Hi Sonnenblume
Yeah, when I was (much) younger I remember begging to be put on anti-depressants as I honestly thought everything could be fixed by taking a magic pill. I've been on and off them all my life but I now refuse to take them.
Honestly, I don't think they did anything for me - anything that they did do was likely just a kind of placebo effect, perhaps I thought that things would get better now so therefore they did (for a bit).
Again with side effects, all anti-depressants have done is make me massively fat. I stopped taking duloxetine now over two years ago and am still not back to 'normal' size. It's like I'm slowly deflating. It's a side effect they refuse to even acknowledge. Every single person I know IRL who has been on anti-depressants has basically ballooned and yet the doctors deny there's a link... try to put it on me with questions about my 'diet' and how 'difficult' it is to exercise with chronic pain - nothing has changed in either, the only thing that has changed is this new medication, therefore it seems obvious to me what the problem is.
But it's like the ONLY side effects they care about are with opioids. Putting on a huge amount of weight was no good for me on many levels and much more damaging than any of the opioid side effects, but again, they don't care.
I can't see how it would help with neuropathy pain... I was forced to try all kinds of shit before they let me stay on the opioids (that worked). I think there was some anti-epilepsy drug - maybe it was amiltryptiline? Something like that. Made me feel like a zombie, I had to stop taking it when I realised I'd walked out into the road in a world of my own and not looked to see if any cars were coming. But sure, opioids are dangerous :(
