasn’t until I quit the citalopram that my shoulders were suddenly relaxed and the hip “looseness” or constant need to be adjusted back into place went away, like everything tightened back up, it is really strange, then I looked up how SSRIs can impact this and even bone healing, decided I couldn’t risk my body falling apart.

kyleblarson 9mo ago

I had disk issues in my lumbar spine that caused nearly unbearable pain and terrible quality of life. Tried everything: PT, OTC painkillers, epidurals, massage, nothing worked. Was prescribed pragabalin and duloxotine. Duloxotine is an SNRI that also treats nerve pain. That combination helped some but I was sleeping 11+ hours per day and generally felt like my head was in a complete fog, was pretty much useless with work. I had been trying to avoid surgery but finally had 2 procedures in 2024 that helped immensely. Weaning off those 2 drugs was no fun: sweating constantly, anxious, headaches for about 2 weeks. Extremely happy I went the surgery route and stopped those meds. I can't imagine living day to day feeling like that.

freedomben 9mo ago
Duloxetine was indeed a beast to get off of. It got so bad that I would open the capsules and count the number of beads to taper as slowly as possible. It was hell

Esophagus4 9mo ago

Tangent… but for sweaty feet, try a ski boot dryer! You can get them for $50… they dry out my shoes which makes them last a lot longer before they get so smelly I have to throw them away. Plus, who doesn’t like warm shoes in the morning? That, and there are some creams called Sweat Block or whatever you can rub on your feet which reduce sweating. Those work as well.

aweiland 9mo ago
You can also 3D print them: https://www.printables.com/model/194340-60mm-radial-fan-boot-dryer-usb-powered https://www.printables.com/model/194340-60mm-radial-fan-boot...
larrywright 9mo ago
Also try wearing merino wool socks. It seems counterintuitive to put wool on your sweaty feet, but they're quite comfortable and they help you avoid that "clammy feet" feeling when you are sweating in cotton socks. They also don't develop odor the way that cotton does.

maximedupre 9mo ago

Imaging the number of people that this comment could inspire to get on SSRIs lol I'm not saying it's a bad. But I'm also saying there are no magic pills...!

setgree 9mo ago

I’m glad to hear that. Another frame is that your depression turned out to be “math hard” rather than bodybuilding hard [0]. Your disciplined, methodical approaches were steady applications of effort, whereas what you actually needed was easy to implement but hard to envision. [0] https://www.alexcrompton.com/blog/2017/05/26/hard-is-not-defensible https://www.alexcrompton.com/blog/2017/05/26/hard-is-not-def...

lr4444lr 9mo ago

They've been losing ground to placebo in more recent research. Plus, most of the more serious side effects take a lot more time to manifest than the typical length any given patient remained in the older clinical trials that secured FDA approval and grounded the official manufacturer literature. I am glad we have these tools, but I suspect they are vastly overused, and patients not well informed.

welshwelsh 9mo ago

How do you know it was the SSRI? To cherry-pick a quote from a review of SSRI studies: >the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants and about 30% with placebo. That tells me that antidepressants have some effectiveness, but placebos work shockingly well. You can give someone a sugar pill with no medical properties whatsoever, and a good portion of people will recover, likely crediting the pill for their recovery.

deleted 9mo ago
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ncasenmare 9mo ago

Hi, author of the blog post here! Thank you for sharing your experience with antidepressants, I'm really glad it worked for you & made your life better. I did mention the following at the end of the "antidepressants" section, but reading your comment convinced me to move it further up. The intro now reads: > The "standardised effect size" of antidepressants on depression, vs placebo, is around 0.4. (On average; some people respond much better or much worse.) Also, I wasn't expecting my article to do well on Hacker News; thank you everyone for the comments & critiques! I'll edit the blog post as I go along, to refine it in response to your comments.

