Just want to give some hope to everyone. -Fluoxetine

Hi, everyone.

I know that this is a hard time for everyone right now with this pandemic going on. I hope everyone is managing as well as they can! This is a long post but I just hope it helps!

I wanted to share some hope regarding fluoxetine, because I know that these kind of posts helped me stick with the medication in my early days. I'm a 32 year old female. I take it for anxiety and OCD. I have never suffered from depression and I am thankful for that. This is my first time on a medication after struggling on and off for 10 years, managing it through therapy, diet, and exercise. However, these last few months became very challenging and was making my college studies very difficult so I decided to try fluoxetine.

The first couple of days, I noticed was that I was clenching my jaw a lot, day and night, and had no control over it and it was particularly bad in the middle of the night. This lasted for about 12 days. Starting from the 1st day to the 7th day, I had no appetite, but this came back on the 8th day. On the 4th day, I started having a ringing in my ears that would come on and off for about 3 days, (this one really freaked me out) but if I took the smallest dose of xanax, it would go away. Occasionally this still occurs but hardly and is very minimal. One thing that particularly freaked me out, was around night 11 I woke up with a buzzing sound in my head, with the ringing in the ears, but also with a loud hum. (also very disturbing.) But as with everything else, this went away. I occasionally had aching muscles, like an icepick sharp pain in my muscles, but this too went away. Also, I definitely had more anxiety and had several panic attacks in the first couple of weeks (which is rare for me). But these also went away!

Around day 15, all of this stuff dissipated, minus the occasional ringing. And trust me, I am one to freak out about anything regarding my health so it took all of my strength not to quit the medication!

I am 2 days away from being on it for 6 weeks and I must say, I feel pretty good. My mood is great, I have had very, very little anxiety. My OCD has been either very minimal or not there at all! I feel like I am a little less covered in that doom feeling. I still do all of my activities, I run, lift weights, do my studies, garden, go to therapy, journal, meditate, and read. The thing with these medications is that we need to use them as a crutch to get us to a better place so we can use the tools we know we have that our mental issues make it difficult to use! I feel like I am able to think more clearly now, like the fog has lifted, and I feel more motivated and it is easier to do all of those things I listed.

Sorry for the length, but I hope this helps someone to know that better days are ahead!

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