I'm in my 30s and always had an unstable mind. I can't remember the last time I was really happy and I wake up most mornings feeling like I hate myself and my life. Its mostly because my life is objectively shit, I'm broke and lonely and introverted and basically a neurotic mess that struggles to cope with reality.
I worry that anti-depressants will make things worse, you hear such mixed reports of their efficacy and side effects. Thats why I've never taken them before despite spending half my life basically miserable.
>I'm in my 30s and always had an unstable mind. I can't remember the last time I was really happy and I wake up most mornings feeling like I hate myself and my life. Its mostly because my life is objectively shit, I'm broke and lonely and introverted and basically a neurotic mess that struggles to cope with reality.
This
I was prescribed prozac but I don't take them, too scared.
Thomas Ortiz
The "anti-depressants" currently on the market are not really anti-depressants. They're don't lift up your mood; they're not "happy pills." The SSRIs just limit your range of emotions and make you kinda chemically lobotomized. They have a host of side effects. Big ones include decreased libido, but in my situation I had: headaches, muscle spasms, nightmares, cold sweats, and foggy brain.
So I don't like them. But every so often you'll run into people who will say that they changed their life for the better. Who knows what is true.
Bentley Barnes
Please ignore this guy and talk to a psychiatrist. There are a number of dedicated anti-pharma trolls on this board, and the guys who say shit like that they turn you into a zombie or that they "lobotomize" you are absolutely full of shit.
Yes, there are side effects for some people. No, they are not debilitating for the vast majority of those. You need to take a proactive role in your mental health while you're on the pills, and know when shit isn't working right. Psychiatry requires patient interaction and dose adjustment.
Connor Watson
>and the guys who say shit like that they turn you into a zombie or that they "lobotomize" you are absolutely full of shit
Depends on the drugs. If you are a classic depression case, anti-depressants likely will work pretty well with often minimal side effects. If you are dealing with stuff like bipolar or BPD, though, anti-depressants will make you go fucking insane. The drugs for cluster B are also a lot harder, and the most intense do perform a degree of "lobotomization."
Noah Gomez
>lobotomization Could you please not say that? The drugs don't work like that. They don't cause an effect even remotely like lobotomization. The only purpose of that term is to scare people because it makes them think of the 50s, warehousing, abuse of electroconvulsive therapy, and dangerous drugs of a bygone era. Cymbalta saved my fucking life.
Yes, when maladaptive behavior is all you know, and is deeply set in all your habits, you are going to have difficulty figuring out how to function when that side of you is repressed. As I said, you have to take an active role in your psychiatric care. You need to report to your psychiatrist what's going on and what's going wrong. And you need to focus on getting yourself better; the drugs put you in a better position to heal, to build new habits, and to generally be a better person.
Isaiah Morris
First off, yes the medication is totally worth it. If for any reason you feel like the medication is not working well enough, you just keep talking to your doctor to change the dose and keep experimenting until it works. The important thing to do is to not just take the medicine by itself. But to instead, use the medicine as a part of a much larger strategy you're using to beat depression.
For example my doctor says that just simply exercising for 30 minutes a day has as much effect on a depressed persons mood as medication does. You can also try troubleshooting areas in your life that you feel are contributing to your bad mood to see if you can make those situations better. Fix the diet, find an exercise plan that works. Jow Forums has a really good sticky for fitness and reddit has one as well.
There are guides on the internet for coping with depression from psychology clinics. There are videos on this too. Arm yourself with the knowledge from these to make your plan that will allow your depression to be stopped. Remember, we're trying to make a plan here that will stop the depression. Exercise, meds, eating better, researching strategies. Keep looking and adding strats until you have a fullproof plan.
One big thing I notice with depression is how overwhelming everything can seem to be. There are some coping thoughts my therapist taught me that i'm going to teach you now. The first thing to do with any task is break things down into steps so simple and easy that you can do them to start something. Such as the golden 5-10 minute rule. It says to just focus on the task for 5 to 10 minutes. And that might be just enough to get you started. One brick at a time. The other is to not focus on the past or the future. Focusing on what you're doing will help block out thoughts about how hard its going to be or how hard it was. You'll be in the moment. I don't think that person is trolling. I think they're misinformed but not trolling.
