What do SSRIs "feel like"?

First week it made me feel like there was a very light electric current running through my body. Not unpleasant, just a bit odd. Tingly. And yawning uncontrollably for a few hours after taking them for a few weeks.

Again, not unpleasant. But I absolutely embraced them, I did not fight the effects. I was very, very glad to try medications.

Now, after like 4 or 5 years, I can clearly tell the difference between before and after - the difference is, instead of downward spiralling into a hideous pit that I couldn't climb out of, that spiralling downwards still starts, but it stops.

Instead of falling into the pit, I can just choose not to keep going down.

Things are still upsetting and I still take things worse than other people but I dont become out-of-control spiralling downwards forever until I can't function. I have gained the ability to shrug and go "that sucks but, whatever".

Small, oblong, smooth but not slick. Very similar to many other pills.

Grey, faded, like everything was some distance away.

Totally not for me.

This is too broad of a question. There are many SSRIs and the people giving answers have not tried them all.

Taking SSRIs, I feel like I'm living with an anvil strapped to my back.

Before I started on them, I felt like I was wrapped around the singularity at the center of a massive black hole. Utterly, utterly crushed; reduced down to the size of something that may as well be nothing. So far past the event horizon that I couldn't even see it anymore.

At least an anvil can be useful for smithing something practical, hearty, and if one has the skill, something artful.

Everything felt lighter. Depression for me felt like someone had increased the effects of gravity just for me. It took immense effort to get out of bed or to make myself move to accomplish anything. The meds turned gravity back to normal.

My experience with Zoloft: or the greatest thing that has ever happened to me:

I have autism, which led to crippling, crushing anxiety and depression. It wasn't until my mid twenties that I broke down. I could barely hold a job, talk on the phone, I couldn't even get a drivers lisense because I had panic attacks behind the wheel so no one was willing to even TRY to teach me anymore. Zoloft changed everything. Within a few days of taking it I was less depressed sure, but the reduction of the anxiety was a miracle. I could take phone calls! I got a drivers license! I was able to get a good paying job and get my life together. It enabled me to get therapy and a diagnosis of autism which really helped me to understand a lot of my underlying problems. I remember asking my friend, after my first successful trip DRIVING to the store, is this how normal poeple feel ALL THE TIME!!??? Not crushed 24/7 by fear so bad it would make me puke!??

Side effects: I gained a lot of weight and my sex drive took a huge, huge nose dive. If I miss more than three doses I get terrible brain zaps, and can't do anything until I get my meds. Even moving my EYES felt like lighting through my skull.

Hopefully my mini novel here was helpful, I feel like one of the few lucky, lucky poeple who had such a good reaction to SSDI inhibitors.

TLDR: took zoloft for depression, instead it ended up being the best anti- anxiety medication I have and I am still taking it. 10/10 would Zoloft again.

The sexual side effects were more depressing than the depression.

Like all of the bad parts of a very low dose of LSD without any of the fun.

I want to add another "everyone is different."

As in, my major depressive disorder is comorbid with ADHD. Which means my particular brain is wired like someone insane put it together.

The ADHD diagnosis didn't come until my mid-30s but the depression came before I was 10 years old, so I was trying everything on the market all those years. (Reminder to those of you still working on it that if there's even one day of genuine joy to be found, all the misery will have been worth it, yes, even if it takes 20 years.)

SSRIs for me are treating a problem with a solution I don't have. My brain refuses to make serotonin. There isn't any of it, so controlling it's uptake is pointless.

So it was just a massive variety of different types of numb, and different negative side effects. Of course, numb was preferable to misery, so I stayed on one or another for long stretches until I got the urge to try and find something that actually worked again.

I take fluoxetine. It doesn't have an immediate physical effect like Tylenol, Gravol, and the like. The effect builds up with time. I would describe it as feeling like "quiet". Fluoxetine gave me the ability to quiet bad thoughts. From there, I had more stability to climb out from the pit of despair and anxiety.

The first few days (maybe two weeks or so) after starting, I slept a lot. Where I used to go to bed at 11:30pm and wake up at 5am, I was now out like a light at 8pm. My brain was finally quiet, so I could feel my body's exhaustion.

