Symptoms: Emotional blunting, sexual dysfunction, cognitive impairment, suicidal ideation, muscle/joint pain
When I was 18, I was prescribed my first SSRI, duloxetine. I had been experiencing a massive and debilitating flare of rheumatoid arthritis and was battling severe anxiety and depression due to the chronic pain and loss of self from this new physical impairment. I know the doctor who prescribed it did so thinking it was in my best interest, but it was anything but.
For the next four years, I cycled on and off duloxetine, fluoxetine, and bupropion. In reality, sleep and clean eating would have fixed my issues, but I didn’t know any better and was desperate. I became a zombie husk of myself. I often found myself staring into space, losing time, and barely able to emote anything. At one point, I realised I had been staring at the same email at work for nearly an hour, unable to even comprehend what the memo was about.
Later that afternoon, in the restroom, I distinctly remember looking at the purse hook in the bathroom stall and thinking how I could hang myself with my laptop cord, with about the same emotion as if I had asked someone about the weather. That was the breaking point for me.
I stopped my meds cold turkey that day, not realising what kind of hell it would unleash. I had made it to about 10 days without my meds when suddenly the world felt like it was ending. Everything felt too intense, and making any kind of decision, even as simple as what to have for dinner, would cause me to have crippling panic attacks. I stayed strong and by the grace of God decided to try a keto/paleo diet. It helped more than any medication in my health journey, but it couldn’t fix everything.
It took a while to notice, but intimacy became very difficult for me and my partner. I never felt a spark, and physically it seemed like cardboard. To this day it’s been an issue, and I feel as if I took something away from my husband.
To top it off, I developed a sensitivity to noise and have a very difficult time listening to any type of music. Any kind of music causes a lump in my throat to form and it makes me sob uncontrollably. I take earplugs with me to the grocery store, and even something as benign as wind chimes causes me great anxiety. SSRI withdrawal made me lose music. I haven’t listened to my favourite band in nearly seven years because any and every song causes me severe anxiety.
I lost some of the greatest passions of life because of those pills. Makes me angry anytime I think about it too hard.