Philipp

Age: 18

“When I was just 6 years old, they threw me onto this medication rollercoaster called Lisdexamfetamine and Guanfacine ER to deal with my ADHD. I used to beg my parents to let me ditch those pills because they did a weird number on me. They made me all selective mute, like I was too self-conscious to even speak. I had this bizarre fear that people would make fun of my voice, although, strangely, I never got bullied during that time. Funny thing is, on the days when my parents forgot to give me those meds, I'd become a total chatterbox at school, and everyone loved me.

Fast forward to when I hit 12, and they finally decided to take me off those heavy doses of 40 mg Lisdexamfetamine and 4 mg Guanfacine ER. That's when things got really weird. I started acting all strange, went into self-harm mode, and couldn't stop talking about ending it all, like 24/7. It's pretty clear now that it was all because of abruptly quitting that addictive stimulant I'd been on for a whopping six years, from age 6 to 12.

After that ordeal, I told my parents I was feeling depressed, which is apparently a common withdrawal thing with stimulants. So, they took me to the doc, and when they came back, they had this "miracle pill" called Prozac, or Fluoxetine, at 20 mg a day. I thought it was gonna be the answer to my problems, but little did I know, 30 minutes later, I'd feel like all my sexual functioning had been turned off – it was like chemical castration. And then came all these nasty sexual side effects. When I mentioned it to my case manager and doctor, they just said I was mentally sick. But here's the kicker: I never had these sexual or heart palpitation (kinda like POTS) issues until I took Prozac.

I stuck with Prozac while they started piling on more meds like:

  • Guanfacine

  • Clonazepam

  • Lorazepam

  • Buspar

  • Zoloft

  • Abilify

  • Risperdal

  • Seroquel

  • Wellbutrin

  • Celexa

  • Effexor

  • Vistaril

  • Propranolol

At 14, they finally took me off Prozac and switched me to Celexa, a measly 10 mg in 2019. That first dose of Celexa had me feeling like I was on cloud nine – but not in a good way. It was like depersonalization and derealization hit me hard. And within a few weeks, I couldn't sleep to save my life, no matter how hard I tried to sedate myself. I started getting these crazy heat flashes, and my brain turned into mush with severe cognitive dysfunction. So now, I had both sexual and cognitive dysfunction – far from normal.

These days, my life is like a laundry list of issues: depersonalization/derealization, anhedonia, severe sexual dysfunction, memory problems, new food intolerances and allergies, weird burning, tingling, and numbness in my feet and other unmentionable places, heart problems (kinda like POTS, but only after Prozac), body temperature all out of whack, constant head and eye pressure, body composition issues, severe cognitive dysfunction, and something called dysautonomia.

My doctors advised me to go cold turkey on all my meds except for Celexa. I did a proper taper for that, reducing it by 0.2 mg every two to three weeks, until I took my last pill on November 22, 2022. Now I'm 18, and I'm still dealing with all these effects from those meds, especially the SSRI and SNRI antidepressants. Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction is something hardly anyone talks about, and people like me could really use some help spreading the word.

No one, not me or my parents, got any heads up about the risks that might stick around even after stopping the meds. If we had known, we might've thought twice about giving the green light.

As of today, August 28, 2023, it's been nine long months without any improvement in sight.”