r/SSRIs

Terrified of lexapro causing psychotic mania….There are so many horror stories on here it’s not even funny. Stories of people becoming violent from lexapro and ending up in a psych-ward for weeks because lexapro caused them to become manic-psychotic from undiagnosed bipolar. I’m so afraid of this happening to me. I don’t think I have bipolar, none of my therapists or doctors have ever suspected it but I’m afraid I’m going to find out I am from taking lexapro.

My wife decided to stop her Prozac after starting it at age 12 and taking it until 22 after initially feeling really good she’s been experiencing extreme irritability the past 4 days about how long should we expect this to last and is there anything we can do to help in the meantime

I had been on Paxil for about 6 years for anxiety and OCD and I have to say it was very beneficial and helpful! However, I wanted to wean because I want to have another baby, I couldn't loose weight and felt like I had enough skills to be without it. My last dose was in the middle of March. My physical side effects were minimal but now at almost 4 months after, my anxiety and OCD are coming back full force :(

I keep telling myself it will get better but i am not sure anymore. I don't want to go on paxil in case I do get pregnant . When I was pregnant with my son, they put me on fluoxetine but my son was a bit shaky when he was born and I still feeel horrible about that ... what should I do? Go on fluoxetine? I also tried sertraline and it made me very panicky and shakey. I am also now worried fluoxetine won't be as effective as Paxil was. This is all taking a huge toll on me

Im switching from escitalopram 10mg to bupoprion (wellbutrin) I took escitalopram since 2019

Im completely stoppen with escitalopram since Tuesday. I am so extremely Dizzy, it is like the world moves slower than my brain?i get nausea, sweats.

Please tell me this is temporary and will stop very soon??

I want to try SSRIs, and only SSRIs, since we don't have stimulants for ADHD in my country, and non-stimulants are too expensive

And I would like to hear any experience from y'all

Also thinking of taking tranquilizers for the first 2-4 weeks to cover side effects and basically survive

About to take my very first dose. Need encouragement ): Supposed to be starting at 5mg, but I’m going to start at 1.25mg. Terrified of the side effects, particularly the increased anxiety. I’m already so anxious as it is and suffering from bad dpdr. So scared. Surely the side effects can’t be that extreme at 1.25 right? ):

Sorry I know this might not be the right place but there isn’t really an established sub for this. I was prescribed clonazepam for the start up anxiety of lexapro, but anyway, Took my regular .25 clonazepam yesterday morning like I have been for a month now and after a couple hours I started getting shaky, crazy dpdr and feeling panicky. Took an extra quarter of a pill and it seemed to help. What do I do from here?

Let's say you've found the right med at the right dosage. And they do work. Will your body build resistance towards it? So that over time, you'll need a higher dose for the same effects? And eventually, reaching the max dose limit?

Can't you rely on antidepressants for life?

Id add a photo but cant. I have purple bruises the size of a tennis ball around bug bites i scratched

I woke up completely itchy everywhere. I was very itchy yesterday too, esp while outside shopping

The itching places are bug bites but the usual reaction normally to bug bites i get is it would be swollen and reddish for a few mins, but today they stayed all red for hours.

Another thing is, i don't get hungry but i get very uncomfortable acid burn in my stomach...

I was on 5mg and i upped to 10mg a day liek 2 days ago. I have been on Prozac for 2 weeks now.

Doctors closed till monday but they d likely just send me home saying it ll go away after 3 weeks and im adjusting...

i’m 25 and got covid in 2022, which triggered some long covid illnesses. because of that, i developed severe health anxiety, cardiophobia, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. my main stressor is how fast my heart rate can get during a panic attack. because of long covid, my heart rate is high a lot of the time doing minimal tasks, so when i get a panic attack, it shoots even higher. i’ve gone to therapy and seen many doctors and been prescribed countless medicines that i’ve never been able to take out of fear. i feel like i’m stuck between a rock and a hard place because i cant continue to let fear dictate my life, but also the fear of side effects and increased anxiety paralyze me in fear. i’m desperate now and now i need to take this medicine this time around, but i’m just hopeful to hear some positive experiences. thanks!

Hi

I’ve been hyper-aware of my breathing for the last two months. I focus on it so much that it eventually leads to air hunger and hyperventilation. I visited a psychiatrist, and diagnosed with OCD and health anxiety. He prescribed me aSSRI/sertraline. I’ve been on 75 mg for 6 weeks now. I’m a bit better than before, but once it starts, it persists throughout the day, creating a loop where I constantly feel air hunger, especially when lying on my side at night. However, it goes away when I focus on something else. Since I can't keep myself distracted forever, has anyone else experienced this and recovered—with or without medication?

