Comment by mvcosta91

> I had a very similar experience, except it killed my libido

Did you, as well as the other people seconding this, have any libido left in the first place? I got on Sertraline because I was depressed, and it actually brought my libido back, by virtue of just bringing me back to a better emotional baseline.

All to say, if it had affected my libido, it'd have been a NOOP anyway in my case.

Speaking from personal experience, people react to different SSRIs differently. I took a popular one that had significant side effects without a whole lot of benefit, and so I stopped it and didn't try anything else for 10 years. Then I spoke to a psychiatric nurse practitioner who suggested trying several others until we found something that worked for me. I had (incorrectly) assumed that if you had e.g. sexual side effects from one SSRI, that you'd have them for all. That is not the case.

I spent $300 on high lumen output light bulbs. 28 200W equivalent LED bulbs and 2 LED corn bulbs. Just a TON of light. Depending on severity either run it all day (late January and February tend to be the worst months), but even 10 minutes in the morning helps substantially. Just a lot of light. You can get hung up on high CRI and full spectrum but just do it badly first, then if it works worry about perfecting the setup. I just kept buying more bulbs and as I bought, I felt better and better.

Edit: this was the blog that gave me the idea, it comes up on hacker news a lot. https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/

I have switched to lamotrigin, it helps to balance mood as I had bad mood in months with less sunshine. Lamotrigin is not an antidepressant, previously it was used for epilepsy stabilisation but now it is prescribed for mood swings. (This is not a medical advice.)

Villazodone was created partly to address that. Once I switched to that, I had no libido-related issues again.

> except it killed my libido

Similar experience. Apparently pretty much ubiquitous with SSRIs

Libido can be supplemented with Wellbutrin. Works great, even better than before.

I have no experience about antidepressants myself so please excuse my stupid question.

When I hear people say "it killed my libido" I always think about the fact that hyper-sexuality can be a trauma response, and if your body is healing the hyper-sexuality is most likely also reduced.

It's like when you have a disease and then read the side effects of a medication and notice that a lot of the side effects are basically also something that can happen when your overall condition is improving but still some people report them as adverse effects and then these are added as side effects to the package label.

For example you take antibiotics but bacteria can have toxins in their body, and when the bacteria disintegrate you get more sick from the released toxins. It's called the Herxheimer effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...

When I started methyl-B12 supplementation I also had inflammation in sinuses for weeks but it was just from my immune system starting up again and being able to attack long-standing inflammation. Someone else would've put "fever", "headache" and "stuffed nose" onto the side effects medication label of methyl-B12.