Sertraline side effects

Posted , 4 users are following.

Hello all,

I know this is a fairly regular question so apologies if I'm going over old ground here.

I've been taking sertraline since September, so circa 3 months. 50mg initially. I suffered side effects after starting this; nausea, which eased off after about a week and generally wasn't too bad. Sweating, though I am sadly quite sweaty generally so hard to know if this was the fault of the medication but looking at it generally it seemed to excerbate the problem.

The worst one of course was the infamous sexual dysfunction. I was unable to ejaculate and seemed to be desensitised generally. This actually went away after about 5-6 weeks and I regained my functioning.

I still felt low in mood and thus I have recently increased the dose to 100mg after seeing my GP. Unfortunately the side effects have returned with a vengeance. The nausea I'm not too worried about, I expect that to go. Sweating seems to have got worse, but as stated earlier that may just be me. Having shaken off the sexual dysfunction, it has now come back. I can't climax at all. I recently started a new relationship for the first time in years and I'm worried about the impact of this. It is certainly having an impact on my ability to enjoy sex, and also my partner has been hurt by it.

I guess I'm just looking for reassurance. The fact that it went away first time around, does that mean it might go away again? Or will a regular sex life be the sacrifice for staying on this medication?

Any thoughts welcome. Thank you.

1 like, 4 replies

4 Replies

  • Posted

    All antidepressants in the SSRI family are known to cause low sex drive, all have been documented as having sexual side effects so your sex drive is going to suffer, and anytime you up your dosage, all the side effects start all over again, as for me I'm tapering off after 4-weeks of taking it for Anxiety, down to 75 from a 100mg, 50 by this coming Monday, within 2 weeks I should be free and back on Benzodiazepine alone. Sertraline has too many side effects, that's why the FDA put a black box alert.

  • Posted

    Pleas be assured this is the drug and it will pass, I've been taking sertraline for over 1 year now and been through all you mention the swearing probably stoped for me around 4 months ago but it was like night sweats. The sexual thing just dissapered and be careful thus doesn't become psychological rather than physical. Hand in there the symptoms will pass and o hope 100g works well for you x 

    • Posted

      Sorry some bad predicted text in there ! X 

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