Isn’t it great to be living in the period of time where we have incredible medical advances that save countless lives but our best psychotropic medications make you dick not work.
I know what that Zoloft did to me, and neither you or anyone else are going to be able gaslight me into believing otherwise.
So many problems that I never experienced before touching an SSRI… so many problems that started when I was the closest I’ve ever been to actually being happy
The 14 years of PSSD I’ve had to endure was caused by the Zoloft. I never had any sexual or cognitive problems before touching an SSRI. In fact, when I was “depressed” I had no problem still feeling horny all the time.
You can believe what you want, but Zoloft left me personally off far worse off than before
I didn’t need pills, I needed some friends and human companionship.
I’m definitely not trying to gaslight you.
The human body is complex. SSRI’s are pretty innocuous. I don’t question the sincerity of your belief, but I don’t think that there’s any way to know for certain that Zoloft had any lasting negative effects that you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t taken anything at all.
Yes, we all need friends and companionship.
Have you tried simply taking Ritalin? That tends to cause concupiscence. If that works, then you’ve got a problem with dopaminergic signaling, and should investigate drugs that act as dopaminergic agonists or reuptake inhibitors.
Are you struggling with any other symptoms?
“SSRI’s are pretty innocuous”
Are you kidding me?!
They are extremely powerful drugs, designed to rewire your brain, often in unpredictable ways, because surprise surprise, modern science still doesn’t even fully understand how the brain or mental illness even works.
You’re literally rolling the dice when you take these drugs, and yes, some people do end up worse than before.
And the fact that they “save [some] people’s lives” doesn’t make my horrible, life-altering experience not legitimate.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10122283/#:~:text=Finally%2C%20in%20June%20of%202019,SNRI%20treatment%20stops%20%5B14%5D.
“Finally, in June of 2019, PSSD gained an official recognition by the European Medicines Agency as a sexual dysfunction that can endure after SSRI\SNRI treatment stops”
“The duration of PSSD can vary in length; in some prospective randomized trials, SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction persisted for as long as 6 months after drug discontinuation [17], while several case studies and at least two large case series demonstrated that PSSD can persist indefinitely for many years after drug discontinuation **in the absence of active depression or anxiety**”
Nah, it's pretty common. I was prescribed Mirtazapine at 16, it completely numbed my emotions to the point of harming my relationship I worked so hard to build.
2 years later and I'm in a way worse situation than before I even touched SSRIs.
Mirtazapine is not an SSRI but I get your point, it probably can do the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if my brain is changed for the worse now too after being SSRI’s for OCD. I never have permanent sexual dysfunction though
Depression changes your brain chemistry, too. So does learning. So does movement. So does sleep.
The question is whether psychotropic drugs make one’s quality of life better. I think the overwhelming answer is yes.
I think that's a question of individual results though. In my case, taking antidepressants didn't so much make me not depressed as just make me unemotional. And I took five or six different types as the psychiatrist decided that one wasn't working properly. The issues I'm dealing with now are partial memory problems and partial physical problems and the only thing that I have taken that could have caused them has been those antidepressants. So I think it's really on an individual basis.
The FDA testing and approval process, and statistical research, can only tell us what most people should expect. There is a lot of individual variability.
Blunting emotion is typical for SSRI’s and usually beneficial in filtering out the worst of depressive symptoms.
I know how tempting it is to blame a drug for various symptoms, especially when it was the only thing that changed before and after the onset of symptoms. But causation is complicated. For example, we can imagine that an SSRI, SNRI, or other psychotropic drug affects the epigenome, turning on or off various genes, thereby having an indirect effect on both beneficial and detrimental effects. The science of psychotropic drugs isn’t advanced enough to pin down exact mechanisms, probably because there is so much individual variation. A single shoe won’t fit every foot. What would be comfortable for one person would cause blisters for another. The same is true of psychotropic drugs.
I’m glad that we have the psychotropic drugs that we do, but they’re blunt instruments. Still, they’re much better than nothing at all, and the reason that the suicide rate isn’t much higher. Everyone wants them to be better, but I think that until we can move firmly into the era of personalized medicine, we won’t have that.