Brody Mitchell
I'm atypical bipolar. Atypical bipolar basically means you shift between severe depression and normal mood, without manic episodes. Because of this, most psychiatrists think atypical bipolars are just normal depression, and prescribe SSRIs that make us have more frequent and severe mood swings.
People like are nasty, duplicitous scum and I hate them.
Blake Cooper
>They don't cause an effect even remotely like lobotomization.
Fuck you, dude.
I watched my Dad be put on several drugs for his Type 1 Bipolar. My mom and I would watch him eat when he was on this one drug. It was robotic. He could barely speak. Everything was slow. He spent all of his time in the chair blitzed out of his mind. If that isn't a lobotomization, I don't know what is.
Lucas Reyes
DURR I HAVE ONE EMOTIONAL ANECDOTAL SITUATION SO ALL PSYCH DRUGS R BAD!
But forreal OP, go see somebody about it. They will generally look into something like Paxil or Citalopram.
Luis Nelson
oh yeah paxil's awesome I love the part where it feels like your brain is being electrocuted
Jeremiah Lopez
you're not sick
society's sick !
amen brother !! !
Aiden Walker
I didn't say that all psych drugs are bad, nigger. If you actually read my initial post, I said that if you have something typical and straightforward, like depression, then it is generally effective with limited side effects. The problem is if you have something complex or not very understood, such as 's situation. In other words, it is very subjective, and OP is in the right to be scared and skeptical, especially from industry-pushing retards like you.
Luke Nelson
I took SSRIs for a while and they definitely made me happier. The major side effect was a drastically lowered libido, I had to force myself to become erect if I felt like fapping.
In the end I decided I'd rather be miserable.
Jeremiah Myers
I am I am definitely not trolling. Maybe my brain is wired or differently, or I am just not a classic major depression case -- the people who claim to have the most benefit from the SSRIs. I suffer from Dysthymia (or mild chronic depression; no suicidal ideation), Generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD. Basically a holy trinity of psychiatric maladies. I am very treatment resistant to first-line psychiatric meds. I've tried Prozac, Zoloft, Prozac, and Effxor in that order for up 2 months. All of them, without exception, have caused me to suffer from increased drowsiness/daytime sleeping, vivid dreams (usually nightmares accompanied by cold sweats), mental fog, and memory deficits. I also felt a bit of the 'zaps' when coming off of Prozac and Effexor. None of these meds helped in reducing my primary anxiety or intrusive traumatic thoughts. I probably wasn't on them long enough to make a complete assessment, but the side effects were unbearable for -- really worse in some ways than my actual disorders. I try to do some mindfulness, and pop a benzo if my panic attack sets in. For depression, well, I just try to get out of the house, get some vitamin D, and see some people. I'm not much of an outdoorsy type, but I would say that when I exercise, I do feel like I have more good days than bad in a week.
Shrinks have considered moving me onto the harder drugs, but I've declined. Without going into another huge paragraph about my life, I cannot tolerate any more cognitive decline that these meds were already giving me. I've seen what bipolar meds do to a person (my grandma had it), and I have a cousin with schizo on antipsychotics. I guess crazy runs in the family. I'm not prepared to move onto those harder drugs and basically become a potato. I need my brain function for part-time college work, and writing (not Jow Forums shit posting, but writing prompts and philosophizing).
Look, if anyone is getting benefits from SSRIs, then my hat's off to you. Try them.
Chase Jenkins
>drugs for bipolar disorder did X to one person >therefore antidepressants will do X to everyone You are a fucking idiot, and I wish shitposts like yours were actually against the rules. You are harming real people with this anti-pharma bullshit.
Christian Cox
>I didn't say that all psych drugs are bad No dude, you said that because you saw one person have a bad experience with DRUGS FOR BIPOLAR DISORDER, that a guy who said that ANTIDEPRESSANTS don't cause "chemical lobotomization" (whatever that means) is wrong.
