Thanks for hosting this forum and giving us a place to share our stories! Here is mine, I am trying to make it short:
(Please note that english is not my native language.)
I'm 31 years old, male, and have been taking 10mg of Escitalopram (I heard in the US they call it Lexapro) daily for about 7 months. My doctor put me on it for what he said was a depressive episode, which showed itself by physical / bodily symptoms only, like constant dizzyness, drowsiness, exhaustion etc. I had never had any mental illness before.
I was doing pretty good on the drug and - since nobody told me not to do that - after like 5 months I reduced the dosage by myself to 5mg every second day. Big mistake. I was still doing good for another 6 weeks, but then the original symptoms came back, so I told my doctor that I had reduced the dosage on my own. He said I could go back to 10mg daily to counter the symptoms, which I did. The symptoms were gone again and after 2 weeks of 10mg he asked me to go on 5mg for one week and then on 0mg. I took my last pill in October 2020.
Day 1 without it was good, day 2 as well. Day 3 is when the problems started. The original symptoms were back. Not all of them, but some. And also some new symptoms, like the sexual problems.
I heard about withdrawal symptoms and I was pretty sure its just them and it will all be good in a few days or weeks. But it hasn't been good ever since.
I experience the following symptoms every day since October 2020:
1. Heavy exhaustion / fatigue (I constantly want and need to sleep) and constant drowsiness (the way I experience my surroundings feels kind of dull, like if I was below a cheese bell).
2. Lack of motivation and power to do anything.
3. Unable to "feel" any real emotion, like real joy or love even. The only emotion I have right now is aggression.
4. Sexual problems:
- Complete loss of libido. I just dont feel the "desire" anymore. The problem is, I know I "should" want sex and I "should" want to masturbate, so I am trying to, but the desire is gone.
- No spontaneous erections and morning erections at all.
- Inability to create an erection. If I can manage to create one "by force" during masturbation, I can not keep it. If I stop the manual stimulation at any time, the erection is gone within 5 seconds. I can look at my wife, pictures, porn, whatever, nothing moves down there.
- Heavy premature ejaculation. Instead of being able to get an erection through manual stimulation, most of the time I just "finish" after a few seconds. I am done without even getting an erection.
- Genital numbness.
Before taking the antidepressant I was able to masturbate whenever I wanted to.
If my wife just looked at me the "wrong" way, I was already rock hard.
Yes, I must admit, at some times I did not last as long as I wanted to when having sex, but that were exceptions and mainly caused by being to aroused...
So the problem is, my doctors keep telling me that all of the mentioned symptoms can be caused by another depressive episode, which yes, could be true I guess. I could be in another depressive episode right now, judged on symptoms 1 - 3. But the fact that the sexual problems were not present in my first depressive episode and only started exactly 3 days after my last pill of the antidepressant is alerting to me. I did not have any sexual problems during my first episode nor while I was on the antidepressant.
My doctors (GP and therapist) both tell me, that the cause must be the mental illness again, because I couldn't have "permanently destroyed" anything by taking these antidepressants, that would be impossible. Well yeah...
I agree on the fact that these sexual problems can be caused by depression, by taking antidepressants and by withdrawing them. But from all my research and from the way it feels, I am pretty sure that this might be PSSD.
By the way, I was trying Sildenafil (something like Viagra) a couple of times before all of this, and it worked great. I tried it like two times these days and it still works to get an erection, although it feels a bit less hard and because of the genital numbness it kind of feels strange. Also it's just not the same if you can't feel anything emotionally when doing it.
Does this sound like PSSD to you?
I would be very happy to discuss with you guys about this.
Let me know if I missed something.
Sorry for the long text and thank you for your input.
Best regards,
Tim
Edit: I found some questions which seems I should answer, so I will:
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1- What is your gender?
-> Male
2- Why did you take antidepressants in the first place? and for how long were you on them? which med?
-> Escitalopram / Lexapro 10mg for first depressive episode, took for 7 months
3- How was your sexual and emotional function before antidepressant intake?
-> Perfect, good desire, erections and orgasms.
4- What are your symptoms exactly and when did they start? sexual dyfunction alone, or cognitive/emotional/hedonistic as well? which symptom is bothering you the most?
-> answered above but worst symptoms are drowsiness, fatigue and sexual problems
5- What meds/suppplements have you tried so far?
-> to fight "withdrawal": Vitamin D, B, Zinc, Omega 3, Magnesium
-> to fight sexual problems: Maca, Sildenafil
6- Do you have access to meds without prescription (buy online), or would strictly require a prescription for meds to try?
-> Could get Sildenafil without, but mostly prescription
7- Can you tolerate garlicky foods? what about proteins?
-> Yes to both, not tested, but so far I am fine with both. I like to eat garlick and when I was doing sports, I would take proteins regularly.
8- Have you done any blood testing? what were the results?
-> Yes, about one year ago. All values were good, at least my GP did not ask me to change anything.