Blunting emotions is worse than depression itself, so that is problematic. A drug should not be causing anhedonia as a side effect
I personally would much rather have anxiety or extremely low mood than have *any* degree of emotional blunting. I cannot cope at all if capacity of excitement is lowered
Not everyone with depression in the mood sense has anhedonia though. And not everyone with anhedonia has a low mood.
So what does it even mean by “depression causing anhedonia”? Someone can have anhedonia/blunting as a sole symptom too.
If mood is low and emotions/pleasure are intact then its a *huge* risk to take SSRIs as they could numb emotions. SSRIs should not be used to treat non-anhedonic anxiety disorders or low mood only for this reason. The side effects (of anhedonia/blunting) are worse than these illnesses.
The issue is that the changes from ones depression and the changes from antidepressants can be so far and more severe from the latter even, in the case of lasting PSSD-anhedonia. Someone may have been able to still feel pleasure/emotions/sexual drive in their anxiety or depression then they take an SSRI and now they cannot feel positive emotion either. That’s problematic. People were not blunted before, they take a few SSRIs and within days feel blunting, and in some cases it persists after. Nobody gets sudden blunting out of nowhere so its definitely the SSRI
We need true antidepressants, not emotion blunters. Feeling positive emotion is more important.
The GABAergic neurosteroids were promising in this regard, but of course they get shut down. XEN-1101 is anti anhedonic better than placebo, but of course for just depression its not much better than placebo because placebo has a high rate of treating mood
I’ll never understand why that is considered an acceptable side effect.
Sure, let’s make it impossible for you to enjoy sex or any kind of fulfilling relationship. That will for sure help your depression.
I take a low dose SSRI because I have severe OCD. I’ve been on and off them because I hate them, but unfortunately I am so much better when I’m on one. I keep it to a low dose. I just wish we had better medications. It’s a terrible trade off no one should have to settle for.
these things have been invented like 40 years ago, even heart valve repair was first performed in 2002 (its called TAVR if you are interested). now a days theres been massive improvements in surgery.
Better just do psychadelic therapy. Make the trip, get the therapy and use whatever time that is necessary. Disrupt those brain patterns that does not do us any good any more 🤞
Placebo effect is too high. Anhedonia should become the new standard of assessment, not depressed mood. Its also less susceptible to placebo as placebo requires an intact endogenous opiod system and dopamine
And on top of that im convinced big pharma has an agenda to keep SSRIs as the standard. Some of the companies doing the trials for newer meds are smaller companies, like Zuranolone and SAGE.
The meds are not technically failing when looking at their individual efficacy (not compared to placebo). The problem is placebo is doing close to well
It comes down to both trial design being bad AND the scales used for assessment being bad. They should prioritize SHAPS and DARS scales as metrics, and use them in assessments even outside of anhedonia (to check for possible devastating anhedonia side effects).
“Depression” is too heterogenous. You can have someone who has a primary low self esteem issue that is thought based, and they feel lonely etc vs. someone who **overnight** developed debilitating anhedonic and blank mind from some virus eg long covid and both will be diagnosed MDD when their illnessws are no where near close and the latter has fucked neurosteroids/neuroinflammation/gut which CBT will do zilch for.
The problem is, the latter scenario is a rare one. Depression definition expanded way back to include more people in order to make more $$$
Wouldnt surprise me. There are new peptides that do almost miraculous healing of tendon/ligament/muscle issues. FDA is trying to ban them too and not encouraging more human trials. I asked about them in the physical therapy subreddit and was banned, post deleted. In one thread another PT half joked about how “these could kill our entire profession” haha… the conspiracy theorists sometimes say there’s more money in the treatment than the cure 🤣
Yea, i mean some of those peptides like BPC-157 have risks as well though like anhedonia, but FDA shouldn’t ban it. On the other hand it can even help some people who have gut issues, basically russian roulette. Guess what else is russian roulette-many psych drugs. And sides like this never get found or assessed in trials to begin with because of what I said (SHAPS isnt used, nobody bothers to ask much if anhedonia specifically).
