Have anti-depressants healed your mood and thus your life ?

Yes. I started them during a very terrifying part of my life, and the helped me come with that. I stayed on them after that was over because I realized it was treating some major anxiety that I never knew I had. I used to fret about tiny things and now I am able to chill and focus on what is actually important.

They have helped me through some rough periods in my younger life but it took me a long time to wean myself off, and I doubt that I’ll ever use them again.

They helped me also through some rough patches, but luckily I found it easy to wean myself off. And I too will never used them again. I have discovered that I (again, luckily) can choose to be reasonably cheerful most of the time.

My sister and I (and I have said this before) allow each other to whine for five minutes daily about anything we choose…then it’s on to other things. I did get a dispensation during the first six weeks after my recent knee surgery, but I make sure to always talk a little about other more interesting topics before concluding the conversation.

I did not find any that worked for me, personally. Everyone’s body chemistry varies, so there is some trial-and-error (until they develop ways to really test the hormone and chemical imbalances in a reliable and efficient inexpensive way).

I am a little puzzled because you say her Dr. “added” Zoloft to the Prozac… I’ve not heard of people combining SSRIs before, and it sounds risky. Taking different classes of medications in combination might make more sense to me, but perhaps this is a new trend in a field that I no longer follow closely.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room so you could say you are cured? Or have you learnt t?o deal with it

I’ve never had a chronic depression, except for the period after I divorced my first wife. And while I didn’t try prescription anti-depressants, I found relief with what would be considered medical marijuana these days. It put me in a better mood long enough to get out of self-destructive thinking and behaviors. They say the sativas are better for this than the indicas, the indicas are better for chronic physical pain.

@hearkat I wasn’t the least bit surprised they tried two at once. But I don’t know much about how it’s treated.

Yikes, I just noticed all my typos. I wrote the above on my phone. Should say “they helped me cope with that.”

Absolutely. I was suicidal for a good portion of my life, but I actually only went on medication because of anxiety (I was having daily panic attacks at that point). The fact that it alleviated my depression, too, was a huge side bonus. I’ve weaned off of them several times since then, thinking “I’m okay now”, to disastrous result each time. I know now that I will need this medication for the rest of my life, but that’s okay. Why live in constant misery?

@Aster Are you sure she’s taking them both at the same time? She may have misunderstood her doctor’s instructions, if so. While you often have to try different medications to find the one that works for you, you normally wouldn’t take two of the same type at the same time.

@Aster – Without a doubt! (Well, reading literally into your question, what I have cannot be “healed” – bipolar disorder, but the quality of my life is profoundly better.) I could go more in-depth, but since this is in the general section, let’s leave it at that.

i was going to say the same thing; that you cannot heal moods. For most of us, the SSRIS took the edge off things and enable us to function better. Is this woman a friend?

And I also have never heard of taking Zoloft and Paxil as a tag team.

@ZEPHYRA, I don’t know if “cured” is the right word—I’m just in a better place in my life than I was in those years, more adept at coping with my ups and downs. Also, I’ve become less willing to take meds unless I absolutely have to.

It made the lows less bad, but it didn’t ever make me happy. The side-effects were rough on me and I eventually went off them. I’m glad they’re there, but everyone’s brain chemistry is different, so there is a lot of trial and error with psychoactive meds. I’m sure in a hundred years psychiatrists will look back at this period and think how crude our meds are. I do know they save a lot of lives every year, and are a godsend compared to what we used to have available.

I have bipolar disorder type 1, so I get irrational euphoria chased by nasty depression. I began taking anti-depressants alone decades ago, and they helped my down moods a great deal. They helped lift my spirits and gave me what I can only best describe as oomph to get on with life. So, yes, medication has made my life bearable.

It is a no for me. No matter how depressed I am I avoid taking anti depressants. Whenever I have these kinds of mood swings then I travel and do alot of shopping. Probably these are the best ways to heal your problems.

I remember in a psych class I took, a very wise and kind professor said, “God gave us disease, and then God gave us medicine.” I guess you can substitute God for whatever you believe in
... just felt like revisiting this post and sharing that.

@CrifJohnson – Not everyone has the means (or desire) to travel and shop. I wish! :) And there’s always that old adage – “Wherever you go, you’re there…”

I’m very weird about my anti-depressants. I don’t take mine a lot, or I take too much. I don’t know why. It’s weird, and bad.
Depression runs in my family. Both my parents have it (and I was the only one of three kids to get it- just my luck!) They’re good about taking their medicine, unlike me, and they say it makes them feel so much better.
While it depends on who you are, getting out of the house and getting out in the sun tends to make us feel somewhat better. This is really hard in the winter unfortunately.
The thing with anti-depressants is that they’re not supposed to make you happy all the time. They’re supposed to make you, for lack of a better term, normal. You will still have bad days. You will still be sad from time to time. You’re human. Anti-depressants don’t take that away. It just makes coping with depression easier. Also, it’s kind of a pain because anti-depressants take a very long time to starting working. And once they do, it’s a very subtle difference. It takes more than a month to see if a medicine is right for you. I’ve been on multiple medicines for a long time just to find that one doesn’t work, so I’ll have to drop that one and start taking a new one, then I have to wait 2 weeks to see if I notice any tiny differences in my mood…
If you do have depression, while you should take medicine, you should also get in the sun, exercising and eating healthy also helps too, and you should also see a counselor. Keeping those emotions bottled up is very unhealthy. A lot of people release these emotions by cutting. If you talk to someone, you get your feelings out so they’re not bottled up inside, and it helps so much to notice that someone cares.
My counselor gives me a lot of books and exercises on how to change my thinking and how to think positive. Trust me, it’s hard. That’s actually an understatement. It is extremely hard to change your way of thinking. It’s takes hours of practice. But trust me, it’ll be worth it.
Fighting depression is a very long, vigorous, exhausting, and painful experience. However, about 80% of people with depression who seek help end up feeling a lot better. I hope this helped!