Are you on any kind of antidepressant drugs?

This is my survey damnit and i'm on Prozac...I think it sucks.

I changed this survey to have yes, no, and other answers. I also set the category sort and removed all previous votes.

kristalynn - why does it suck to be on Prozac?

Do endorphins count?

I have been in the past, after my father died they helped me cope until I was far enough along in the grief process to function on my own. They were very helpful, and did not affect me negatively.

Bill: My impression is that all drugs that mess with your brain chemistry kinda suck. Some more than others, but they all have weird side-effects that aren't nice.

I'm currently on Zyban, which is Wellbutrin, to help me to quit smoking. It's working well on that front. I don't perceive any other effects, really. I am afraid that I will smoke if I get off it, which is a little scary, but I'll deal with that when it becomes an issue.

One thing that does really piss me off is that after I'd been taking it for a month, my health care provider announced that they wouldn't pay for it when used to quit smoking. Like they don't want me to quit?!!! Luckily, I'm in a position to afford it on my own, but I'm annoyed by their short-sighted decision.

I was on Zoloft for a while, but then I realized that what I really needed was to quit my job. I feel better now.

Hunter: yay! And I think I know you well enough to risk saying "you can do it." and no need to be afraid.

Lara: even though I don't think I know you, I'd like to say I'm very happy for you and the way you dealt -- too many people fail to realize they can remove the cause instead of treating the symptoms (never as effective). I'm not bashing people on drugs here, sometimes it's hard or impossible to remove the cause of the problem promptly; I guess I'd just like to congratulate you for realizing what was going on and being able to deal accordingly. (I guess I'll shut up now before I put the _other_ foot in my mouth.)

I'm on Nitrous tomorrow.......I wish I could get antidepressants. I realize though, that the recent issues in my life that need to be solved, must be solved with communication and maybe a bit of therapy. If those things don't work...I'll just eat beef jerky 'til I croak!

Anyone here on antidepressants....I feel for you...and good luck!:)

Nope, I should have been really but I don't like medicine (I can't take anything oral, I'll just throw it up, and needles are too much hassle), and though I've still got a long way to go I'm not constantly depressed anymore.

doesn't excuse you for it being bad.

I'm on an a antihigh drug, its called 'being surrounded by human beings who do their damnedest to suppress my optimism for the human race'..................................................michael

I also work out daily in moderation which puts me on a high. I am told it releases endorphins in my brain. Well whatever, I feel good most of the time, its just that the antihigh drug gets in the way sometimes..................................................michael

Not now, but I've tried more than 7 anti-depressant drugs during a year and a half period because my two shrinks just couldn't figure out the best combination for me. Most gave me side effects ranging from low blood pressure to nausea to constant drowsiness. Prozac was the worst. The first time I took it, I got a muscle twitch so bad that I couldn't turn my head straight.

prozac

Give you a break? You step up to the mic and expect compassion? My, what a sensitive society we inhabit...

**miykal: You, on the other hand, fill me with a sense of salvation. God bless you, you nietszchian uber-mensch!

Not anymore. When I was a teenager, I was on prozac, but I wasn't too impressed.

Actually, I think it's a very good survey question, with nothing superfluous in the answers.

Next time leave out the comment in the explanation, and you'll be fine.

I've tried most of them. They usually make things worse. I started prosac 4 days ago. So far it is making me sleep 12 hours a day, instead of 10 in every 40. It is also making me feel like throwing up, and making me swear under my breath without provocation, or worse, when things are going too good.

lara: That was my experience on zoloft.
foo: It's called Tardive Dyskensia (and it's often irreversible). Unfortunately popular treatment often involves prescribing these SSRI's and TCA's until TD symptoms appear.
Welbutrin got me out of many concentration symptoms. If it weren't for Welbutrin i wouldn't have known what the experience of 'impatience' was about. Leaving Welbutrin helped me leave the symptoms further behind. I took it for ADD (scatter-brained functioning) symptoms. My friend with similar syptoms tried it and had the reverse reaction, going comatose.
I am taking Prozac because I like experimenting. I asked for something that targets Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, not to be confused with plain OCD, primarily because my paycheck is contingent upon needing help, just having every symptom in the book, particularly the 'magical thinking' to the nth degree, is not grounds alone for an SSDI check.
Regardless of how I appear to believe.. PCPR said the truth: redefine the cause, don't just treat symptoms.
Welbutrin (SSRI's) works by killing brain cells: Seratonin is not disposed, so signal strenth increases, so receptors have to diminish in quantity to maintain an overall reception level.
Personally I make a challenge of counteracting effect's for instance having increased labido & stamina, on a drug supposed to deplete those qualities.
The brave at heart can read how the FDA approves Sertindole even though after 6 months more than 1% of 2194 subjects in the trial DIED.