The next thing I noticed is that I was able to let small annoyances slide. I used to be triggered by stuff like someone playing music too loudly in the bus. Instead of hyperfixating on that sound and ruminating for the entire bus ride, I could now let it fade in the background and think of something else.

After a few weeks, I noticed less crying, less blowing up at my partner, and less panic spirals. That time and energy I could now put into other stuff: chores, hobbies, socializing. I wanted to be happy and I felt empowered to make it happen, rather than at the whim of the exterior world.

While fluoxetine greatly diminished my lows, it also muted my highs. In my manic-ish days I felt "happy" for hours, and often hypersexual. Now my happiness was different, like... instead of going on fun rollercoasters and having my heart race, I was now sitting in a cozy armchair with a cup of tea and a snack, and my heart was peaceful. I do have a lower libido, which is tough on my partner. (OTOH I now contribute a lot more to household tasks, so it events out lol.) I do miss the euphoria I used to be able to feel, but I don't wish it back because I know the price I had to pay for it.

For me personally, it didn't really feel like anything. Kind of like taking an over the counter pain medicine, it's not an obvious change but the pain that was there before is numbed or even entirely gone. Not noticeable unless consciously thinking about it.

It took a while to find the right dosage (roughly a year, multiple hospital visits, and a divorce from a toxic marriage), but I went from being obsessed with suicide and doing multiple attempts every day to being horrified at the thought of suicide and wanting to live as long as possible.

Marginally happier for a few weeks and then absolutely nothing

Like the first ten minutes after waking up from a really hard, hot, nap, all day, every day.

So, I want to preface this with "it affects everyone differently". If you are at all curious about it and live in a place with functioning healthcare, you may as well give them a try. Worst comes to worst, you try them for a month and they don't work. Personally, I kinda wish I had tried them sooner.

Anyway, for me I think that they allow me to feel more of a "range" of emotions. I still have good and bad days, but that's better than bad and terrible days. It's actually interesting to me, because it feels like I've unlocked a range of emotions and need to learn how to manage them like a normal person.

I also sometimes get this weird euphoric feeling that everything is going to work out and that the world isn't as bad as it seems. I also seem to be better at motivating myself, although still not good at it yet. Since taking them, I've been able to push boundries and do things I wasn't confident doing before. But I still don't exercise enough and eat too much takeout. :P

However, I do feel that there's a tiredness in the back of my head that inhibits my ability to do intellectual tasks? Someone else described it as feeling like carrying an anvil around, and I can kinda see that. Although I did pick up a really bad habit of bedrotting during my depression, which I have yet to shake off. Maybe if I exercise more regularly I will feel better?

For libedo... I do feel that it has gone down a lot. Especially in the first few weeks of taking them. However, I also was really worried and obsessing over that part of them before taking them, so maybe I placebo'd myself into thinking I had issues? The biggest sex organ is the brain and all that. A lot of my anxiety and depression was related to sex stuff as well, so that may tie into it.

Anyway, that's my experiences. Let me know if anyone has any more questions. I like talking about myself. :P

For me it felt like an uncomfortably mild head high. Some slight anxiety spikes, mild SI, quicker to anger.

Less anxiety. For a bit there I felt like "nothing" and then I realized that's what it feels like when I'm not constantly ruminating on all the crap that brings me anxiety.

It made it a shade easier to overcome OCD - BUT a decade on I feel drowsy, oversleeping, dulled intelligence and creativity, difficult to feel pleasure "driving with the handbrake on" These meds need to have a yearly review factored in - 10+ years of use make it almost impossible to come off (even with good advice and the liquid form (that can taper 1mg change at a time) I had to BEG for in the UK. The standard advice of splitting pills for moving doses means a change far too large to handle (2.5mg is a massive drop). The brain and all its systems get very used to having more serotonin and resist this change with terror, confusion and upset. I'm on 7mg after starting with 10mg then 9, 8... and it gets tougher with each drop (no professional had any advice to give except try to come off in a few weeks :0 ).

i forget what exactly i had but it was in drops. This is from a perspective of someone for whom the meds didn't work, rather, did the opposite of what they were supposed to