I’m honestly at my last resort for all of this. I’ve been dealing with it for months at this point. It was pretty bad at one point. I was only sleeping 1 to 3 hours sometimes nothing in for a month. It was good while I was using trazodone, but no medication is perfect and that gave me side effects so I tried to come off of it and it was not pretty. It triggered a sleeping anxiety loop for me and at this point I know the root of my insomnia is stress and anxiety specifically anxiety about not sleeping and all those catastrophic thoughts. I’ve watched almost every single video on the sleep coach school channel, and it has helped me a lot, but my I have ADHD, OCD, an anxiety disorder, and I find it very hard to try and manage those things without medication. I’ve tried so many different medication’s, I have tried three different SSRI’s but two of them. I only did for a day each because I was so freaked out about side effects. I think I was actually giving myself them. And one of them I actually went through with a full week, but it definitely made my anxiety worse and I couldn’t push through. Who knows what would’ve happened if I did push through it might’ve solved a lot for me. I’m just wondering if anyone on here has found success in taking antidepressants and if it has improved their sleep.

I really want to start taking sertraline, but I’m worried because I keep having random episodes of tachycardia (130+ bpm). I’ve had two 12-lead ECGs during these episodes and both were normal apart from the fast heart rate. I also have a Kardia 6L, which has always shown sinus tachycardia (normal rhythm, just a fast rate).

I’ve read online that SSRIs like sertraline can, affect heart rhythm and go into a chaotic/dangerous rhythm. I’m worried about starting it while I’m having these episodes. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Did your doctor recommend any further tests or reassure you it was safe to start?

I really want to get my anxiety under control and feel normal again. 😢

Hi there! I was diagnosed with severe OCD at 5 years old and started on sertraline at age 6. I was only on a minimal dose then but have been on 200mg for at least 15 years now (I am 25 in 2 weeks). I stupidly thought “lol my sertraline ain’t even doing anything anymore” so I slowly came off it early 2021 and I was severely anxious (not eating or sleeping) and overcome with death and existential OCD. I got put on Fluoxetine before finally deciding to go back on sertraline which I’ve been on ever since.

When I turned 18 the drs never mentioned mixing sertraline with alcohol because I assume they forgot due to me already having been on it for 12 years. So I drank normally from age 18-24 and only last year did I start getting severe anxiety the day after drinking and suffering with severe headaches and drowsiness after only 3-4 drinks when I used to be able to drink a decent amount. I am absolutely fine with weed and if weed was legal where I live I would happily give up drinking forever but unfortunately it is not so it’s only socially acceptable to drink on nights out.

I have never fully tried to treat my ocd. I got therapy aged 6-18 and then was basically told by my psychiatrists that I understand OCD better than any of them. I have found an online course from an OCD specialist (@ocdandanxiety on YouTube) so I have 2 questions: has anyone ever successfully come off sertraline before by curing their OCD and is willing to share their experience or is anybody able to drink on sertraline with minimal side effects? Many thanks for reading!!

It's only the 37.5mg dose too I'm supposed to take the 75 now but I'm really so scared and thinking of just dropping it without notifying anyone, i feel unable to go to the toilet and constipated and my stomach gets upset after every meal at this point I don't know what to do if this continues, I mean I did have some sleeplessness too initially but the stomach issues are really what takes the cake

This is probably my third post in the last two weeks on this thread because I’m feeling so bad… got back on Zoloft after 4 years of not being on it- started almost 5 weeks ago on 12.5 mg and then upped to 25 mg after 2 weeks being on the 12.5 mg. Tomorrow will be my 3rd week on the 25 mg dose and this week has truly been horrible for me today being the absolute worst. I feel like I’m on the verge of a panic attack 24/7 now and I don’t know what happened I wasn’t feeling this way at all just started happening this week really bad I’m now contemplating stopping all together because I hate this feeling so much 😓🙏 anyone else feel this way I don’t know what to do from everything I read it said things should be better by now… also I started my period these last week week too and I know that’s not helping either ugh.

Hey all, wondering if SSRI’s are even helpful to me anymore as I’m just getting side effects and still getting anxiety and panic although I’m dealing with chronic health issues. I started SSRI’s before puberty and through my whole development… Was on Prozac for 13 years now Lexapro for one. Tired of the GI Issues, Emotional blunting, zero libido, etc. very afraid of tapering off as I’m super sensitive and wonder if it will leave lasting side effects or symptoms as well as brain damage. Or even what I will be like without them or go crazy? Has anyone here stopped after being on them for over 10 years? Experiences? Better without them? I’m tapering from 15mg to 12.5mg right now and the GI upset is rough. Going to then go down to 10 after 2-4 weeks then 5 and then 2.5…

So first of all, I'm aware that doing this cold turkey was a bad idea. Not my first rodeo, either, I'm afraid. That said, I simply could not handle what Zoloft was doing to me anymore.

