A positive experience with Fluoxetine!

It is the nature of these forums that in many instances people only tend to post negative experiences rather than positive ones. Below is my experience of Fluoxetine (Prozac) which I hope will reassure and comfort those who are either worrying about taking, or who have just started taking Fluoxetine.

I am a 38-year-old male, living in London and freelancing in the film industry in a very high-pressure and extremely stressful job. Without boring everyone senseless with the whole story, back in February 2007, about six months after getting married, I was diagnosed with Dysthymia, a mild form of depression. I felt very dissatisfied with my life, I would quite often wake-up in the middle of the night feeling that I couldn’t go on and would sometimes have thoughts of suicide, and I had a terrible temper. To begin with the diagnosis was a relief but I think deep down I had trouble accepting that I had depression and I was totally against taking any form of anti-depressants. I started taking EPA (fish oil), which is supposed to help, and I saw a Psychologist once a week. However things didn’t get any better. As the feelings got worse my frustration increased and my temper also got worse. My Wife and I had terrible arguments and it didn’t help that at the same time we were in the middle of a very complicated house purchase, and subsequent lengthy renovation, and she also suffered a miscarriage as well. About a year ago I switched from seeing a Psychologist to a Psychotherapist in the hope that “talking” would somehow unlock whatever was wrong with me but despite having a two-hour session a week things didn’t improve. My Wife, who has some experience of depression herself couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t try anti-depressants but I was absolutely terrified of them. All the stories that I remembered from a couple of years ago about Seroxat didn’t help but it was really just the thought of putting a chemical into my brain that might change me forever and turn me into some-sort of catatonic, drugged up automaton that frightened me. Also, although I knew three people who had taken anti-depressants and all three of them had nothing but positive experiences, they were all women and a little bit of me thought that having depression and taking pills was not something that men did.

As the months went on things got worse and worse in my marriage. My refusal to take any sort of medication, together with my Wife’s understandable disappointment and resentment at the terrible start to our marriage meant that we argued almost incessantly. I would explode with rage at the slightest provocation, usually at my Wife, and I began to see her as the cause of all my woes and think that maybe if she had been a “better wife” then maybe things would have got better. It was her fault: she had “caused” my depression.

As this year wore on life just got worse. My wife and I almost couldn’t spend any time together without arguing and the arguments were sometimes really awful and a couple of times I felt very close to hitting her. After these rages and arguments would come an almost debilitating level of grief that would exhaust me.

Finally about two months ago I knew that I had to take the pills in order to save my marriage. All the experts said that I had to take them for myself, not just for my wife and my marriage, but I knew I had to make some sort of gesture to my wife or my marriage would have been over.

Under the care of a Psychiatrist I was prescribed 20mg of Fluoxetine. Just before I started to take them I made the very very big mistake of Googling Fluoxetine and found this site, and many others, full of details of the awful side effects that people had suffered. My already substantial fear increased massively and it was all I could do to take that first pill.

Now after two months of taking the medication I can report that it has already made a substantial difference to my life and I have had no real side effects. To begin with for the first three weeks or so I felt very slightly spaced-out but it was nothing that really affected me and it certainly didn’t have any detrimental effect on my day-to-day life. Maybe in the first week getting to sleep took a little bit longer but that was it. My appalling temper has all but disappeared and I find I can cope with things much better. My Wife and I haven’t had a terrible row for at least four weeks and that in-itself is cause for optimism. I suppose the only real side effects have been that my libido has declined and for a long time any form of alcohol was completely out of the question. Even one glass of wine, or bottle of beer, would wipe me out for the next couple of days. I basically stopped drinking for two months, which was probably a good thing on many levels! I also seem to have lost a bit of weight as well but whether that is due to the pills or the lack of alcohol is impossible to say but either way I'm not complaining!

The point of this lengthy posting is to say that whilst it is undeniable that many people have suffered really appalling side effects, there are many, like me, who haven’t. From being implacably opposed to the medication I am now a fervent advocate and think that the world would probably be a better place if the majority of the population took anti-depressants! This is not to say that the pills have completely solved all the issues in my life, and I continue to see the Psychotherapist every week, but they have made a big difference. I bitterly regret not taking the pills sooner and for having caused my Wife so much pain and anguish over the last eighteen months. It remains to be seen if the damage I have done to her and to our marriage is too great to repair but without the pills there would have been no hope at all.

I realise that I have been very lucky in suffering from a relatively mild form of the depression that has been alleviated quickly by medication that I responded well to without any side effects and it certainly not my intention to make light of the suffering of others. All I wanted to do was to recount a positive experience and hopefully provide some reassurance to others who find themselves in the same situation.

Finally, I don’t know if it makes a difference but I never take the pills on an empty stomach. I always make sure that I have a decent breakfast before taking them and that I take them with a couple of large glasses of juice.

:D

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