I actually tried it as my first psychiatric drug over the past week. I was prescribed 20s and told to take half a pill for the first six days.
I was pretty positive and open minded going into it. I had read some about SSRI's but was optimistic that I'd have small side effects that this would just work for me–doc said it'd take a month or more for mood effects to kick in so I planned to stick it out. However, I only ended up taking it for three days before discontinuing with the permission of my doctor.
To start, I had some side effects which—while unpleasant—I'd consider tolerable if it meant I felt less emotional pain: nausea around food, lack of appetite, nausea in response to sudden motion or just randomly throughout the day, diarrhea, and jaw clenching. I'd also forget words or concepts once in a while, seemed like notably more than average but I'm still trying to figure that one out.
The one that was a deal breaker for me was that it made me impotent within three days. I had worried about this effect after reading about SSRIs online, so I decided I wanted to watch it closely. I'm a male, and each day it became more difficult to get and maintain a full erection and then orgasm. By the third day I could barely achieve an erection (it was less full than usual and went away quickly and was harder to accomplish) and orgasm was literally impossible. My attraction to and desire for women in a sexual sense also went away almost entirely, despite having good stimulation (someone who's very attractive from my past randomly reaching out and flirting/sending photos).
I'm generally someone who has a higher libido even when suicidal and depressed so this was very concerning to me. I had the thought that it'd be nice not to have to worry about sex anymore. This freaked me out as I'm really not comfortable having little to no sexual function in my mid twenties, so I woke up the next day, skipped my dose, and called my doctor. He said to discontinue it and said that that was an atypical response and that I should never take citalopram or any of its analogues again, even put it in my allergies section to make sure. He said he thought I'd react in a similar way to most SSRIs out there and that we'd want to stay away.
I believe it was Tuesday of this past week that I opted out of taking the med (Friday now). I'm still having lingering diarrhea and low libido but those things are markedly closer to normal now. My doctor recommended I try Wellbutrin/its analogue form next since it doesn't normally present sexually problematic side effects. I'm going to give it a shot.
I hope you have better luck with it than I did (individual chemistry and all that, it might be very helpful for you)!
