Ten years ago, I took Lexapro (escitalopram) 20 mg, for one year and four months. At first, I felt very good, my anxiety suddenly disappeared. I had never had problems with depression before taking the medication, only anxiety. Months went by and I started to feel like a robot without feelings, but my sexuality was not greatly affected. Only a slight decrease in libido which usually happens to many people when they take this type of drug.
My problems started as soon as I stopped taking the medication. A few days after stopping, I noticed that my libido was not returning and that I was no longer able to feel romantic attraction. I basically became asexual and aromantic overnight. My genital erotic sensations disappeared along with my interest in people of the opposite sex (I am heterosexual). We are talking about brutal symptoms such as genital anesthesia, total lack of desire, zero libido, anorgasmia ā in terms of the physical spectrum ā and the eradication of attraction to the opposite sex, erotic fantasies and romanticism in the emotional realm.
This syndrome has transformed me into a person I don’t want to be, simply because it’s not me.
No one is prepared to have certain things that are taken for granted, such as the ability to feel attraction for someone or to fall in love, taken away from them. It’s something that is not expected and that no one warned about as a possibility when I started taking the pills. Basic aspects of my personality and my way of relating to the world and people have been taken away from me. Of course, it has put my ability to emotionally connect with a partner and form a bond in life at risk. Something I have always wanted.
I don’t know if it’s possible for someone without Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) to imagine the brutal effect that antidepressants can have on someone’s mental health when they nullify your emotional and sensual self. In my case, I developed severe depression with exacerbated anxiety that brought me very close to taking my own life. The depression continues but I have had no choice but to develop coping mechanisms.
At the beginning of this nightmare I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I just cried and threw myself on the floor begging for my body and mind back day and night. I was suicidal for a long time: The level of suffering was so extreme that if I hadn’t had my family I would have surely left this world.
It is still very hard. It is a weight that accompanies you 24 hours a day, 356 days a year and that sometimes leads you to lows that you have to overcome no matter what because there is no treatment or anything that improves the symptoms. I am incapable of what makes humans human: emotions, emotional bonding.
As time went by, I realized that I had lost even more things: I didn’t enjoy events and hobbies like I used to… life feels boring and lacking in spark. Planning a trip, listening to music, going out into the countryside doesn’t give the gratification that normal people experience. In psychology, they call it anhedonia. Life is flatter and lacks color. Still, I force my brain to experiment, because only sometimes, I see a ray of light and something awakens excitement, love or joy.
I immerse myself in activities without any desire and force myself to feel things through reading or watching videos when I have some time.
Ten years later I still experience the same symptoms, I have not recovered anything. Only the insomnia is gone and thanks to that I am able to work.
I have not been able to adapt to the person I have become because of the medication. How can I accept the shadow of what I was? How can I accept loneliness, apathy, chronic boredom and asexuality? Days go by and I think about what will become of me, I feel like I will always be alone because of the medication, and I also have to work and socialize without any desire. In my job, in fact, I help rehabilitate people who are suffering from depression for reasons that I consider ridiculous compared to what I face every day and I have to put on a brave face and help them as a therapistā¦
I need the existence of PSSD to be acknowledged. All of us suffer from the denial of our symptoms by many members of the medical community, despite the fact that organisations such as the European Medicines Agency already include a warning about persistent sexual dysfunction in some antidepressant brands’ leaflets, as well as in the DSM-V used by psychiatrists.
Of course, there is no psychological help or sick leave if you collapse one day. I consider myself a very assertive person with clear ideas and I will always be grateful to be part of theĀ PSSD Network: a window to hope where other victims like me fight for informed consent and self-finance research into the syndrome among other activities of an always positive nature.
On our websites (including theĀ Spanish page) you will find serious scientific articles and research publications that have been done to date, extensive information on PSSD and stories and videos from other patients like me, along with numerous appearances in the press, blogs and TV.
For any questions or collaboration, please email me atĀ [email protected].
Thank you for writing this. And for being a part of the solution instead of continuing to practice inside the system of lies and control. I hope things improve for you, me and all harmed patients.