I've on a high dose of 250mg for a few years and what I thought for a long time was the drug working was just me losing my sense of self.

I really thought I had no side effects either but now that I'm off, oh boy. I had turned into a literal zombie, losing interest in just about everything I used to love to do. My anxiety was maybe mostly gone but it did come with a price. Having lived most of my life inside my own head, all of those thoughts shutting up felt like a miracle at first. But that also meant that every other thought was just as gone, too. I simply didn't care about anything. I didn’t have an opinion about anything. Everything was just 'whatever'.

Just like starting Zoloft, the first few weeks of quitting felt absolutely amazing. But now I find myself sinking deeper into my depression and I'm finding it difficult to differentiate if it's just the withdrawals or am I getting bad again. Either way, I'm not touching Zoloft or any other SSRI again.

I just really don’t know how to handle these mood swings after having felt practically nothing for a good two years. It's starting to mess with my head in a way I'm almost getting suicidal. The one thing that gladly stops me is my own rationality, knowing this could very well be just a symptom of my bad choice of not tapering off. I don’t really trust any of these feelings.

Mostly came here to vent, but I would be interested to hear if anyone here has been having same issues as me. Either before or after quitting. And most importantly, did it eventually get any better?

(I'm also not here to hate on SSRIs. I know they help a lot of people. They helped me for the time being, too. Most people don't ever get to struggle with them the way I did. Just sharing my own experience.)

Anyone else feel like being on SSRI’s is a personal failure? I know logically it’s not. But I can’t shake this feeling for my case.

I had to go on them during my PhD program because I overworked myself and gave myself severe adrenaline surges and insomnia. Like, I didn’t sleep for 7 days.

I only needed the lowest dose of lexapro, but I didn’t go up when I needed to and depended on hydroxyzine to get me through my last year (job market/defense). It pooped out and now I’m on Prozac trying to adjust. Still dependent on hydroxyzine as it adjusts.

I just feel like I broke my brain and it’ll never recover. I also feel like I’m never going to be in a period of my life where I’m not stressed. Also, playing the adjustment game and finding the right stuff, that might poop out, just sucks. Feeling down in the dumps about it.

If anyone wants to talk me out of it, please do!

Hi everyone,

I’m a 24-year-old male with a psychiatric history of anxiety. My only other diagnosed medical condition is fibromyalgia, for which I take Cymbalta (duloxetine) 60 mg daily.

I’m honestly starting to feel like I’m losing my mind, and I’m hoping someone has been through something similar.

I was taking Seroquel (quetiapine) 50 mg every night for sleep since December 2025. It was prescribed by a different doctor than my psychiatrist, who had originally prescribed trazodone (50-100 mg) for sleep. About 10 days ago, I stopped taking the Seroquel because I really didn’t like how it made me feel before falling asleep. Instead of drifting off naturally, I always felt like I was about to pass out or die right before I fell asleep. It wasn’t a smooth transition into sleep. Trazodone wasn’t a great option for me either because it significantly increased my appetite.

Since stopping Seroquel, I feel like my brain has become extremely sensitive to anything stimulating.

For example:

My ADHD medication now causes episodes of very high blood pressure.
Even caffeine causes my blood pressure to spike.
I have clonidine prescribed for high blood pressure, but it dries my eyes out so badly that I hate taking it.
Hydroxyzine helps me sleep, but it also causes severe dry eyes and even makes me notice specks in my vision.

What worries me most is that it feels like my brain has become overly sensitive to dopamine. I’m wondering if stopping Seroquel has temporarily changed my dopamine receptor sensitivity, and whether it’s also making me more sensitive to my Cymbalta.

My worst symptoms are:

Blood pressure spikes (I’ve measured readings as high as 149/105)
Feeling my pulse pounding in my head and even my eyes
Muscle tension
Confusion
Difficulty speaking during these episodes

These symptoms are especially noticeable if I consume more than about 200 mg of caffeine (which is still below the FDA’s general limit of 400 mg/day for healthy adults) or if I take my ADHD medication.

I know the obvious answer is to follow up with the doctor who prescribed the Seroquel, and I do plan to. I’m just hoping to hear from anyone who has experienced something similar.

My main questions are:

Has anyone experienced becoming much more sensitive to stimulants or dopamine-related medications after stopping Seroquel?
If this is withdrawal or receptor readjustment, how long did it take before things returned to normal? Are we talking weeks or months?
Did anyone end up restarting Seroquel, and if so, did it help?
Is there any legitimate concern about developing Stevens-Johnson syndrome simply from restarting quetiapine after being off it for about two weeks, or am I worrying unnecessarily?

I really appreciate any experiences or advice. This has been incredibly distressing, and I’m trying to figure out whether this is something that will improve with time or whether I need to consider restarting the medication.

Thank you.