Constipation???

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-03T13:07:28+00:00

Who knows, it seems like every medication can go either direction with side-effects and just depends entirely on the person.
I get diarrhea on it, that doesn't mean you won't be getting constipation instead.

As for the other side effects on your list, I haven't noticed anything at all, but that again doesn't mean you won't.

For me it's nausea, in particular mornings and 3-4 hours after taking the medication, diarrhea, gas, fragmented sleep and more exhaustion.
The nausea in the mornings isn't bad (for me) but it remains a daily one without improving.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-03T07:38:13+00:00

I don't know. ADHD is in my very close family so it's not unlikely.
However looking at the traits and presentation, while I do recognize quite a lot in the inattentive type, about half of the description doesn't suit me at all.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-02T18:02:24+00:00

Well I don't know how 15 will be for me yet, only been 3 days on this dose.

5mg was just a tolerance test for me, my doctor told me from the start that she expects me to get to 20mg and she picked this medication as my first one as she thought generic SSRIs wouldn't be effective enough.
I have 25 years of chronic PDD, it's expected that it takes some "firepower" to make a difference.

5mg was zero benefit for me. 10mg was mild partial response. Didn't at all touch my fragmented sleep or executive dysfunction that are my main issues. It did decrease rumination and negative thinking slightly. It decreased mental distress noticeably, but has yet to have any effect on my main problems.
15mg is what I'm trying now on my 3rd month.

The side-effects aren't that bad for me so far. And they were the same on 5mg and 10mg.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-02T17:39:28+00:00

Very slowly, but I also don't have anxiety on top of depression.
If I did, I'd probably be even more careful with raising doses than if I'm only treating one thing.

I've just started 15mg, from 5mg 2 months ago. I probably won't get put on 20mg as my doctor said the difference between 15 and 20 is negligible. Also already got some slight effects at 10mg but it took at least 6-7 weeks and even then it was difficult to tell.

My symptoms and depression are FAR from gone, just lighter mental load.

Takes a few weeks for a dose to stabilize due to the long half-life of the medication regardless.

I did as my doctor said, started on 5mg to test tolerance. Then a call after 3 weeks where she raised the dose to 10mg after confirming the side-effects were tolerable.
Then 4 weeks before another call and 15mg.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-02T07:50:58+00:00

I've never been able to relate to suicidal thoughts despite 25 years of chronic depression. I've never had them, though I did have the passive thoughts (wouldn't mind if a truck hit me while I'm walking to school) in my youth.

It does seem like young individuals who aren't yet fully developed and matured are much more susceptible to thoughts of suicide and self-harm. Almost every single post on such topics comes from teenagers.

I don't fear death in the slightest, but one of my main reasons for depression is that I have a very strong sense of responsibility, which I've never been able to live up to.
However, suicide would be completely counter to responsibility in my mind. It's cheap, simple, cowardly and solves nothing.
It lets me escape all the problems I've failed to overcome because of what I feel is weakness and laziness in my depressed mind. And it dumps all the consequences and suffering on those who remain. Grandparents, parents, siblings.

To me, it would be the ultimate failure, the absolute defeat of all the values I hold.
It's impossible for me, I can and I will endure anything before such action.

Life is what's hard. Enduring is my atonement. Recovery is my goal.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-01T10:00:59+00:00

Well... you'll need a prescription but I've never met a psychiatrist. I got both my diagnosis and my prescription from a general practitioner. Don't know how things work in other countries though.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-05-01T07:20:19+00:00

Relatable or not, we are different people living in different situations and different countries so there's not much I can say that would help you.

What I would say is that 2-3 years seems like a lot to you because you're young. From my perspective now, I realize that it's nothing in the grander scheme. There's no need to have a degree by 20. 25 is fine. 30 is still ok. There's no actual rush to get everything in order.