marcd35 9mo ago
Thank you for the blog post! I live in New England and always had the winter blues, always just assumed it was because of the weather but never acted on it. About a week ago, there was a reddit post claiming it's actually geographically impossible for anyone where I live to produce enough Vitamin D naturally from the sun alone, due to the shorter days and lower angles throughout the day. I had no idea.
- ncasenmare 9mo ago
  Thank you! I relate; I live in Montréal, close to New England, with similar climate. The current UV Index for Montréal is... 0. And the current UV Index for Boston is... 0.6. (1.6 later today) I can't find a rigorous academic source right now, but the top web results all say we need at least UV Index 3 for our skin to be able to make enough Vitamin D. I guess summer may work for us, in the Montreal/New England area, but other than that, yeah, you and I will need to get Vitamin D from diet and/or supplements. And fish is expensive, so supplements it is.
isoprophlex 9mo ago
My personerino let me be ridiculous and fawn a bit, and tell you that you're one of my internet heroes. Don't take it as criticism, more of a personal take on figuring out what antidepressants do for me. Furthermore, since posting that parent comment I've converted my vit. D dose to IUs and I realised i'm only taking 800 IUs daily. So a thank you for clueing me in on that, and who knows what happens if I up that. Maybe you were right all along and all i DID need was a heroic dose of vitamin D. (... thats what she said)

Aurornis 9mo ago

> I won the SSRI lottery I guess, From reading internet comments you’d think so, but your experience is more typical than anything. Depression is deceptively common. As a consequence, SSRI use over a lifetime is also more common than most would assume. Any drug will come with negative side effects for some portion of its users. Multiply that by the high number of people who have ever taken an SSRI and it starts to become obvious why there are so many Internet anecdotes about SSRIs not working. Meanwhile, most people who take SSRIs successfully aren’t going around and advertising the fact that they’re on psychiatric medications. There is less stigma now than there was in the past, but it’s still not something most people like to broadcast to the world. For patients on long term SSRIs in stable states, the SSRI is just a routine thing they take in the background and don’t really think about. There’s no reason for it to come up in conversation.

zigman1 9mo ago
To add to this discussion as someone who had above experience this winter, after (literally) years of mood fluctuations, fatigue and brain fog. I have started taking SSRI after a harder-than-usual body collapse, and after no matter what I did my mood hasn't improved for a month. Regular running, meditating, writing, crafting, coding etc were my antidote to my mood swings but this time it didn't work. Started taking SSRI and continue doing all this things, and I was reborn. My therapist said that a big chunk of why i am feeling better is also because I kept doing things that are good for me. That she sees with a lot of her patients that they think a pill will magically change the situation. It doesn't work on itself, you need to show up and do things that release serotonin in your body. But seriously, unbelievable, years of frustration and friction in my life disappeared and I have never felt better.
- butlike 9mo ago
  Why were you getting body collapses?
steve_adams_86 9mo ago
> Depression is deceptively common I didn't even know I had it, but when I was diagnosed, my psychiatrist was very concerned and made a point of encouraging me to keep in touch, making sure I worked through things and engaged with the problem. I initially thought something like "I'm fine, just a little down here and there, I wonder if this person is inventing work for themselves?" Same with anxiety. I would have told you something like "I'm not an anxious person at all. I don't even know what that's like, though I can sympathize with people who suffer with it". As it turned out, I was suffering pretty severe anxiety. In retrospect it's as clear as day, but at the time it was just... The way life was. The thing is, all of my assessments remarked that I demonstrated relatively high self awareness and openness. My experience being diagnosed with ADHD and depression made me seriously concerned for people who 1) can't afford this process and support, and 2) will just continue to grind like I was, living half-dead without knowing it can be any other way. I suspect there are a ton of these people—I think I notice them quite often—and I was arguably accidentally pulled from that stupor and would likely still be there, unaware, if it weren't for a chance encounter that caused me to think slightly differently about the possibility of having ADHD.

roody15 9mo ago

Same I am in outstanding physical health and my diet / exercise is excellent. Taking Lexipro has made a massive improvement on my emotional bandwidth. I take vitamin D / fish oil and bits of other supplements. At least for me no question this medication even at a 10mg dose has made a major positive impact.

raffael_de 9mo ago

Bessel van der Kolk also mentions in his excellent book "The Body keeps the Score" that the effect of antidepressants is correlated with the source of the depression. If the depression is a comorbidity from early childhood trauma then antidepressants are limited due to trauma-related reshaping of how the brain is organized. Cases like yours or those that a related to traumatic experiences as an adult are more the result of a shallow neurochemical imbalance which antidepressants are able to impact beneficially.

anthonyrstevens 9mo ago
>> "The Body Keeps The Score" Such a great book. Highly recommended.
- greygoo222 9mo ago
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wafflemaker 9mo ago

