Do antidepressants actually work? I’m tired of being so sad and jaded all the time, everything feels pointless and futile and I want those feelings to go away but I can’t stop myself from falling back into the same stupid depression again and again. It’s getting to the point that I’m down 90% of the time and up only 10%. I’ve been thinking about suicide more and more, which I didn’t even start to consider until a couple months ago despite being depressed for years. I need a fix for this. I’ve been avoiding medication, but I can’t find the motivation to try anything else. So, again, does it work?
PILLS HERE
Asher Gutierrez
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Logan Brooks
I need this pain to go away.
Josiah Gray
Go see a psychiatrist. They work for a lot of people, though sometimes you've got to try a few and see if they help.
And for the love of fuck, don't listen to what the anti-pharma shills who will inevitably come to this thread say. They'll make shit up about being turned into zombies, about getting horrible side effects, about wanting to commit suicide, whatever.
Yes, some antidepressants can have bad side effects in a small percentage of people. You know what else has a bad outcome? Untreated chronic depression. Ever see that Penn and Teller skit about why everyone should get vaccinated even if there was a tiny chance of getting autism? The shit you can beat is so much more debilitating than anything it can cause on average.
So go see someone. Talk to them about it. Ask questions, ask your concerns, ask about side effects. Take charge of your treatment. This is your body, your brain. Seeking help is NOT weakness; if anything, it's strength.
Adrian Morales
I’ve tried a couple psychiatrists. I feel like it almost helped just to talk things out, but it wasn’t quite everything I needed. It did help me realize how much anxiety contributed to my other problems, though. Thanks for the advice.
Cameron Bennett
>So, again, does it work?
For some people yes.
Personally they made me feel like a zombie and have dick problems. That can be an improvement if you're suffering all the time.
Connor Martinez
How regularly is one supposed to take antidepressants?
Daniel Morgan
>I feel like it almost helped just to talk things out
That's not a psychiatrist, that's a psychologist or a therapist. A psychiatrist is a physician who will usually use pharmacological means (i.e., give you drugs), though they have the training to give therapy (most of them don't unless they work with extreme mental institution cases).
Usually once a day. Sometimes morning and afternoon if they're not time release. I've also seen them prescribed once a day before bed (the ones that also work like sleeping pills).
Camden Thompson
So this isn't something you take for a few weeks and drop? You're supposed to keep taking em?
Camden Evans
OP, do you go outside a lot? I literally just like an hour ago started taking a vitamin D supplement. I've herd it can make a huge difference but we'll see. Could be worth trying for you because its really cheap, just get a huge bottle of vitamin D at Costco or some shit for $10.
Joshua Ortiz
It can take a couple weeks before they start working. And, many of them, you do need to taper off. But they aren't intended to be a permanent thing, no.
Ryan Murphy
It depends on the brand. SSRI's slowly make semipermanent changes to your brain. You can take them for as long as needed, taper off and still maintain the benefits, but you may need to take them again decades later.
Benjamin Rodriguez
>anxiety
Have you tried CBT? Worked wonders for me, and generally works a LOT faster than psychoanalysis.
Nicholas Robinson
Not really, no. They can make it worse though.
The placebo effect is what works
Isaac Moore
What I recommend is that you start walking or swimming every single day. Exercise is demonstrably more effective for curing depression than anti-depressants.
fitness.mercola.com
Antidepressants are no better than a placebo.
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They also come with many bad side effects, which are easy to find and so multifarious that I don't know where I should begin.
Aaron Hernandez
I’m outside a lot at work and school so I don’t think that’s the problem.
Never heard of CBT, is that a type of drug?
Xavier Cox
>SSRI's slowly make semipermanent changes to your brain
Eh. This isn't exactly true. It's more they enable you to change your behavior more easily. So in the sense that changing your behavior causes changes in your brain (i.e., you create different pathways, etc.) then yes, SSRIs and other antidepressants will make changes to your brain.
Jack Perez
Like I said, I get plenty of excercise. I’m always on my feet at work and I jog on my days off. It hasn’t helped yet.
Logan Gonzalez
>They can make it worse though.
>The placebo effect is what works
Wew. So they can make you worse, but they're just placebos. You must have a real big brain dude.