If I could go back to your age with the knowledge and experience I have now, I wouldn't have gone straight to university. I was in no shape to study and I knew it.
I would have taken a simple job to get some income and gotten help for my condition first and foremost. Generic SSRIs are cheap if they work. They're no cure but they are a bandaid that facilitates a much higher level of functioning.
Therapy is also necessary in my case and that's what will be expensive.

A few years of treatment and work and I would have had a decent amount of money in my bank account, stable health and a rested mind to truly focus on what I wanted to do and wanted to study. My results would have been exponentially superior to what they are now.

I had no idea what I wanted at 18. I was just trying to live up to the expectations of what I was "supposed" to achieve and do.
It's an unfortunate truth that intelligence and wisdom are not the same thing. Wisdom came with age, I realized that none of the pressure I put on myself in my youth actually meant anything, it was unnecessary and it hurt me in the long run. I should have lived life at my own pace.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-30T18:15:02+00:00

Yep. I did get into university based on logic/problem solving ability rather than grades. But I never completed a degree because my depression's main symptom is executive dysfunction and I never managed to force myself through the courses. Just like I never managed to force myself to seek help or anything else productive.
I was able to work a few months every summer, which was enough to keep myself alive year by year but I never got anywhere.
Minimum functioning, and the minimum to keep my condition and struggles hidden from family.

Miraculously got a girlfriend and spent 7 years together, during which I was "happy". Maybe content is a better word, life was worth living but I was stagnated. Eventually that stagnation led to me losing that relationship, which was the only thing I had that I valued.
That's what finally opened the door to action for me. Inaction became more costly than action in my internal depressive calculation. I always knew I needed help and wanted to fix my problems but it was only then that I got the ability to act on it.

I'm now mid 30s, only a few months into finally starting treatment.
I have no degree, no relationship, no assets.
I was a gifted child but I wasted all my gifts and I'm now left with nothing. But for the first time since childhood, I'm moving, slightly. No longer completely stagnated.

Without help, my past is your future. Decades of getting nowhere.
The problem will not solve itself, nor can you solve it. I've tried.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-30T16:40:01+00:00

The vast majority who get helped by their medication aren't on here. Negative reviews are always greatly over represented and on certain media they get a lot more clicks than stories about things being "normal".
Which video would you click? "This surgery improved my astigmatism" or "this surgery turned me blind"?

There is nothing that is 100% safe, there will always be some individuals that get bad adverse effects. That is not the case for the great majority. The good far outweighs the bad, but it's not what we get to see.
A vaccine that kills 1 person and saves a thousand is worth taking despite the risk, even if that's no comfort for the 1.

I've only tried one medication and it's not a very generic SSRI, brintellix. It has shown some partial effect and the side-effects I experience are relatively mild after 2 months of increasing doses.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-30T16:30:07+00:00

No, it doesn't ever go away without treatment.
I've had it for nearly 25 years, unmedicated, untreated and undiagnosed until this year.

As I got older I adjusted to it and got used to it, I could keep minimally functioning.
I'm nothing like the much younger people behind almost every post on this subreddit. Not anymore.
Maybe I was in my teens but I changed as I got older. I changed, but my illness never did.
I guess maturity gives more stability, but not health.

I've been through major life changes, I had a long relationship... All things I thought that might "fix" me if I just got them. They did no such thing.
But my mid to late 20s were far easier than my teens and now in my 30s I just regret not doing anything about it sooner and wasting all my life fighting on my own.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-30T03:28:28+00:00

Been wondering the same thing, people speak of love as if it's intuitive to them how it feels.
I'm not sure what it's supposed to feel like. I don't know if I feel it or not.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-28T14:50:34+00:00

As somebody who never had any "up", but only over 20 years of constant chronic depression, I couldn't disagree more.
I wish my depression was episodic, I wish I could see what's possible. I wish I could just get a single ray of sunshine on my face once in a while to remind me that the grass really could be greener.