You have no idea what you're talking about and need to be culled.
Brandon Jackson
Guy with atypical bipolar disorder again. I've been seeing psychiatrists for over a decade and have had nothing but troubles for most of that time. One time I was hospitalized and ended up prescribed intravenous antipsychotics even though I wasn't psychotic.
"Real people" frequently aren't served as well by psychiatry as you would like to believe.
Jaxson Reed
Are we just pretending the high rate of misdiagnosis for people with bipolar and BPD, and that antidepressants don't work for them and can make them have more dangerous swings then? There's a reason psych drugs have the reputation they have.
Grayson Rogers
>bipolar >got antipsychotics >this is abuse! You know that antipsychotics are frequently used in bipolar disorder, right? I get that you have shades of paranoia or a persecution disorder, but at least fucking know enough about psychiatry to make up a convincing story.
Also, this is where you go a bridge too far: >tell bullshit story about antipsychotics and psych hospitalization >in a thread about antidepressants for depression You have no idea what you're talking about dude.
Brandon Collins
No, we're just pointing out that people like you need to be culled because you're running around keeping the mildly mentally ill from recovering.
You are doing more harm than good by posting here. Frankly, you're doing more harm than good by continuing to exist.
Ian Brown
Interesting that you assume OP has simple mild depression based on nothing.
Landon Barnes
Interesting that you assume OP has bipolar disorder or is borderline based on nothing.
You are scum.
Brayden Kelly
I'm not assuming anything. That's the point, shithead.
I have actual experience with misdiagnosis, and not just a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder. I've been dealing with people who like you, who say "just get help", for my entire life, and I have no patience for it.
Daniel Bell
No you don't. You just said that you were "misdiagnosed" as psychotic because you were given antipsychotics when you have bipolar disorder. I'm telling you that you were appropriately given antipsychotics when you required inpatient hospitalization because antipsychotics are considered an appropriate course of treatment for bipolar disorder.
You are causing actual harm to people with your anti-pharma paranoid delusions. You need to stop coming here.
Bentley Hughes
I was misdiagnosed as simply depressed by a psychiatrist who said I wasn't bipolar. I was also one time misdiagnosed as an aspie by a psychologist during the time when aspergers was an en vogue diagnosis. Both were later contested by other psych "experts".
Of course, I was "appropriately" given antipsychotics because of my "paranoid" behavior, which was clearly inappropriate because a stable person should obvoiusly act normally while kept against his will in a psych ward full of borderline violent schizophrenics.
Liam Lopez
Do you just believe that the drugs commonly prescribed are automatically good because they're commonly prescribed? I swear, next you're going to start explaining to me how the oversaturation of Xanax is a legitimate drug treatment option.
Oliver Murphy
incidentally, the psychiatrist who said I wasn't bipolar was the one recommended to me by the hospital that gave me the antipsychotic because I was bipolar.
Sebastian King
>recovering
You cannot "recover" from mental illness through drug treatment the same way you cannot "recover" from any other chronic disease. Both must be managed through drugs and therapy, and every form of treatment has its own risks, and unfortunately, the rarer or more extreme your illness is, combined with how much the doctor actually cares about the work they're doing, decides how effective management through drug treatment is.
In other words, while treatment for chronic illness, mental or physical, is encouraged, everyone should have a high-level of distrust of what pills they pop and what shit coats spew and be vigilant for side effects.
Jonathan Miller
>misdiagnosed as simply depressed Honestly bipolar is severely overdiagnosed. Far more than depression. I wouldn't be surprised if you were relatively normal, maybe just depressed, but that you're fucked up on lithium and shit.
So go fuck yourself.
Josiah Harris
>everyone should have a high-level of distrust Oh look, it's another anti-pharma troll.
Jacob Wright
>but that you're fucked up on lithium and shit Does that mean you admit that commonly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs "fuck you up," and should be taken with caution? You just proved the other guy's point, nigger.