I too suffer from many neurological and other physical damage from both prescribed drugs and ECT. I tell my story everyday. Itās only when people are aware of abuse and stop tolerating it, that it will ever even begin to stop.
Most of us will die (childless at that) in this injured state, but hopefully our stories will leave this world a better place for the humans to come.
Thank you Carmen. If itās any consolation to you, in my opinion are much much more than PSSD. You have a purpose. Youāre a warrior and a heroine.
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Carmen, this is EXACTLY how I feel with PSSD. It only took me a couple pills of an SSRI in 2019 to permanently end up feeling lifeless. I still pray for these symptoms to reverse everyday but Iām losing hope.
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Carmen, first of all, I would like to tell you, what you are experiencing is the worst thing that can happen to a person. It is the highest form of dissoziation, because it takes away the half of a person, only the body remains.
Also I would like to explain a few things to you that might shed another light on these “conditions”. Whether you can accept them is of course up to you. It’s an expanded view of what happened. Unfortunately I have no help.
I have been studying Eastern mysticism for a long time, but also Western mysticism. I am not a follower of any direction, but there has been a lot explained to me and I have understood a lot. We should pay more attention to these views, but that is very difficult for Western medicine which can only think in terms of the body.
In all mystical teachings, east, west, north south, sexual energy is the most important energy in a human being. At the same time this means, it is not just about sexuality as we normally understand it, but about a much more important overriding aspect. This is the aspect of CREATIVITY. Sexuality in its entire form is creativity. That is the reason why you don’t like doing something, starting something, enjoying something, and finally loving something or someone. PSSD is just the point that breaks the camel’s back or lets the water (water is a synonym for feeling) run dry. In the case of PSSD it finally becomes clear, this greatest and most important creative aspect of our lives is completely destroyed….. not only sexuality. Without sexual energy no creativity, ON ALL LEVELS of life. That is best known in all old spiritual directions.
It is not alone sexuality running over hormones and other bodily contexts, It is much more, it is the other part of our bodies, and…..and that is the big problem, it is an energetical question.
About all these different mystic sights I’ve learnt, all has to do with altered states of consciousness, and these states are reached over energy. That’s what normally is happening in meditation or in Hypnosis. Energy is linked over attention (energy follows attention) to different parts of the body and over hormones, glands and neurotransmitters the nervous system and the brain CREATE new insights into life, myself and the univers. On this way I can bring back these insights to earth, That is the great way of transformation.
Now I claim, these terrible drugs change the states of consciousness or stop the possibility of human beings changing these states in the way that is necessary in the respective situation. The different states of consciousness no longer work. (In this context, I am glad that you can sleep again). This deprives the body of the energetic vitality to be able to react in any situation. If you (or your brain) can’t change the states of consciousness anymore, everything is dull, without emotional colours, without necessary energy to live. You know this “deep state” very well.
A hypnosis book took me a little further. The author, Werner J. Meinhold, has written almost 700 pages about hypnosis, which I think are very good and very interesting.
He says, the hypnotic state, which incidentally runs normally alongside daytime consciousness, runs right hemispherically and in the old parts of the brain, in those parts that first arose in evolution. And, this hemisphere also dominates the newer left hemisphere.
He defines:
“Hypnosis is the firstly because it encompasses the chronologically oldest levels of consciousness, and secondly because older brain areas or levels of consciousness, when activated, dominate the younger ones.”
Werner J. Meinhold, “Das groĆe Handbuch der Hypnose”, p. 100
Translated by Deepl translator
I have the suspicion that these horrible pills are reversing evolution and altering states of consciousness in such a way that the nervous system can no longer return to its normal state of switching between the different states. It remains in a deep right hemisphere state and in the older parts of the brain.
I also believe, it is so difficult for medicine to research for help, because we are not yet able to influence states of consciousness from the outside.
Once again, these terrible pills have influenced the states of consciousness, but at some point they seem to have a hypnotic effect and manifest an old state that is not adapted to our today development.
Perhaps in conclusion. All life is made up of states of consciousness. We ARE states of consciousness, and the body reacts on these states. This is not an intellectual question, it is a question of our entire being, the processes in our lives and our perception.
