Something sounds a little off in your presentation of the events. An antidepressant regimen won’t do squat therapeutically for at least two weeks. You may have been offered a sedative (which I would not characterize as a downer), but more probably an anti-anxiety medication, which is effective in short order, and which may have sedative effects, particularly when first administered. If you were indeed bouncing off the walls, it was not from any antidepressant, and the subsequent medicine would have been on the money.
I’d like to see a cite better than some random website. scientology.org will say that only they can fix it, but it’s more likely they’re wrong, and not credible. Also, someone with a PhD is not in the business to prescribe medication; you need an MD in most places, and would be a psychiatrist not a psychologist.
The fact is, it’s not serotonin for everybody which is why they make SNRIs and NRIs to adjust norepinephrine levels. Also, SSRIs increase serotonin through reuptake inhibition, but other antidepressants may agonize serotonin through other means.
And yes, your body adapts to serotonin. This is why withdrawal to meds happens if you go cold turkey instead of weaning off. It doesn’t mean that antidepressants aren’t a viable long term solution, often in conjunction with psychotherapy.
I take more than one anti-depressant and wish I didn’t have to (but I do). The side effects can be nasty and take some getting used to. And when you want to stop taking them, you have to wean yourself off very, very gradually or you’ll get some really nasty side effects from that too.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to take this stuff if they don’t have to.
Yep, those things can bind you up tighter than a drum. A lot of people have to take a stool softener or else their inner plumbing will turn to concrete.
>>i] started tripping out in meetings, jumping around in my chair, feeling like I was upside-down on Planet Zog, not able to speak because I was so spaced out. The worst thing was they were my meetings - I was the boss!
Then during lunch I just had to get outside - and ended up walking around the city aimlessly in a state of high agitation until I came to my senses and found myself going up and down an escalator in a shopping mall, flapping my hands and laughing to myself. Crazy shit! Never ever again. <<
You’re Tom Cruise, aren’t you?
Read Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic. The link I provided above is a concurring opinion written by someone citing Whitaker’s investigative research. I do not believe that person (Betty Phillips) is affiliated with scientology. I know for damn sure that Whitaker isn’t.
Antidepressants are not a good long range solution for a great many people for whom they mostly seem to foster a dependency on the mental health system with very little in the way of positive tradeoff.
I have been on a combination of 2-3 various antidepressants at any given time over the past 15 years. While, unlike the OP’s question, I AM clinically depressed, there have been numerous times where it was discovered that my blood levels for at least one of the medications I was on at the time was higher than recommended due to things such as weight loss, being on a new med, dehydration, etc., which I suppose could be analogous. When this happened I would notice things such as fatigue, dry mouth, rapid heartbeat, hypertension, weight gain (due to increased hunger), but I was never excessively happy or nonchalant, or anything else that would be considered the “opposite” of my depression symptoms.
I have zero interest in sex, at all. Its really negatively effected my relationship. My doctor put me on an anti-depressant, not because he thought I was depressed, but to ‘cure’ my lack of interest in sex. If I stop taking it cold turkey, can it make me depressed, even if I wasnt depressed when I started taking it?
When I was finally diagnosed with “situational depression” I was told to take drugs to help me tolerate my intolerable situation! At that point I cut off all contact with the “experts” and worked at changing the damn situation.
Any drug that could make me happy in that situation is a drug I do NOT want to experience!
QFT and then some.
PS: zombie alert
I can’t speak to anti-depressants, but has your doctor checked your prolactin levels and if you are male, your testosterone? High prolactin inhibits testosterone and luteinizing and follicle stimulating hormone (LH and FSH).
I have a benign pituitary tumour called a prolactinoma. Before treatment I had the hormones of a 10 year old girl, now it is more like a 17 year old boy 
When I told an “expert” that drinking coffee and taking walks outside every day helps me feel less depressed, she said (direct quote): You’re self-medicating. You have a serious problem!
Gee, my reaction to the anti-depressant must have been a psychological one. And those don’t count, do they?:rolleyes: And you KNOW I wouldn’t have had a negative psychological effect from the subsequent medicine?
I take no meds now, and I work and support myself I did NOT go on disability for my psychological problems, as 13 “experts” told me, along with the fact that they “knew” I could never get and keep a job. They were wrong.
I’ve had friends take seroquel for hardcore bi-polar disorder, and it pretty much acts as a sedative/sleep-aid it seems, more so than any anti-psychotic effect.
I’ve also had this situation, wondering why I’m not out trying to get some like everyone else, but the right mix of anti-depressants fixed it up for me. Voracious at times, but it worked after some experimentation with different A-D’s. I dealt mostly with anxiety though.
My Doc wanted to find a sub to Ambien, so we tried QUETIAPINE. It had no side effects for “happiness” but I wasnt depressed to start with. It did work for sleep as well as Ambien, but the Quetiapine made me groggy in the morning. Other than the groggyness, it was fine.
Antidepressive effects may take time to kick in, but the side effects show up almost immediately. It’s a brain-altering chemical, after all.
I had a doctor who tried prescribing fish oil tablets, based on his frustration that I should be taking some kind of antidepressant (other than med. marijuana) and the traditional treatments weren’t doing squat. Not only did it give me lingering fish-breath, but after two weeks, I began waking up in a mood of bleak, black despair, far worse than anything I’d felt before, until I took my morning pill. So in that case at least, a medication was making the symptoms worse, not better.
A sleeping aid that can cause neuroleptic malignant syndrome or tardive dyskinesia. Hooray for modern medicine!
Careful here. Not medical advice, but I’ve been on SSRIs and a few anti-anxiety drugs over the years. I did medical marijuana for back pain (while not on any of the other meds), and it really amped up my anxiety, to the point that my psych and I had to work through another round of anti-anxiety meds after I stopped the marijuana, in order to stabilize. I’m very grateful that the mj made me functional during the peak back pain, at a time when the more traditional docs would have had me on a lot of scary opiates - but for the mental issues, it was not for me (though I didn’t experiment much with strains or dosages, so maybe there would have been methods that worked).
Did you notice your appetite increased?
No, not really. But it could have, I just didnt notice it.