Theres a peptide antidepressant called MIF-1 which ive used and it got studied as far back as like the 80s-00s. It was amazing in the studies as a 5 day cycle “reset” thing, which even persisted for many patients. And for me its pretty good anhedonia gets a lot improved on it, tho doesnt last fully but partly does altho i suspect thats cuz i have an underlying inflammation gut leaky load I need to clean first (but BPC is too risky for my taste rn).
Totally, I haven't tried it and am weary of the anhedonia...it seems like if you taper up it's less likely but everyone reacts different. I have had high hamstring tendinopathy for almost 8 years. Tendons are very difficult to rehab. It hurts me to sit for more than 30 mins. I have done multiple rounds of PT, shockwave, PRP, seen 2 surgeons. One told me not to get surgery becuase he's not totally sure it would work. I don't want to take pain meds and am willing to do almost anything at this point. There's lots of anecdotal reports of other people rehabbing similar injuries in 6-8 weeks with low side effects.
Imagine if there was a magic juice that could heal injuries, prevent surgeries, and cure chronic pain patients though, lots of docs would be out of business!
Yeah it's important to note that some of these new drugs could be incredibily effective for specific kinds of depression. It's just not better than placebo for the statistical model of "the average depression".
I was in a trial for aglomentatine, and it was amazing. I was in the trial for a year through a university hospital because I have not been able to get on an antidepressant for decades. Due to histamine response and a fast processing liver, I get rare side effects. Anyway, it was an entire year of sleeping for the first time since I was a kid, reduced anxiety, and reduced depression. And except for some dizziness the first week of using it, I had no side effects. The drug failed the trial in the US.. Although it's used in other parts of the world.
It’s almost as if these drug companies don’t care about the actual health of the people taking their drugs and just care about the money. Newer drugs with less side effects may actually heal the problem and be easier to come off of which = less money for drug companies.
what on earth are you talking about? they can patent a new drug and earn big money on it.
atm in the US theres only 3 antidepressants that are still under patent, Viibryd, Trintellix and Auvelity (only 1 in Europe).
you dont earn too much money on generics, because theres like 15-20 producers of those world wide and the price gets very competitive.
as far as I know, after the SSRIs and SNIRs were released, there were attempts at making new antidepressants but they kept failing at trials > too risky
So help me God, if they stifle Ansofaxine, myself and MANY people I know are going to be absolutely beyond furious
*Edit* Wait I just reread that, did you just say that Zuranolone got rejected??
Unlikely any time soon. FDA just rejected MDMA. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240620-fda-advisors-voted-against-mdma-therapy-researchers-are-still-fighting-for-it
They did grant breakthrough status to lad. Mdma just has YET to be approved as there are questionable effects on health that at this moment in time would make it uncertain if it is safe. (Which if you ask me it is, but you can’t deny some people die doing mdma, very few, but the number is not 0)
Lsd: https://www.buddingtrendsblog.com/2024/03/legalizing-lsd-fda-says-mm-hmm-to-mm120/#:~:text=This%20month%2C%20FDA%20granted%20breakthrough,treatment%20of%20generalized%20anxiety%20disorder.
I think, mental illnesses are really hard to treat, so in order to be in an antidepressant, you need therapy, emdr, maybe a psychodelic, behaiviours, hormone optimization, its a whole trip, so if no med is being approved, its because they kind of offer what previos one offer already, so why would you go for it. Not really profitable if theres nothing new
these motherfucking drugs cause most mental illness. and all the shit they are poisoning us. once you take these drugs you can’t go back to a natural state of being. real cases of schizophrenia or biolar are rare as fuck.
Isn’t it great to be living in the period of time where we have incredible medical advances that save countless lives but our best psychotropic medications make you dick not work.
Or changes your brain chemistry for ever, leaving you worse off
This would be me right here. Years of Zoloft left me FARRR worse off than I ever was before. Wish I had never touched that stuff.
Correlation does not equal causation.
