Have you ever been medicated for depression?

Yes! Right now. :)
I’m on generic Celexa (Citalopram), and it is fucking amazing! The reasons are, ten years of panic attacks, my mother being diagnosed with cancer three days before my 22nd birthday – last August, more recently my mother’s cancer spreading, my brother drowning his problems with beer, and being evicted. I’m also in a tremendous amount of debt because of all of the above. Nothing at all to do with birth control. :)

I figured enough was enough, I wasn’t coping well and I wanted to help myself before I let it get out of my control, so I spoke to my doctor and presto! Happy pills.

Best decision I could have made for myself. I’m glad I grew a pair and got the prescription. For a long time, I was against antidepressants for myself thinking I could handle it, I wasn’t that bad. I was dealing. But it wasn’t healthy. Now I am. :D

I’ve had no side effects whatsoever apart from a week of drowsiness when I first started.

If anyone thinks they need help or are unsure, get thee to a pharmacy.

Proof that it works? See all the smileys above. :)

I knew it was time to see my dr. when I had been seeing a therapist for a few months and although talking about things felt good at the time, my general day-to-day mood didn’t change and even got worse. My therapist agreed it was time to try medication, which meant a lot to me.

I’ve used Prozac, and the vast majority of my experiences with it have been positive. It made me yawn quite a bit when I first started, even though I felt more energetic than I had in a while. My biggest complaint is how it kills my sex drive, but I’ve been taking supplements and exercising to try to counter-act that. I don’t use hormonal birth control, so I don’t know how the pill would interact.

No shame in anti-depressants, IMHO, provided you’ve try other solutions (dietary changes, therapy, exercise, etc) before or in conjuntion with the meds.

@likeradar: Not everyone has access to mental health services. I flat out could not afford it, and due to two separate injuries in both feet exercise is extremely painful for me, I was already on a healthy diet but that can only do so much. In my case a prescription was a fantastic alternative and my doctor agreed. As long as you have a respectable doctor’s go-ahead, there should be no shame, regardless of other factors.

@asmonet- I didn’t mean to imply therapy was the crucial factor for everyone. I meant that in my experience it was useful, and I truly believe diet and exercise can be helpful too. I’m obviously not even a little against people taking anti-depressants. Maybe “shame” was the wrong word for me to use, so I’m sorry if it came off like I think it’s the best answer for everyone.

@likeradar: I think I got the right impression, the one you were trying to make that is. I appreciate the clarification, I just felt the need to point out a different story based on your quip. Thanks for clearing your side up. :)

Yep, depression and anxiety. I take Effexor XR and it has been a life-saver (sometimes, quite literally). I also have Xanax to take as needed (rarely, anymore). Daily panic attacks and a years-long depression weren’t quite enough to get me to give up my resistance to the drugs. It took a panic attack while driving to finally wake me up. I have tried to wean myself off medication a number of times, and it has always been a mistake. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll need to take them forever, and I’m quite ok with that :)

I haven’t been, but I’m sure a lot of people would tell me I should be. I won’t ever talk to a therapist though, because it would be far too weird for me to open up to a complete stranger. I can barely bare my soul to those I love, so yeah right.

I just don’t like the idea of being medicated, anyway. It would probably make it worse for me, just because of how I think. I’d start to question it in every way imaginable (very philosophical) and I’d probably quit taking it.

@DD: Many people think they’ll have a hard time talking to a stranger, but find the opposite to be true. It’s worth a try if you think it might help you. If it’s absolutely not for you, your regular doctor can prescribe antidepressants for you. Why would you want to suffer, just to be able to say you are ‘medicine free’? If you had diabetes, wouldn’t you take the insulin? Go, get help…you will never regret it!

Breaking point: no energy, despair, hopeless, and I knew better than to think these things were situationally justified.
Side effects: with Lexapro (first thing tried): sleepy for two years. With Wellbutrin, no problems. With bupropion, generic Wellbutrin, REALLY no problems because it costs $7/month.
Yes, I felt better.
No birth control issues. But long ago when I was taking bc pills, I got very depressed and hopeless perhaps partly because I was married to a big baby at the time

Yes. I was told by my therapist after the first or second hour of sobbing brought on by a devastating family crisis that I needed antidepressants to

help lift my spirits enough to
function.
That was 12 years ago now. I
have tried to wean off without
success. My family has high rate of depression- both my siblings take them.
I continue talk therapy as I am convinced one should not be used without the other.
I know I am more depressed when all I want to do is sleep and sleep. I feel like a balloon with a leak- and the energy seeps out.
No side effects problems that I attribute to my medication.