>commonly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs "fuck you up," Wasn't my point at all stupid. Idiot above me is talking about drugs for bipolar and antipsychotics. I was talking about antidepressants. Completely different drugs with completely different therapeutic indices and side effects profiles.
Idiots like you are the people who say "oh my god chemotherapy is POISON! why would you put that in your body?!" Because it kills the cancer more than it kills you. Then you get better.
Tyler Sanders
On the contrary, I'm quite pro-pharma. I take eight pills a day, probably going to have to make it ten in the upcoming months. I have a myriad of legitimate diagnosed disorders by long-term trusted physicians of mine. I've participated in experimental drugs in the development phase before they went onto the market as OTC. I've participated in one that was struck down, too.
It is why I have such distrust of the system. I've had doctors who have saved my life. I've had doctors who, had I not been smart and skeptical of what they prescribed, would have let me die.
But OP being nervous about getting on meds that dick around in your head? Yes. That's a legitimate fear to have.
Anthony Martinez
>But OP being nervous about getting on meds that dick around in your head? Yes. That's a legitimate fear to have. Yes that's legitimate. Being suspicious or exhibiting other paranoid behaviors? Not legitimate.
>had I not been smart and skeptical of what they prescribed This is all part of taking a proactive role in your recovery. It's not a matter of doubting everything, though you apparently need to couch it in paranoid terms to make it happen. I guess it's a good behavior in that sense. Kind of like the drugs themselves; does more good than harm in that instance. It's gonna bite you in the ass if you don't cut it out at some point though.
Brayden Thomas
Ironic you say that about chemo, as my mother was rushed into radiation therapy for her cancer and it permanently destroyed her lymphatic system. She regrets not taking the time to think about her options and read up on the dangers of the treatment, as she might have gone with a different option, had she known all of the risks. So, your strawman argument is actually legitimate.
Camden Perry
You do not recover from chronic illness. You will never recover from chronic illness. That's what makes it chronic. This belief sets someone up for failure. It is managed.
If you want to assume OP just has mild depression, then sure, he should go for it and manage it with ease. The moment he gets diagnosed with something else, however, he's going to be in the same boat as the rest of us, up shit creek with shitty drugs, shitty doctors, and no sustainable way forward for treatment that doesn't come with huge drawbacks.
Elijah Garcia
Antidepressants aren’t for everyone, but they can help. Try and identify your symptoms, triggers and alleviating factors. Exercise, diet, social support and sleep are very important. I took Zoloft (SSRI) for about a year, and Cymbalta (SNRI) for a few months. They sort of dampen your emotions and limit their range, and allow you to push on with your life. They take a few weeks to do their work and can take some getting used to, but the science says they’re at least as effective as placebo, and work best with talk therapy. Correcting the biochemical imbalances of mental illness is one part of the equation. It’s just as important to correct the ‘thought imbalances,’ the cognitive tricks and patterns that are keeping you depressed. Good luck and stay strong.
Jackson Hernandez
Look at it like this,
The scale goes from 1-50 1 being absolute bliss and 50 being seconds away from pulling the trigger
Improving your sleep pattern can move you up 10-15 points on this scale, while anti depressants will move you 2-4 points Dont get me wrong if your at 50 antidepressants may very well save your life
Take good look at what aspects of your life you change that will make you happier, food and sleep plays a massive part, most people are clueless about this, and wonder why they feel like shit when they eat like shit and sleep like shit
Try getting to bed before 10 at night, dont use any screens after you go to bed, and once you wake up in the morning go get a good breakfast right away, then go for a run
Repeat this for a few weeks and I can promise you will become happier, ofc it will not solve the root issue of your unhappiness it will still be a good distraction and it will increase your physically comfort and running will literally trigger a dopamine release in your brain
Asher Walker
damn, you even do it mid-post apparently
Jason Martin
You should try a change in diet and exercise and try to get 7-9hr of sleep. If you don't notice any changes or can't do that with your current situation pills are not worst choice.
Elijah Ortiz
>Cymbalta saved my fucking life. >DURR I HAVE ONE EMOTIONAL ANECDOTAL SITUATION SO ALL PSYCH DRUGS R GUD!