KR, be patient. Prozac takes weeks to start making a difference. It does help a lot of people though.

bill, I was just about to say the same thing to her... KR: I don't think the drug is making you act or feel any different, because of what bill said... Did you switch from one drug to prozac? Discontinuing the other drug might be what caused the problems.

I've been off everything except Ginko, Ginseng, & Estrogen for three months, and felt better than I had 7 years. In fact, every year in that period, I look back on the prior year and wonder how I could have thought that so wonderful compared to what i'm doing now. Technically my diagnoses is depression, though I'm sure I could land a OCPD or Manic Schizo-Affective label if i wanted. I haven't been depressed in many months. As I've said before, ADD & OCPD symptoms are the only symptoms that i wish to treat. Usually i react to psych meds right away, even if the effects change over the first few days, or when dosages increase. When I went up to 200mg/day on welbutrin, I was going out of body, When I went up to 400mg/day I had blue sparks coming out of my fingertips & the sensation of being eaten by mites at night, so I decided to lay off the psych meds for awhile. And welbutrin ws the most favorable med of the many i've tried.
Generally i guess i'd say i'm chemically sensitive. Eye drops at the optometrist make my whole body go numb, a toke of weed affects me for half a week, i never feel any pain at the dentist, etc. It took 2 1/2 years before the nerve damage from 10 years of washing and spray-painting occaisional car parts wore off.
What should I expect on Prozac? Today, my symptoms have expanded to light headedness, nervous agitation triggered by the voices of neighbor kids, and a trapped animal feeling. It's requiring discipline to overcome, if it last's more than a few more days, or gets worse, this med goes in the circular file quicker than the rest. Fortunately no meds have ever diminished my spiritual capacites. I remember a couple meds like trazadone, made every moment a burden to endure. I suppose they made my thoughts appear more conventional, because it replaced my regular instant free association of 100 thoughts with making any connection a wearisome chore.
The anti-high drug Miykal speaks of gets to me sometimes too.

Prozac shouldn't have any kind of effect until you have been taking it for a couple of weeks... maybe it is reacting to something you are currently taking... I'm not a dr., I just know what they told me when I started taking it.

check this out: www.rxlist.com

No, I'm saying I have OCPD. I go for days not eating to answer surveys. When On the job, i'd spend two months of 12 hour days working on a project that was supposed to take 80 hours. I can't do anything without dedicating my entire life to it. Give me a job arranging hardware bins, & i'll move into the shop to spend my life sorting gallons of used hardware that no one cares about. when I last had a garden, I dug the whole 20 x 30 feet at least four feet deep, and created fractalling spiral burrows. To be honest, I can master any engineering skill, but I can't even seem to manage my time in a way i find acceptable, let alone an employer. And whenever finals roll around at school, it tends to be synchronistic with extrememe chapter of my development that involves wearing lingerie in public, or taking on the persona of a 12 year old retarded girl. I was almost forced by administrators to accept SSDI. It wasn't my idea. I was intensely bent on resuming my career, and was writing a dozen cover letters out a week within my specialty (and they take me 2-3 hours a piece to write). I also applied to dozens and dozens of fast-food & retail kind of jobs. I finally gave up, and spent my efforts helping out friends, neighbors, classmates, and volunteering at homeless agencies and the computer lab, as well as developing my prior job skills as a hobby on my computer. I can't see that anyone who know's me would consider anything else more reasonable. I could probably make money with my tarot site, but again I've been to obsessed with this survey site to develop it further, even though it's been my lifes foremost passion.
Unfortunately, there seems to be little interest in hiring a person who turns even the minutest details into monumental engineering triumphs. But i'm still looking. On top of that i have back problems, also even doing normal things takes me forever. My grocery shopping takes me about four hours. I've been spending 12 hours a day on SC.
I think i take pride in my diverse rotating disorders, because to not do so and still have them is pretty miserable. I've been meaning to eat for the past 15 hours, but keep getting distracted.
I'm surprised I've been that difficult for you to figure out on that level.
they: Thank you, I've been there, and just about every other existing site on psych meds.

SSRI's essentially prune down the quantity of neural receptors we have by overloading them. Does anyone else find this premise kind of disturbing?

True, maybe you've had better luck; almost every med i've been on interfered with my reason's for living, some of them like trazadone/serzone/naphazadone made every minute torturous to endure. Even my hope was being eradicated on some of those drugs. Zoloft was ok, can't say it did much though except make me sleepy and improve my sex life (the opposite effects i was told to expect).

No...they once wanted to put me on Lithium but I wouldn't let them.

alcohol

Yes, Zoloft.