Oh look, it's the fag from the body dysmorphia thread. This guy has so much wrong with him, you could give him a sugar pill and he'd swear it made him impotent. What a piece of work.
Hudson Ward
>Never heard of CBT, is that a type of drug?
It's cognitive behavioral therapy. The idea behind it is that you learn to catch yourself when you're having bad thoughts, depressive spirals, whatever, and learn to reflexively break those thought processes.
It's probably the most effective talk therapy there is right now, but it's generally not as effective as antidepressants. You can do both at the same time though. There's some synergistic effects. Talk to a psychiatrist.
Sebastian Lee
Pills don't treat the problem and only puts you on a never ending cycle of drugs. Start seeing a therapist for regular psychotherapy sessions. Make it clear that you don't want to take pills and only want psychotherapy. Refuse any offers for pills.
Jackson Edwards
See I do that but then it turns into a negative reflection on myself, like getting angry at myself for getting angry at myself. Ends up being kind of counterproductive. Is there a certain way to do it that mitigates that negativity?
Carson Kelly
That's what you can learn in the therapy, more constructive ways of doing it. You should seriously talk to a medical professional about this by the way. These are people who actually have training, and actually can explain how the drugs work in a non-autistic, non-conspiracy theory way.
This guy is retarded, by the way.
Brayden Sullivan
Drugs sounds better than pain and needless self loathing
Josiah Jones
They can work, yes! But if you do not find the right one for you (sometimes you may get lucky) then you will have a plethora of symptoms that may make you wonder OK WHY THE HELL DID I AGREE TO THIS SHIT? -- and then give up because you did not find the right one like, within the 1st or 2nd try. I was lucky as it only took a few adjustments to get me on the right meds... But then after some years later, what worked before made things much worse.
Example:
I was on Citalopram / Celexa, Abilify, and Lamictal with an anti-anxiety med (not Xanax) as needed. Now I am only on the Lamictal because the anti-depressant made me severely depressed/suicidal and the Abilify gave me hand and face tremors so bad that I could not hold cups and plates while doing dishes.
I had to switch to Ginko Biloba and CBD oil. Which both have worked, but then again I am also going in to be re-evaluated sometime within the next few weeks as I started mentally getting worse once the job of Caregiver was thrust on me.
The point I'm trying to make is that when you're first working with pills you have to really give them a chance to work in your system but let me tell you that once you find that right combination it's like NIGHT and DAY. I hope it works for you too.
Landon Lee
>The point I'm trying to make is that when you're first working with pills you have to really give them a chance to work in your system but let me tell you that once you find that right combination it's like NIGHT and DAY. I hope it works for you too.
THIS. It takes work, and you need to be an active participant, both in documenting the effects so you can report back to your doc and get adjustments, and in being an active participant in your mental healing.
It's kind of like sleeping pills. You can take them and do whatever you want really. They won't literally knock you out. They help you fall asleep, but you need to actually put your head down and shut your eyes. Same with antidepressants. If you don't take an active role in improving your mental health, you'll get nothing done. In fact, you might feel even more stress if you don't get out and do things because the antidepressants can make it easier to just tolerate what's happening around you.
Josiah Kelly
Pills are not the grand solutions to those feelings. I have a friend who got anti depressant pills for about a year but combined it with therapy.
They made her feel a lot better cause sometimes she could go into this dark place inside herself and it would be hard for her to get out. So they did help however: she couldn't handle alcohol anymore with the pills, she'd be drunk off her ass from just a half glass of wine and when she had to very slowly build off her prescription to stop taking the pills cause if she did it too fast, like would either just stop or take too little too fast, she would get very depressed again (which is why they are not a permanent solution).
Mason Russell
Pills help somewhat with my anxiety don't seem to be doing anything for depression though which is getting worse and worse
Psychologists don't seem to do anything because I'm too shy to talk to them and they can't figure out what to do with me
Brayden Diaz
>slowly build off her prescription to stop taking the pills cause if she did it too fast, like would either just stop or take too little too fast, she would get very depressed again (which is why they are not a permanent solution).
This is actually retarded reasoning. They aren't a permanent solution because you have to taper off? Are you five years old or something?
I wish people like you would fucking stop posting in these threads. You are as bad as the dedicated anti-pharma posters in the harm you do to people on here.
Daniel King
So what exactly are the side effects people keep mentioning?