Symptoms: Brain zaps, emotional blunting, severe lack of energy
I was prescribed sertraline by my gp without any questions. I brought up my symptoms that were largely ptsd related from the job and he prescribed it without hesitation or talking about potential side effects other than suicidal ideation. This was approximately 20 years ago. I took it consistently for about 10 years. When I came off I experienced brain zaps. At the time there was almost nothing on the web I could find about this symptom. It was difficult to find anything partly because the term brain zap didn’t really exist. I finally found a chat board where a few people described the symptoms I was experiencing. There was no offered solution except to go back on sertraline. I did this for about 2 months and had no relief from the symptoms.
I still experience brain zaps to this day. I have become much more accustomed to them. At first they were very disconcerting and I felt a lot of fatigue I attributed to the zaps. Today the fatigue is less but my energy has never returned to a similar level.
I will say that my ptsd symptoms were pretty severe and had I not gone on that drug I would likely have done something terrible. Therapy would not have worked with me.