I'm guessing you can afford spending $300 on light therapy glasses. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, but saw 4 seasons of dr. House. Moreover, few hours of Huberman Lab on sleep and light and most importantly, this episode of Additude Mag Podcast on curing SAD and ADHD day-rhytm shifting with light glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu4mLgkNc6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu4mLgkNc6I What happens in the seasonal affective disorder season is the sunlight pattern diverges from 6-18 that we evolved with. Without daily reminder of getting enough sun (or sun-like) light at the 6 o'clock⁰, your body clock will drift. It can start by feeling groggy instead of refreshed in the morning, even if you've slept enough. And can escalate into loosing the will to do anything or even live. No wonder. You're still an animal. You need to be fed, put to bed, etc. at a specific time. If you try to make your body sleep during the day, and eat and work during what body expects to be night, you won't really sleep and won't really live/work. Enough of not really sleeping and not really living - you mess up your body, your gut biome, your hormonal balance and your brain chemistry. You kind of should get depressed when you do it. You can steer your body clock with light. Most of us do it, by exposing ourselves to strong (strong enough it won't matter if it includes blue wavelength or not). But you can do it consciously (and in a way good for you) by putting on light therapy glasses (I'm using Lumiere 3¹, and they are not the only ones, find your own) at 6⁰ everyday, or right after you wake up if you're trying to readjust your rhythm. Or if you have time and want to save $200, use a stationary lamp and just sit in front of it doing nothing. I don't have the time. When readjusting, small doses of melatonin (0.5mg) 1h before sleep will accelerate body clock shift. But don't listen to me, if you have SAD, you should really listen to that ADHD experts episode. I feel for you, struggling with that stuff for a long time. Vit D, fish oil (lot of). All lights at home set to reduce intensity after 18. Strict going to bed routine. Still sleep poorly once in a while, but can do things in winter again. Hope it will help :) 0: choose whatever suits you. With small doses of melatonin and discipline in using light glasses you can even flip day and night. Just stay consistent, good farmer always feeds his cows at the same time. 1: at the time of buying ( fall '25 ) they were cheapest and best overall in norway. Solid build, ok battery, can have them on during yoga using attached rubbers and kind of can have them over glasses. Mine are very large and have blue light filter, but I manage 20min without eyeglasses. Medical certificate. Few leds, holo strip, battery and some plastic - my inner Scrooge says it's not worth $285, but everything else was worse and more expensive.

Noaidi 9mo ago

Re "citalopram" and "SSRI lottery I guess"...in fact, citalopram is not a true SSRI and in fact no SSRI is only an SSRI as they also on, at increasing doses, many other neurotransmitters like norepinephprine and Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. However, citalopram specifically has a big effect on the histaminegma the sigma-1 receptor. I will focus on the sigma-1 receptor: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861314000176 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S134786131... Never heard of it? Yeah, don't be ashamed, it is the biggest secret in depression. In fact they are finding that many "SSRIs" are sigma-1 agonists, even prozac. https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/1691987/fnins-19-1691987-HTML/image_m/fnins-19-1691987-t001.jpg https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/1691987/fnins-19-... It tunrs out that Sigma receptors modulate glutamatergic dysfunction in depression, and glutamate, being excitatory, well, you can. make your assumptions from there. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2025.1691987/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/1... It seems the main function of the Sigma-1 receptor is Calcium release. And calcium ion channels are one of the most studies ion channels in mood disorders. By increasing calcium release you increase neuronal activity, hence, the uplifted mood. It is too bad that the sigma-1 receptor is just starting to be studied and there is limited evidence of how omega-3 and Vitamin D effect it. But I do know that Vitamin D has a huge effect on SLC6A4 (SERT). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79388-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79388-7 I have Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type (disabled) and have been on no less than 14 types of meds. I knwo how they work better than my psychiatrists, which I why I no longer take them. I also know my genetics which gave me clues to what is happening in my body. Now I eat a mostly seafood diet and my needs for meds has mostly vanished. I am still an odd old fellow, but at least I am not ranting in the streets or trying to kill myself anymore. Meds saved my life, but a diet high in Omega 3, D, and a bunch of other things has removed so much suffering from my life, more than any medication has. (Also, if you want to get into the weeds of depression, you might wat to look at ATP and depression https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cns.14536 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cns.14536)

anonymous344 9mo ago
have u ever tried niacin?

throwforthings 9mo ago

The things that keep me away from SSRIs are the potential for addiction and not being able to take psychedelics. I had a friend on SSRIs not tell us they were on them when they hit a DMT vape pen at a party years ago and they got serotonin syndrome. Had I known I would have warned them not to.