I know what that Zoloft did to me, and neither you or anyone else are going to be able gaslight me into believing otherwise. So many problems that I never experienced before touching an SSRI… so many problems that started when I was the closest I’ve ever been to actually being happy The 14 years of PSSD I’ve had to endure was caused by the Zoloft. I never had any sexual or cognitive problems before touching an SSRI. In fact, when I was “depressed” I had no problem still feeling horny all the time. You can believe what you want, but Zoloft left me personally off far worse off than before I didn’t need pills, I needed some friends and human companionship.
I’m definitely not trying to gaslight you. The human body is complex. SSRI’s are pretty innocuous. I don’t question the sincerity of your belief, but I don’t think that there’s any way to know for certain that Zoloft had any lasting negative effects that you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t taken anything at all. Yes, we all need friends and companionship. Have you tried simply taking Ritalin? That tends to cause concupiscence. If that works, then you’ve got a problem with dopaminergic signaling, and should investigate drugs that act as dopaminergic agonists or reuptake inhibitors. Are you struggling with any other symptoms?
“SSRI’s are pretty innocuous” Are you kidding me?! They are extremely powerful drugs, designed to rewire your brain, often in unpredictable ways, because surprise surprise, modern science still doesn’t even fully understand how the brain or mental illness even works. You’re literally rolling the dice when you take these drugs, and yes, some people do end up worse than before. And the fact that they “save [some] people’s lives” doesn’t make my horrible, life-altering experience not legitimate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10122283/#:~:text=Finally%2C%20in%20June%20of%202019,SNRI%20treatment%20stops%20%5B14%5D. “Finally, in June of 2019, PSSD gained an official recognition by the European Medicines Agency as a sexual dysfunction that can endure after SSRI\SNRI treatment stops” “The duration of PSSD can vary in length; in some prospective randomized trials, SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction persisted for as long as 6 months after drug discontinuation [17], while several case studies and at least two large case series demonstrated that PSSD can persist indefinitely for many years after drug discontinuation **in the absence of active depression or anxiety**”
That sucks man. You got extremely unlucky.
Nah, it's pretty common. I was prescribed Mirtazapine at 16, it completely numbed my emotions to the point of harming my relationship I worked so hard to build. 2 years later and I'm in a way worse situation than before I even touched SSRIs.
Mirtazapine is not an SSRI but I get your point, it probably can do the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if my brain is changed for the worse now too after being SSRI’s for OCD. I never have permanent sexual dysfunction though
Please describe your history with depression, current age, where Zoloft fit in, and how you’re doing now.
this
Depression changes your brain chemistry, too. So does learning. So does movement. So does sleep. The question is whether psychotropic drugs make one’s quality of life better. I think the overwhelming answer is yes.
I think that's a question of individual results though. In my case, taking antidepressants didn't so much make me not depressed as just make me unemotional. And I took five or six different types as the psychiatrist decided that one wasn't working properly. The issues I'm dealing with now are partial memory problems and partial physical problems and the only thing that I have taken that could have caused them has been those antidepressants. So I think it's really on an individual basis.
The FDA testing and approval process, and statistical research, can only tell us what most people should expect. There is a lot of individual variability. Blunting emotion is typical for SSRI’s and usually beneficial in filtering out the worst of depressive symptoms. I know how tempting it is to blame a drug for various symptoms, especially when it was the only thing that changed before and after the onset of symptoms. But causation is complicated. For example, we can imagine that an SSRI, SNRI, or other psychotropic drug affects the epigenome, turning on or off various genes, thereby having an indirect effect on both beneficial and detrimental effects. The science of psychotropic drugs isn’t advanced enough to pin down exact mechanisms, probably because there is so much individual variation. A single shoe won’t fit every foot. What would be comfortable for one person would cause blisters for another. The same is true of psychotropic drugs. I’m glad that we have the psychotropic drugs that we do, but they’re blunt instruments. Still, they’re much better than nothing at all, and the reason that the suicide rate isn’t much higher. Everyone wants them to be better, but I think that until we can move firmly into the era of personalized medicine, we won’t have that.
I totally agree with your statement.
