I succumbed to a psychotic break in November 2024 when my wife of twelve years left me and the US voted Trump into office. Mind you, I’m spectrum AF and suffer from lifelong major depression, but the turn of circumstances was a doozy.

I spent 2025 on the med-adjustment carousel trying a variety of mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics. In all cases the physiological side effects were too extreme, but more than that, they persisted months after I stopped taking the med.

For a while it took a confirmation by the Senate for me to pee. Sometimes it was excruciating. Months after stopping the culprit med, I got the ability the pee regularly and then on demand.

An early one drove me to sleep all day. I still sleep for 11-13 hours a day.

At this point I’m only on a dopamine reuptake inhibitor and nothing else. I’m trained in DBT which helps, but with practice I might actually be able to manage my depression.

When I was younger, I tried a few SSRIs for major depressive disorder, and they mostly made me want to kill myself. Turns out anhedonia is far and away worse than feeling sad/depressed.

20 plus years later, I take an SNRI for emotional lability caused by a disorder of the nervous system, and it’s done wonders.

It was only mindfulness that saved me from depression, though. Took a while.

Edit: Also, alprazolam is a godsend if you have a doctor who prescribes it responsibly. It’s severely addictive and should be used on the rarest of occasions.

I quit SSRIs. I have anxiety and depression and there’s like a 80% chance I have undiagnosed ADHD.

At first the meds were great (after the initial two weeks of extreme suicidal thoughts and stomach issues), literally everything was more enjoyable. But it was weird. The food I enjoyed changed, I put on weight, lower libido, and I didn’t find I was happier overall. The lows were definitely less low though.

Making real lifestyle changes and therapy actually helped me, which took time and some big changes.

I quit my corporate job, took a smaller gig where I don’t have to deal with bullshit management. Therapy helped me recognize what I was feeling and understand my feelings, and that’s turned into me curbing some behaviours and dealing with things more constructively.

I’m very awful at forming habits, so taking medication consistently was not easy for me. I had to have multiple systems to make sure I had taken my meds and not double take them, I didn’t like that.

Depends which meds, most of those have rather subtle effects, especially ones ment for psychological issue, it’s oftentimes even questionable whatever those work or not. Ones ment for physical ailments do have more noticable effects.

Like, long release ADHD med(concerta) was rather useless against ADHD, but max dosage did rise heart rate and gave me sweati palms.

Fluoxetine for depression didn’t do anything.

Pain meds are obvious enough.

Testosterone has some mental effect from hormonal fluctuations and long term physical effects are good, within medical dosages.

Cialis has a minor physical effect, but no mental effect.

Rocutane has no mental sides and minimal physical side effects.