nerdsniper 9mo ago
It's more "dependency" than "addiction". No one's waking up jones-ing for another hit of their SSRI. Dependency works well because some people are dependent on it like I am dependent on glasses/contacts.
- wincy 9mo ago
  Whatever the word, getting off of them is not fun. It took 6 months after getting of Paxil to stop feeling like I was being dropped down an elevator shaft at random times day and night.
- throwforthings 9mo ago
  Yeah, that's fair, there's not really a loss of control so dependency is probably the better term. Still, if you go off of them I've seen people get rocked with physical symptoms. I really try to avoid anything that would have such an affect on me physically.

shevy-java 9mo ago

> This just goes to show that for me, they're extremely effective. I am not so convinced. Perhaps your case was simpler, but people can feel chronic depression. They may take some drugs to modify that, but what if the external factors won't change? You can see this issue for some people who have a disease that only gets progressively worse. I think we can not unify all this as "dislike on antidepressants" as a one-size-fits-all formula.

YeahThisIsMe 9mo ago

I had pretty much the same reaction after two days of taking it. Took a while longer to get the dose right so that my anxiety also mostly disappeared, but the difference in quality of life it made for me is hard to put into words.

quotz 9mo ago

Have you tried SAD lamp light therapy? But not those lamps you get on amazon or other marketed SAD lamps, those are a scam. Just buy a 2 floodlights that are pretty powerful, say 100 watt each. Works like a charm. 15-30 mins a day its all it takes

dghlsakjg 9mo ago

As someone that falls on the side of “depression is real and antidepressants can help” it is very clear that there are people in this thread that need to hold their tongues because they know not of what they speak. (Not you OP) There are some forms of depression that you cannot think or act your way out of. If you haven’t experienced that, I promise that you do not understand what it is like. You cannot really understand unless you have experienced it. Your opinion on it is irrelevant, and frequently offensive. The same is true for people that say that antidepressants are mostly placebo. They are not. When people say that antidepressants saved their life, they aren’t joking or exaggerating in the least. Yes, I understand that other therapies are also effective, and that some people are non-responsive to some drugs. Keep your pet theories to yourself if you are not a subject matter expert or someone who has experienced it first hand. Edit: I understand that the placebo effect is still an effect. My point is that there are a lot of people being incredibly dismissive of real lived experiences and outcomes on a VERY serious issue.

deleted 9mo ago
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monero-xmr 9mo ago
Lexapro saved my life
- wincy 9mo ago
  Lexapro made me feel like I was randomly being dropped down an elevator shaft for 6 months after I stopped taking it. I’m glad it worked for you, and am not minimizing that, but these medications have a side effects profile a mile long and should be a therapy of last resort in my opinion.
  - htek 9mo ago
    The problem with antidepressants are that while we know, more or less, what they do, we don't know why they work for some and not for others. Escitalopram (Lexapro) was a vast improvement for me over Citalopram. Then it plateaued and a year later, left me anhedonic. Tried an SNRI that would give me brain zaps every day a few hours before my next dose and it was horrendous to quit using. It also messed with my ability to meditate for a long while. Basically, I could put myself in a mental state that would trigger the same kind of painful brain zaps that withdrawal from the SNRI caused.

throwaway314314 9mo ago

Thank you for saying this, I wholeheartedly agree. Antidepressants have an excessively bad reputation. I'm sure they have their problems too on occasion, but for me the decision to start taking Escitalopram was one of the best things I've ever done. The side effects were totally negligible compared to the benefits. I've stopped taking it a year ago or so and... it's basically cured me. I'm not saying antidepressant are a literal pharmaceutical cure for depression, but in my case it simply put me in a position mentally to change habits and patterns of thinking in a sustainable way. My only regret is not doing this 10 years earlier; the poor reputation contributed to that.

wojciii 9mo ago

It takes a 10 min talk with a doctor to get antidepressants around here. Perhaps a test which looks like multiple choice score of symptoms with some weights. I had an old gf receive two different drugs each with terrible side effects. To me it looked as poison. I decided that I would rather hurt myself myself than fuck with my brain chemistry this way. During the dark northern Winters I lack vitamin D (your doctor can measure this using a blood test). The symptoms are some physical issues and probably something that can be described as light depression which goes away if I remember to take the vitamins. We are all different. Some people might need anti-depressants. I just need some vitamins.

chasd00 9mo ago

I had a similar experience except instead of antidepressants it was when i started taking Adderall as an adult. A sense of peace and serenity in my mind that I had never felt before, it was almost overwhelming.