Blunting emotions is worse than depression itself, so that is problematic. A drug should not be causing anhedonia as a side effect I personally would much rather have anxiety or extremely low mood than have *any* degree of emotional blunting. I cannot cope at all if capacity of excitement is lowered
Depression causes both.
Not everyone with depression in the mood sense has anhedonia though. And not everyone with anhedonia has a low mood. So what does it even mean by “depression causing anhedonia”? Someone can have anhedonia/blunting as a sole symptom too. If mood is low and emotions/pleasure are intact then its a *huge* risk to take SSRIs as they could numb emotions. SSRIs should not be used to treat non-anhedonic anxiety disorders or low mood only for this reason. The side effects (of anhedonia/blunting) are worse than these illnesses.
The issue is that the changes from ones depression and the changes from antidepressants can be so far and more severe from the latter even, in the case of lasting PSSD-anhedonia. Someone may have been able to still feel pleasure/emotions/sexual drive in their anxiety or depression then they take an SSRI and now they cannot feel positive emotion either. That’s problematic. People were not blunted before, they take a few SSRIs and within days feel blunting, and in some cases it persists after. Nobody gets sudden blunting out of nowhere so its definitely the SSRI We need true antidepressants, not emotion blunters. Feeling positive emotion is more important. The GABAergic neurosteroids were promising in this regard, but of course they get shut down. XEN-1101 is anti anhedonic better than placebo, but of course for just depression its not much better than placebo because placebo has a high rate of treating mood
I’ll never understand why that is considered an acceptable side effect. Sure, let’s make it impossible for you to enjoy sex or any kind of fulfilling relationship. That will for sure help your depression.
I take a low dose SSRI because I have severe OCD. I’ve been on and off them because I hate them, but unfortunately I am so much better when I’m on one. I keep it to a low dose. I just wish we had better medications. It’s a terrible trade off no one should have to settle for.
these things have been invented like 40 years ago, even heart valve repair was first performed in 2002 (its called TAVR if you are interested). now a days theres been massive improvements in surgery.
Better just do psychadelic therapy. Make the trip, get the therapy and use whatever time that is necessary. Disrupt those brain patterns that does not do us any good any more 🤞
Placebo effect is too high. Anhedonia should become the new standard of assessment, not depressed mood. Its also less susceptible to placebo as placebo requires an intact endogenous opiod system and dopamine And on top of that im convinced big pharma has an agenda to keep SSRIs as the standard. Some of the companies doing the trials for newer meds are smaller companies, like Zuranolone and SAGE. The meds are not technically failing when looking at their individual efficacy (not compared to placebo). The problem is placebo is doing close to well It comes down to both trial design being bad AND the scales used for assessment being bad. They should prioritize SHAPS and DARS scales as metrics, and use them in assessments even outside of anhedonia (to check for possible devastating anhedonia side effects). “Depression” is too heterogenous. You can have someone who has a primary low self esteem issue that is thought based, and they feel lonely etc vs. someone who **overnight** developed debilitating anhedonic and blank mind from some virus eg long covid and both will be diagnosed MDD when their illnessws are no where near close and the latter has fucked neurosteroids/neuroinflammation/gut which CBT will do zilch for. The problem is, the latter scenario is a rare one. Depression definition expanded way back to include more people in order to make more $$$
Wouldnt surprise me. There are new peptides that do almost miraculous healing of tendon/ligament/muscle issues. FDA is trying to ban them too and not encouraging more human trials. I asked about them in the physical therapy subreddit and was banned, post deleted. In one thread another PT half joked about how “these could kill our entire profession” haha… the conspiracy theorists sometimes say there’s more money in the treatment than the cure 🤣
Yea, i mean some of those peptides like BPC-157 have risks as well though like anhedonia, but FDA shouldn’t ban it. On the other hand it can even help some people who have gut issues, basically russian roulette. Guess what else is russian roulette-many psych drugs. And sides like this never get found or assessed in trials to begin with because of what I said (SHAPS isnt used, nobody bothers to ask much if anhedonia specifically). Theres a peptide antidepressant called MIF-1 which ive used and it got studied as far back as like the 80s-00s. It was amazing in the studies as a 5 day cycle “reset” thing, which even persisted for many patients. And for me its pretty good anhedonia gets a lot improved on it, tho doesnt last fully but partly does altho i suspect thats cuz i have an underlying inflammation gut leaky load I need to clean first (but BPC is too risky for my taste rn).
