What are your experiences with medication for anxiety / depression?

[TydalWave]

I know a lot of us have had experience, or tried to at-least find medications to improve our state of being.

Curious what peoples end mind set is regarding their experience with prescription medications.

 

[MyLifeisHell]

Medication for depression and anxiety were all ineffective. The antipsychotics used as adjuncts were outright harmful.

The 4th option is funny. In America they'll above your ass into the psych ward and slap you with a bill befitting a luxury resort, but no one gives a damn if you can't afford meds on the outside, even the ones that your release was made conditional on taking.

 

[LookingOverTheEdge]

No effect on me whatsoever. Felt no different when I took them to how I did before. And then no change when I stopped

 

[GentlyFading]

I'm on a bunch of meds and they've been really helpful. I've been taking escitalopram (Lexapro) for six years now. I lucked out and have no sideeffects on it. The shitty part is that missing a day or two feels awful but I'm in the habit of it already since I take 7 meds a day for a bunch of other things.

The other two meds I take are clonidine and prazosin. I know it looks risky to take two alpha-blockers at once, but it's how I'm able to sleep and just stay regulated with my PTSD. Clonidine works wonders for my ADHD and PTSD anxiety as well as anger regulation. It keeps the night terrors away as well!

 

[Darkover]

useless need i say more

 

[Rairii]

SSRI's always cause me to go numb or zombie like. Zoloft was the worst in that regards and the brain zaps coming off that were terrible. The numb from Viibryd was kinda nice in a way, it reminded me how numb I felt when I was starving myself. However, I don't really want to live my life being numb because I'm still suicidal and depressed and it'll just trigger my eating disorder and that's annoying to deal with in its own right. The other classes of antidepressants don't do anything for me but give me crap side effects. I think Wellbutrin was the most effective at making my depression clear up a bit but it spiked up my anxiety/insomnia and triggered me into a huge anorexia relapse because of the lack of appetite (which the lack of appetite does go away with time but just seeing the weiight go down so quick was addicting).

For anxiety, benzos work for short periods of time but its very easy to become dependent/build tolerance to them so you'll need a higher and higher dose until you cant go up any longer because itll be too dangerous and they wont work any longer. the withdrawals from those are literal hell. Buspar did nothing for my anxiety. Some blood pressure pills do fine with anxiety. My body is dumb so antihistamine like atarax actually make me really jittery and anxious but i heard they work for others.

I did some genesight test and my body just metabolizes drugs weird, so I think that's why I have such shit luck with everything. Right now I am on gabapentin for anxiety and I think it helps, as I'm not as bad as I used to be. My Topamax is technically is for my migraines but i guess its also a mood stabilizer, when I've had to be off it because the pharmacy didn't have it in stock I did notice my mood kinda got a little bad, so I guess that also kinda helps my mood maybe a little.

 

[Unknown4]

Antidepressants don't work for me, I've currently been put on lamotrigine which is a mood stabiliser it's not working, but I'm only on 50mg with plans to up the dose until it works, my Dr it's usually 100mg where people see a difference, with lamotrigine you have to slowly go up doses, because there's a risk of getting a dangerous rash.
Only thing so far I feel like has somewhat helped was quetiapine(I was prescribed that for other reasons) but that just sedated me to the point where I was sleeping alot, but I wasn't sad which was a bonus, I just didn't feel anything.

 

[nightmystery]

I'm on sertraline right now. I used to take Trifluoperazine. did not notice the effect. as I thought about suicide, I continue.