Oh, I just realized I forgot to talk about side-effects. I’ve had a couple of problems with other drugs. One of the first I ever tried, years and years ago was a Tricyclic antidepressant (can’t remember the name): Felt like a robot…no lows, but no highs either. I hated it! Prozac: Went bat-shit crazy…to the point that my husband at the time flushed the pills down the toilet. Topomax (a mood stabilizer): Developed an extreme eye twitch, which could have led to glaucoma. Decreased sex drive is pretty common with most of these drugs, except Welbutrin.

I’ve been off and on for years, and something I would recommend checking into as well is an adrenal gland supplement. I’ve been off the drugs for a year and a half, but the supplements made a HUGE difference in my day-to-day functioning…

@asmonet, I am really sorry about your mother. I hope things are better with her. As well as everyone here who has also been through other ordeals. It seems, as if many are familiar with anti depressants here.
I myself was also prescribed prozac by a therapist my parents took me to. I didn’t have any side effects, other than losing my apetite, but it really did a lot for me. I loved my happy pills.

@august: It’s not as simple as me being able to say I’m medicine free. I do believe it helps people – absolutely. But medication makes me paranoid, specifically because I’ve heard so many horror stories about it masking or completely covering up other emotions. I’ve heard multiple people describe feeling numb because of medication – not happy, not sad, just… There. And that idea really freaks me out, because I’ve been there on my own, no medication required. I don’t want to go through life as a robot, if that’s what medication might do to me.

@milla: Thank you milla, I appreciate it. :)

I may be different, and maybe not (there’s some thought that depression is a unipolar version of bipolar disorder). For bipolar, they try to provide a mood stabilizer (which constrains the magnitude of your changes) and then an anti-depressant, if needed.

My first mood stabilizer was Lithium. It got rid of my mania (which it is really good at) and reduced the length of my depressions (but not the severity or depth). It has numerous side effects, and I’ve got most of them: shaky hands, skin itching (like crazy), weight gain, and thought slowness or difficulties with memory (it can be hard for me to retrieve random words).

SO they added Buproprion (Wellbutrin), an antidepressant to try to help with my remaining depression. It helped, but I constantly felt like I was just beneath the surface of the water.

At last, to help with Lithium side effects, they have added another mood stabilizer (the one my cousin and aunt are on) called Lamictal. This allowed me to reduce my Lithium (my hands shake less). It is supposed to be better at helping with depression than Lithium, which is good at stopping manias. It supposedly has no side effects, except there is the possibility of a skin rash that can kill you. But that happens in only one in five thousand people.

They’ve been slowly ramping up my dose (to see if I’m allergic), and I’m about halfway through that process. I’m not at a therapeutic dose yet. However, I am strongly susceptible to suggestion (by a medical professional, not anyone else, you goofballs :D) it may be working already. We’ll see.

I, too, was resistant to the idea of medicating depression. Then I got really, really sick, and nearly died, and that made me reevaluate my position. I still struggle with it. I blame myself for my illness, and for not getting better, faster. I guess I would urge folks to realize that resistance to these drugs is really based on shame, and it is a foolish shame. Of course, I’m telling myself the same thing. We’ll how long I believe it.

I did one year when all these people I love up and died on me, including my dog, I lost my job, and my relationship. I tried a zillion different ones but they all made me manic. Turns out that’s what happens to bipolar people.

I have a long history of depression beginning when I was 27 years old. I was hospitalized at this time and put on a tryciclic antidepressant along with perphenazine an antipsychotic because I had psychotic depression. I felt hopeless and very flat like the life had been taken out of me. At the time these medications helped me to find work and hold a job down but the side affects were many. It wiped out my sex drive and I felt like a zombie. Over the years I have been of and off medicine with minor success. I have tried prozac which I gained weight on, trazadone which made me sleep alot, Lexapro which I had little success on and currently I have been taking zoloft with geodon and buprion [wellbutrin]. I have been taking these three medicines for over three years now and have held a job for the same amount of time so I must be doing something right. I still think alot about not taking any medicine at all but am afraid I would go downhill which has happened in the past. My biggest complaint is that these medicines decrease your sex drive and I gain weight. Hopefully I can wean myself off these medicines and take a mininmal dose.

Have you tried testosterone for your sex drive?