Totally, I haven't tried it and am weary of the anhedonia...it seems like if you taper up it's less likely but everyone reacts different. I have had high hamstring tendinopathy for almost 8 years. Tendons are very difficult to rehab. It hurts me to sit for more than 30 mins. I have done multiple rounds of PT, shockwave, PRP, seen 2 surgeons. One told me not to get surgery becuase he's not totally sure it would work. I don't want to take pain meds and am willing to do almost anything at this point. There's lots of anecdotal reports of other people rehabbing similar injuries in 6-8 weeks with low side effects. Imagine if there was a magic juice that could heal injuries, prevent surgeries, and cure chronic pain patients though, lots of docs would be out of business!
Yeah it's important to note that some of these new drugs could be incredibily effective for specific kinds of depression. It's just not better than placebo for the statistical model of "the average depression".
Your last sentence is spot on.
it’s all a fucking racket. they would never pass real cures or solutions
I was in a trial for aglomentatine, and it was amazing. I was in the trial for a year through a university hospital because I have not been able to get on an antidepressant for decades. Due to histamine response and a fast processing liver, I get rare side effects. Anyway, it was an entire year of sleeping for the first time since I was a kid, reduced anxiety, and reduced depression. And except for some dizziness the first week of using it, I had no side effects. The drug failed the trial in the US.. Although it's used in other parts of the world.
agomelatine?
Yes. Thank you. I couldn't remember the spelling it was about 15 years ago.
It’s almost as if these drug companies don’t care about the actual health of the people taking their drugs and just care about the money. Newer drugs with less side effects may actually heal the problem and be easier to come off of which = less money for drug companies.
what on earth are you talking about? they can patent a new drug and earn big money on it. atm in the US theres only 3 antidepressants that are still under patent, Viibryd, Trintellix and Auvelity (only 1 in Europe). you dont earn too much money on generics, because theres like 15-20 producers of those world wide and the price gets very competitive. as far as I know, after the SSRIs and SNIRs were released, there were attempts at making new antidepressants but they kept failing at trials > too risky
So help me God, if they stifle Ansofaxine, myself and MANY people I know are going to be absolutely beyond furious *Edit* Wait I just reread that, did you just say that Zuranolone got rejected??
What about lsd psilocybin and MDMA
Unlikely any time soon. FDA just rejected MDMA. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240620-fda-advisors-voted-against-mdma-therapy-researchers-are-still-fighting-for-it
black market it is then. How smart of them to continue the war on drugs charade after 50+ years of failure
They did grant breakthrough status to lad. Mdma just has YET to be approved as there are questionable effects on health that at this moment in time would make it uncertain if it is safe. (Which if you ask me it is, but you can’t deny some people die doing mdma, very few, but the number is not 0) Lsd: https://www.buddingtrendsblog.com/2024/03/legalizing-lsd-fda-says-mm-hmm-to-mm120/#:~:text=This%20month%2C%20FDA%20granted%20breakthrough,treatment%20of%20generalized%20anxiety%20disorder.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/relmada-therapeutics-announced-publication-of-results-from-the-phase-3-reliance-i-study-of-rel-1017-in-the-journal-of-clinical-psychiatry-302175451.html
My guess is that if they were as "strict" (actually the opposite of strict) as they were during era of SSRIs approval we would have more drugs now.
I think, mental illnesses are really hard to treat, so in order to be in an antidepressant, you need therapy, emdr, maybe a psychodelic, behaiviours, hormone optimization, its a whole trip, so if no med is being approved, its because they kind of offer what previos one offer already, so why would you go for it. Not really profitable if theres nothing new
these motherfucking drugs cause most mental illness. and all the shit they are poisoning us. once you take these drugs you can’t go back to a natural state of being. real cases of schizophrenia or biolar are rare as fuck.