First week i felt nothing, second week i thought my anxiety was getting worse and really started hoping the meds kick in soon (let's call it foreshadowing). Week three... well i noticed that in the mornings i feel alright, then i take the prescribed amount of drops, then i feel terrible, and in the evenings i feel alright again. My doctor told me effects fully kick in after around a month of treatment, and there can be some bad side effects at first, things getting worse before they get better kind of stuff, so i kept taking them hoping they start working as intended but the thing is- it didn't stop there. Past week three my anxiety was constant, usually it gets triggered by something i have to do and then fades but when I was taking those SSRI it never stopped. I constantly felt like i was on the edge of a panic attack. I spent my days paralysed, just sitting before my PC trying to distract myself with comfort games & comfort videos, i didn't even feel like i could play something more challenging or unpredictable than picross or tetris. It drove me to the point where i decided that i'm gonna risk it, do some ill-advised and understudied drug mixing and smoke weed

After 3 days of being nearly constantly high I decided to stop the meds. Though i was close to the elusive month of treatment i just couldn't keep going like that, some people can stay high for weeks on end but not me, i do actually like being sober. And at that point being sober felt like hell. I gave it a quick Google and when i read that i can quit cold turkey (you can only do it if you haven't been taking them for longer than a certain amount of time) i did.

It was fucking terrible, 3rd type of anxiety meds in a row that made me so much worse than normal. I've just been rawdogging my normal anxiety ever since, well, with some help of weed, alcohol and occasional psychedelics. It's strange that so far the only "meds" i've found to be helpful are uh "self prescribed" so to say

this is obviously not something that happens to everyone, majority of people react fine to SSRIs, i'm apparently just not one of them :(

On the right one, the sense of utter futility and doom gets out of the way. I'm able to feel normal, to do things that previously I'd put off through some sense of dread or other nonsense. Things that were hard for no good reason get reset to their normal values.

SSRI's don't feel like anything (if you are lucky about side effects). The depression that they replace is more of a feeling that I could describe endlessly because it's a pit of despair that never ends.

Like putting a fence around the spiralling pit of doom.

I feel pretty much the same as when off of them but my anxiety isn't nearly as crippling. There are some side effects like a dulling of emotions but to me it's so worth it

They feel nauseating at first, but then it feels like something that stops your brain from wandering into the wrong place.

Even though sometimes I feel I should be anxious about something, it's just too relaxing to really think about it.

I also feel sleepy. Better than not sleeping lol

Lexapro gang gang! Gave me insane bouts of diarrhea for the first week or so, but it helped fix what i thought was IBS, got me out of a severe crippling depression, and has helped immensely with my adhd. It pretty much renewed my lease on life. I was able to quit smoking a gram of dabs every week which i was using to self medicate ny depression, now i only take 1 CBD gummy a day to help with a neurological condition which other medications do nothing for. Wish i had started taking it sooner, but i thought i had it under control with the copious ammounts of weed i was smoking. I was so fucking wrong.

I've been on an SNRI for a bit now, specifically a synthetic metabolite variant. Surprisingly, for me, it has both an emotional feeling and a perceived physical sensation.

For the emotional, it's kinda like wearing a climbing harness with a trustworthy belayer. Sure, sometimes life throws a bit of a curveball, causing me to lose my emotional purchase but, most of the time, it keeps me from falling into depressive thinking patterns. More recently I had some pretty rough stuff happen in my life, to put it lightly, that took me to to some pretty places but, I my little chemical belayer caught me before I went splat on the rocks and helped me to get out of the funk.

For the perceived sensation, it's a bit hard to describe. At times throughout the day, I feel a sensation that is kinda like a tingling on the inside of my skull. It's a bit weird but much better than brain zaps.

Like you're one of a kajillion people who have ever lived, like an ant, and if someone came along and stepped on you, you'd be dead, just like most of the kajillion people who have ever lived, only to be replaced by another.

ETA- also sweaty, yawny, and either very interested or very not interested in sex and/or food.

What in the actual fuck are SSRIs?

They have no effect until you stop taking them. Then you hallucinate for a few weeks, like a low to medium dose of LSD.