What is the best or most efficient antidepressant?

I’m glad to read you’ll be talking to your doctor about this, since we can’t really tell you what’s going to work for you. Every person is different, and each body reacts to medication differently.

I’ll gladly share with you through private messages here what works for me.

There are so many different types/brands of antidepressants and even more types of depression ..and people. As @Hawaii_Jake stated, it is different for different people. You can only figure this out through trial and error with your doctor.

@Hawaii_Jake gave you the best possible answer. Good luck with your ongoing work to overcome depression. You will succeed!

I’ve been through several, and what works for me may not work for you. I know many people on meds that work for them, and they are all different ones! For what it’s worth, Effexor XR does the trick for me.

@augustlan thank you, I’ve heard a few good things about that one.

There is no one answer. Everyon’es chemistry is different. What works best for one person might not work best for you. You simply have to keep working with your doctor until you find the right medication.

This is very individualized. Paxil got me through it while I had bad reactions to prosac.

What @Plucky said.

There are different classes of anti-depressants which have different kinds of side-effects. Welbutrin, for example, is a bit of an upper, and some people lose weight on it, or can’t get to sleep on it.

The best thing to do is to go on one of the medical sites, like WebMD, and read up on the different classes of anti-depressants. Then, when you meet your doctor, you can discuss them in terms of potential side effects, and see if you can find one that both works and does not cause side effects you want to stay away from.

It’s all a gamble, since so far, we can not predict how any one individual will react to any one drug. You have to try them to see. And it usually takes at least a month to see what is going on.

There are also experiments going on with a new kind of drug. I’m blanking on the name of it now—Ketamine, perhaps? It works differently, and if it works, it actually works in a day or two, which is amazing. But it doesn’t work for everyone and it’s still not clear whether it will get FDA approval for use treating depression. But I think it’s for people with classic monopolar depression, such as yourself.

“Prozac works okay,” <- OK, so what is the problem?

What about Lexapro or Wellbutrin?

I quit smoking using Wellbutrin. Works good,

I quit taking lexapro. too tired and very apathetic.

Highly variable. I know people that do well on a medication that doesn’t help others and makes yet others worse, sometimes suicidally so.

Everyone is different and even the same person may need different meds at different times. The first time I was on meds for depression I was on Prozac and it was fine. The next time, it did nothing but make me feel nauseous so I was switched to Cipralex and that was much better for me that time.