QuantumGood 9mo ago

What dosage of Citalopram? 40 mg/day? (Roughly equivalent to Lexapro 15mg/day; Saffron 30 mg/day if Crocin+Safranal properly standardized)

isoprophlex 9mo ago
10 mg a day, down from 20 but that made me feel wired, like I ate a bunch of 9V batteries for breakfast. Big pupils, trouble sleeping, manic thoughts, the works. I'm a small, generally sensitive guy so ymmv...
- QuantumGood 9mo ago
  Thanks. Ever try Saffron extract standardized to crocin content (typically 2-3% crocin, dosed at 20-30 mg/day)? One meta-analysis showed an antidepressant effect size around 1.2-1.6 , and unlike pharmaceutical antidepressants, saffron with standardized crocin has no well-documented or commonly reported withdrawal syndrome in clinical studies or reviews.

wincy 9mo ago

I had severe SAD to the point of having a mental break where I told my wife I was flying that very day to Miami to get away from the cold. I didn’t end up flying to Miami, which is likely why I’m still married… So I ended up spending $300 on LED bulbs, both corn bulbs and 200W equivalent, bought some 7-Way splitters for my ceiling fan so it’s holding 28 light bulbs (people have joked I have a “biblically accurate ceiling fan” because it’s so bizarre looking, like a weird glowing biblical angel), and get about 10,000 lux in my home office now. As a bonus, I don’t have to run a space heater in my home office (since I only need it in winter, I’d have been using that electricity anyway via a space heater). Solved the issue completely for me.

bossyTeacher 9mo ago

sweet feet seems so random, maybe some serotonin receptors down there? are they noticeably sweety?

isoprophlex 9mo ago
something's fucking my hydro balance. i've done my fair share of psychedelics, and i have to keep drinking water on shrooms too. i dont know, something highly idiomatic haha. i also sweat more in other places, but my feet are the moistest. right now i just change socks often, it's hardly a debilitating side effect...

randusername 9mo ago

Same story here, but different drugs. Every year Nov to Mar means no lapses whatsoever in diet, exercise, sleep, supplements, clutter, lighting otherwise the SAD will seep in and erode me. I tried udosing ADHD meds this year and suddenly subsistence is easy and I have gas left in the tank for worthwhile things. I feel like I speedrun Maslow's hierarchy of needs. No anhedonia so far this year and my creative output is at all-time high. Hope that helps someone get over their own biases about prescriptions.

kranner 9mo ago

Similar story here but for ADHD and Atomoxetine. I finally went and got diagnosed at age 46 for what had been an childhood-onset issue in retrospect. All the signs were there: inability to start work until enough challenge or novelty or a state of crisis had come about, etc. When I spoke to friends about considering treatment, they said they thought of me as a hyperfocus kind of person. But they didn't see how many support systems I had put in place to function normally, how I saw others around me just doing things while I had to work myself up to start and then keep checking and double-checking for the silly inattentive mistakes I knew from experience I would keep making. I've had a meditation practice for a long time and it has helped with anxiety but it hasn't really helped with getting started on tasks, especially those perceived as boring. I even had to psych myself up to sit down and start meditating, even though I knew I would enjoy it. I didn't know until a year or two ago that non-stimulant medication existed to treat ADHD. I always thought it was only Adderall and the like, and I couldn't risk anything that would ramp my anxiety up, or take additional treatment for the anxiety with SSRIs because I have severe hemophilia and any additional risk of bleeding from SSRIs was an untenable proposition. After sitting on the idea for some time and just hoping that I could fix it with more meditation, I finally decided to see a psychiatrist. The doctor suggested Atomoxetine, but said it doesn't work for most people and even then takes 3-4 weeks to take full effect. I started on the absurdly low dose of 10mg/day for the first month to be sure it wouldn't cause additional bleeds. By day 3 I could see a huge improvement in my working memory and ability to perform tasks. It gave me insomnia for a bit but I would wake up at 3 AM, sit down happily to work and write the best code I've written in years. I could not believe the difference it made. There were quite a few side effects initially but I was willing to put up with them because of how smoothly my brain was functioning. I became a nicer person to deal with. I felt this sense of possibility and freedom that I haven't felt since my 20s. My only regret is not having done this sooner. So yeah, please don't avoid medication based on internet reading.

