Help Your experience with sertraline?

[whatevs]

Negative, positive, no effect?

 

[chronicallybroken]

No effect except the worst night sweats of my life

 

[DynamicDepression]

I was on Sertraline for three years and it did nothing for me. If you haven't tried it before it might be worth a go, though. Everyone reacts differently, after all.

 

[jamie_]

weakest drug in all of existence. convinced it's just step 1 on the prescription list so they filter out people with placebo effect.

 

[western_heart]

Hypomania, even at a low dose. I engaged in a lot of impulsive behaviors, didn't sleep very much, and had terrible withdrawals even after only a few weeks of use. It affected me more than meth does. The first time I was prescribed it I flew across the country to meet friends online, the second time I bought a new car. The third time I think I only took it for a couple of days and didn't do anything too crazy.

 

[whatevs]

weakest drug in all of existence. convinced it's just step 1 on the prescription list so they filter out people with placebo effect.

Lmao makes perfect sense

Hypomania, even at a low dose. I engaged in a lot of impulsive behaviors, didn't sleep very much, and had terrible withdrawals even after only a few weeks of use. It affected me more than meth does. The first time I was prescribed it I flew across the country to meet friends online, the second time I bought a new car. The third time I think I only took it for a couple of days and didn't do anything too crazy.

How was you meetup? And yikes, bad prospect.

 

[PartlyHuman]

I'm not sure if I'm lucky or not compared to previous comments, but 1) It really helped with my depression (seriously, I enjoyed life first time in years and got energy to fix my life to some extent which helped long term) 2) It fucked up my sleep (3-4 times waking up with nightmares every night), insomnia later 3) It gave me awful tremors (to the point I couldn't sign papers) and muscle twitching almost nonstop. This all on 100 mg, we later had to lower back to 50 mg (lowest dosage sold) because my psychiatrist was convinced that I was on my way to develop serotonin syndrome. Probably, my case is personal high sensitivity to sertraline.
Lowest dosage wasn't as effective but still helped combined with other medication I took (mostly, mood stabilizers + anxiety meds). Almost a year since taking it depression seems to return but it's not bad enough to want to repeat this ride...

 

[whatevs]

I'm not sure if I'm lucky or not compared to previous comments, but 1) It really helped with my depression (seriously, I enjoyed life first time in years and got energy to fix my life to some extent which helped long term) 2) It fucked up my sleep (3-4 times waking up with nightmares every night), insomnia later 3) It gave me awful tremors (to the point I couldn't sign papers) and muscle twitching almost nonstop. This all on 100 mg, we later had to lower back to 50 mg (lowest dosage sold) because my psychiatrist was convinced that I was on my way to develop serotonin syndrome. Probably, my case is personal high sensitivity to sertraline.
Lowest dosage wasn't as effective but still helped combined with other medication I took (mostly, mood stabilizers + anxiety meds). Almost a year since taking it depression seems to return but it's not bad enough to want to repeat this ride...

I already have sleep problems but I guess in life you have to risk to gain, so I will try It. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[PartlyHuman]

I already have sleep problems but I guess in life you have to risk to gain, so I will try It. Thanks for sharing your experience.

You can ask your psychiatrist to address it, mine easily agreed. I was taking atarax (not sure about English name for it) which helped with anxiety and improved my sleep.

 

[western_heart]

How was you meetup?

It was nice, saw nine inch nails, got really (blackout) drunk, threw up at the airport before my flight back home and went to the ER for IV fluids so I could fly back the same day. When you're so sick and pale as I was they will change your flight for free lol. After the hospital I was full of meds & blacked out most of the flight home too! I remember having Five Guys and it was delicious. I made it on my rescheduled flight including a layover. Not sure how I got back home from the airport!

The following weekend I adopted a cat because my friend had one that I fell in love with. I also took a solo trip to Hawaii around then too.

Fun times. Every time I've visited said friend since, I've gotten incredibly drunk. (I've stopped drinking and haven't seen him in a few years, but we still talk a few times a week)

I was a very adventurous and sometimes reckless person in my 20s and when it wasn't stimulants or psychedelics, SSRI hypomania was the culprit. I'm surprised bad things didn't happen to me more often (they did, but didn't stop me)

 

[LittleJem]

I tried it for a week and it increased my agitation and I chickened out. Currently on Prozac and preferring it. But we are all different!
the reviews on Facebook are really useful if you join one of hte groups, they can help you through the side effects if you get them at the beginning. Also check out drugs.com

 

[Foresight]

Hypomania, even at a low dose. I engaged in a lot of impulsive behaviors, didn't sleep very much, and had terrible withdrawals even after only a few weeks of use. It affected me more than meth does. The first time I was prescribed it I flew across the country to meet friends online, the second time I bought a new car. The third time I think I only took it for a couple of days and didn't do anything too crazy.

I had hypomania as well and sexual dysfunction.

 

[wait.what]

I had no noticeable mood changes, but it did make me really sleepy and inattentive. I went from no recent traffic tickets to three in a row, all within 6 weeks or so. I was scared I was going to pass out at the wheel and kill somebody. My doctor switched my meds up so I was taking something else that didn't help, but which was less likely to cause a fatal accident.

[Spoiler alert: none of those damn pills worked. It was all just choices between side effects.]

 

[☆AwaitingEntropy☆]

Everyone reacts differently. For me, it reduced my anxiety and intrusive thoughts a substantial amount, but didn't touch my depression at all. It also made me even more exhausted, and empty-headed. (Moreso than usual, haha.)

 

[whatevs]

I will update this thread with my experience in a few weeks.

 

[milkandcoffee]

I couldn't cry when I was on sertraline. It was bizarre.

Didn't help much otherwise lol.

 

[Ethereal Knight]

as someone with chronic insomnia and who hates to have the adverse reaction of emotional blunting (which basically means having apathy and not being able to feel any emotions, not even the good ones), after trying sertraline and two other similar drugs (SSRIs), I didn't like any of them and prefered the tricyclic AD called amitriptyline, which is still my choice of drug for life and gives me literally the best sleep of my life and a huge feeling of serenity and peace, although I'm currently doing some experiments with extended-release trazodone due to its better side-effects profile.

 

[whatevs]

Been feeling more drowsy/lethargic than usual, will discontinue this med and try something else.

 

[y'ffre]

It worked pretty well at first. I was having euphoria when I started it first. Then I started to feel better, and my intrusive thoughts were almost gone. My anxiety, OCD, and depression got better. I maintained this state for about ten months then the medicine's effect started to weaken. Then slowly everything came back. After that, I slowly stopped taking sertraline. Then after some time started again but it didn't show any effect. It was useless. After all, I don't use it anymore.

 

[Infernal]

Gives an emotional numbing effect. Kinda like benzocaine for my brain. Basically I'm less anxious and I'm not in acute emotional agony (usually), but I'm still absolutely fucking miserable. One side effect may be lethargy, but that could also just be the lack of adrenaline from the extreme anxiety I was having before. I actually increased my dose last week and so far the only change seems to be increased lethargy, maybe. Not sure because there could be other factors in play. I think citalopram worked better for me, but that may just be because not as much awful shit had happened at that time.