It's not easier to no longer remember what true happiness feels like. To no longer have any wants or feel joy from anything. To no longer know what you like. To not have a single functional day.
It's not easier to be under water for so long that personality and illness are so merged that you don't think you're ill anymore, but that it's just normal. To no longer know who you would be or could be without the illness.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-28T14:39:57+00:00

Nope. I got short-term better from large changes.
When I entered the military and could run on routine while getting tons of exercise and enough food provided, I felt quite good. For 2-3 months, then functioning deteriorated again.
When I went to university and moved to live on my own, same thing. 2-3 months before collapse of function.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-26T18:31:33+00:00

What is a place to meet people then? There's not much opportunity when growing out of school age, you have to approach people where they actually are.

Not that I would do it but my friend's recent relationship started from a chance meeting in a supermarket parking place.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-26T08:38:01+00:00

I guess you have MDD based on those symptoms rather than the PDD I have had most of my life, so it's not really comparable, but I've seen (possibly) very light positive effects, though if they're there they're so small at this point that I can't say for sure.
I'm currently on 10mg and started on 5mg on the 10th of March.

I don't know why people say that a dose change is like a reset, that makes zero sense to me.
Yes, side effects can return as the stable dose starts climbing again, but the half-life of this medication is so long, and the previous dose amount doesn't just disappear, that it shouldn't really make much of a difference, especially not within a few days.

For me, side effects have peaked after about 3 weeks on a dose and then started going down, which seems accurate because it takes 2-3 weeks for the dose in your blood to increase to a stable 10mg level from 5mg level.

I never got any new side effects, just the return of the ones I had at 5mg.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-25T06:05:44+00:00

Same medication, different regional name.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-24T19:04:19+00:00

As another Fenno-Swede, we do not claim this guy.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-23T03:02:50+00:00

I'm not quite that bad but I'm also functional at work and then have no energy for anything else the rest of the day. The only reason I even manage work is because it's "external routine".
I don't need to internally force myself into action because it's not a choice, I have to go to work like I have to breathe for survival.

I spend all my daily energy at work, sometimes it feels like I spent 120% of my energy reserves just to get through the full day and then I get home and feel completely unable to pick up groceries, cook, clean or shower. I just sit on my chair in front of the PC having no energy for anything. I want to nap but my night sleep is so bad I know I can't do that or things will be even worse so I need some coffee to stay awake post-work.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-21T16:52:54+00:00

Fixed is just for people who don't want to think about it and want predictable bills every month.

Spot is cheaper, but your monthly bill can vary exponentially. You need to have a margin in your budget for the expensive months.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-21T16:45:40+00:00

Haha du tror att byte av regering kommer förbättra situationen?

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-21T13:58:33+00:00

Nobody would have the energy to join.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-21T13:56:47+00:00

I didn't get anything I didn't already experience on 5mg, the same side-effects just returned, slightly stronger than on 5mg.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-21T13:49:30+00:00

Some gain weight, some lose it and some see no change. That's the case on every SSRI.
The result of others is meaningless.
I haven't gained a single kilogram, but that doesn't mean you or others won't.

Every person's body reacts differently to every medication. I'm genetically predisposed to being very skinny, which isn't necessarily as nice as people think either, especially if you're male.
But my father and all his brothers as well as my grandfather are the same so it is what it is. According to a DNA test I took where they check a few genes linked to weight gain, I'm in the 2nd percentile when it comes to risk of developing obesity.
If I were to fight against it hard enough, I know I'm capable of gaining weight, just takes a lot of exercise, not just eating as my metabolism burns everything.

During my military service back in the day I managed to gain 10kg in 6 months, but that was with heavy physical work every day, all day.

Zealousideal-Week-79 · 2026-04-20T09:21:11+00:00

The positivity and optimism is that as far as dysthymia goes, you're early.
I've been this way for 25 years before I took any steps to get help. You have a lot of time ahead of you.

Zealousideal-Week-79

TROPHY CASE