MisterTea 9mo ago
Similar. I was on stimulants as a kid and hated them as they did nothing but make me feel high then taper off leaving me exhausted. Nevermind the total loss of appetite. Later on as an adult I obtained adderall from a friend and experimented with it and it seemingly worked for a few days but it never stopped the intrusive thoughts or help with the anxiety. In fact all I did was chase a high with cup after cup of coffee when coming down. That put me off to meds for a long time. More recently I was on a vacation where I took mushrooms and had a nice trip. Two days later at work I felt very relaxed driving in and sat at my desk BUT something was wrong, my head was dead quiet (the GP explained this exactly like I would.) So quiet that for a second I had a bit of panic as I thought something was wrong. Then something wonderful happened: I realized I was able to just do my work. There was no stress, no worry, no nothing. Just a calm quiet confidence to get the job done. Best day of my life. After that I called a mental health center and connected with an ADHD specialist who has been working with me. I am also on Atomoxetine myself and while it has not brought me back to that zen head space it brings me close enough. My only gripe is at a higher dose it gives me sensations in my head. However, I learned that eating a proper breakfast helps a lot as I was taking it on a near empty stomach. Overall my life has been slowly improving and I feel more confident at work. > So yeah, please don't avoid medication based on internet reading. This - 100%

bjourne 9mo ago

> I won the SSRI lottery I guess, the side effect are sweaty feet, vivid dreams and a dry mouth. That's all. Yes, you did. Had the same medication and got tremors and stiffness so bad I thought I had early-onset Parkinson. Could hardly unlock the door without dropping the keys five or six times. Fortunately, it ceased when I stopped the SSRI.

ericmcer 9mo ago

Same for me with Adderall. I do wonder if being highly functional and feeling capable is normal though, like as a species it seems almost dysfunctional to happily plow through 8 hour workdays and bills and appointments and all the little bureaucracies we have to navigate. Sometimes a little voice screams "Run to the woods!" when I sit down and look at a long todo list for the day, but with Adderall I can generate some semblance of enjoyment from ticking off the boxes. Granted our world is what it is, and we are mostly helpless to enact large changes. Finding some kind of peace with reality is probably better than bashing your head against why you don't fit into it well.

qxxx 9mo ago

and then the effects wear of. You just feel "normal" or the same as before. I used to take ssri meds too. It was nice in the beginning. Stopping was a nightmare, I needed to taper down foe like half a year..

jollyllama 9mo ago

Do you take the citalopram year round, then?

isoprophlex 9mo ago
This is my first year, doc told me to wait until at least march, April to start talking about tapering. I have zero symptoms in summer, so I'm inclined to get off them outside the darkest months... we'll see how bad the discontinuation syndrome hits.
- jollyllama 9mo ago
  Here's hoping it goes well, whichever path you take.

drukenemo 9mo ago

Thank you for your comment. I think that can help many people.

thewebguyd 9mo ago

Similar story for me, but with Bupropion (Wellbutrin). None of the SSRIs/SNRIs worked for me, spent years trying different medications, Wellburtin was finally the one that worked, and oh man what a difference.

deleted 9mo ago

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pavel_lishin 9mo ago

> Cold showers, ... no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. I feel like doing those three things would make me feel like reheated cat shit, regardless of the weather outside.

wolvoleo 9mo ago
They do for me too. Alcohol gives me a huge downer the next day but the party itself is amazing so I just waste the day after with a pillow over my head. And I hate strict rules and rituals, I love chaos. So that also gets me down. I often stay up till 6am (the parties I mentioned above only start at midnight) So yah it might make some people better but for me the times I break it are the ones that are exceptionally good.

someothherguyy 9mo ago

> I could cry with joy because I could finally understand emotionally why people like the Christmas season. SSRIs are known to induce a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_affective_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_affective_state I seriously messed up my life early on by not being able to recognize the difference between being happy and manic. One of those manic symptoms was often feeling like crying out of joy, and another was feeling way more cognitively capable that I was.

theshrike79 9mo ago

I described SSRIs like this: When you're depressed, you're in a hole that's too deep to get out of. The SSRI basically shovels stuff from the top of the hole to the bottom of the hole so your head is above ground level. You are still in the hole though and you need to climb out of it.

sizzle 9mo ago

The side effects are suicidal ideation and brain zaps