Posted by rgb on November 6, 2007, at 12:25:44
In reply to SSRI Apathy- This is the *True* SSRI response!, posted by Questionmark on November 6, 2007, at 2:42:33
Sorry to hear that you had difficult experiences with them.
But what makes you think that your experience is a "inevitability" (unless you were only talking about how they affect /you/ there)?
I've been on sertraline for half a year and it's still working fine. Though I agree that the beginning was the best (I had some really nice feelings starting on day 3, but as you say, not the stimulant-kind euphoria, actually it slightly reminded me of 5-HT2A agonists :) A major advantage over dopamine euphoria is that there is zero desire to redose.).
Maybe the apathy will slowly creep up on me, but for now I will stick with the sertraline and see how it affects me /personally/.
I do have /some/ dampened emotions (mostly negative ones are dampened, I was pretty anhedonic at base-line anyway). I don't think this is necessarily bad. It doesn't mean that one is a zombie, it's not so black and white. It might merely make the negative emotions manageable. There is more to life than emotionality; I for one like the fact that it seems to enable me to think beyond my negative feelings, look at outside things.
Motivation still seems to be somewhat increased.
I do try to counteract the dampening with caffeine (I don't have to watch the dose for anxiety reasons anymore :)) and nicotine gum though. Not sure whether it's doing anything in the long-run when you are tolerant though.
Regards,
rgb
poster:rgb
thread:793535
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20071104/msgs/793583.html