I came across another aspect recently when I was reading a book about electricity. When we talk about energy, electricity is the most prominent energy in the human body.
Arthur Firstenberg, The Invisible Rainbowā.
All humans, animals and plants have electric plus and minus poles in their bodies. It is also known that a direct current flows from the back to the front in the middle of the head. If you reverse the polarity of this current and let it flow from the front to the back, the person falls asleep. This means that electricity changes the state of consciousness.
Now there are a lot of other states of consciousness between waking consciousness and sleep,
I now see a connection between body electricity (energy) and the associated polarity reversal, as well as the altered states of consciousness that follow.
My hypothesis:
PSSD is an altered state of consciousness with a severe lack of diversity that our brain has evolved to.
Altered states of consciousness are caused by body electricity.
In PSSD, the polarity of the body’s electricity is reversed and no longer returns to its normal state.
Body electricity can be reversed by electricity (I don’t talk about ECT!!!), hypnosis/autohypnosis, other energetic procedures such as meditation and acupuncture and…….by psychotropic drugs, which deepen the polarity reversal and fix it.
In my opinion the question must be, are there ways to change this manipulated state of consciousness again and to start the nervous system moving again towards the higher centers? I fear, neurology isn’t at that point. And I fear the research in body electricity is not done and not observed in the necessary way.
That is why it is a crime to attack and change this foundation. The entire being and staying in this world is harmed. It is like an amputation of the half of a person’s being.
I hope I didn’t overhelm you, but one piece of the puzzle leads to the other.
P.S. By the way, perhaps Neurofeedback at the PC, first with a therapist and later alone, could be an attempt; there are a lot of programs and perhaps there is one, training the brain to focus on positive feelings.
I’m working with the skills of the US āHeart Math Institutā, which focusses more on the heart than the brain. Perhaps you have such an institut in Spain too??
Wish you all the best and stay stromg!!
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Liberationfromdrugs.
WELL DONE!
Brilliant hypothesis!
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Thank you very much
I would like to briefly add something that I also learned from Firstenberg.
The body heals a lot via electricity, e.g. wounds change their electrical polarity during healing. Of course, there are mini, mini mini amperes that are at work.
Then I remembered that dentists and surgeons sometimes use hypnosis to anaesthetize people when chemical anaesthesia is not possible. And it works, the patients feel no pain. It doesn’t work because it’s a miracle ;), but probably because the electrical polarity is changed in the state of hypnosis. Then the doctors bring the patient back from this state, very consciously. This is very important to give this instruction!!! The pills bring people into this state, but stopping them does not mean that the varying waking consciousness automatically returns.
Many people believe that hypnosis is a trance state that you don’t know much about. This is not correct. Patients talk to the surgeons. This means that both states of consciousness run in parallel. It’s what I quoted from Meinhold, both states of consciousness are there, but the one of hypnosis dominates.
So at the moment the only idea I have is to keep giving the brain stimuli to engage with the world in order to leave this āhypnotic stateā. Nature, movement, laughter, dancing, friends, water in any form. I know it’s not easy when you have no drive. But the brain needs new instructions, like the surgeon who says, that’s it, we’re back in the world and leave this state of consciousness.
I heartfully hope you also can come back again.
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I have only now seen in my comment from 14.08.2024 that the āDeepl translatorā did not translate correctly and I did not check.
The translation from the hypnosis book should read correctly:
āHypnosis is the “first state of consciousness”, firstly because it encompasses the chronoligically oldest levels of consciousness, and secondly because older brain areas or levels of consciousness, when activated, dominate the younger ones.”
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Itās good to see that PSSD is getting more attention! I also suffer from it but not to the degree that you do. With enough stimulation, I can feel orgasmic but has to be a LOT. My partner doesnāt have the patience for this as she has no issues getting fully aroused. She doesnāt understand PSSD, thinks it doesnāt exist, and tells me itās my fault for ānot being attracted to herā
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Thank you for sharing your story, Carmen. It’s a really important reality which needs public awareness, especially given the huge number of children who are being force drugged with the psych drugs. Thank you.
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“Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment Because of PSSD | Interview with Rosie”, Dr. Josef
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