Mental Health Prozac

[LucieQuinn]

Anyone have experiences with Prozac for depression?
Does alcohol and other drugs make a difference in the way that this medicine effects you?

 

[n3ophy7e]

Prozac (fluoxetine) was the first antidepressant I ever tried. It didn't really help me much, personally. But at the time I wasn't really helping myself much either, so any antidepressant hardly had a good chance of working for me. I was using a lot of recreational drugs and drinking A LOT of alcohol, so my brain was pretty fucked from that. I suffered with some pretty lengthy side effects even after coming off it as well.

BUT everyone responds to different medications differently, so in some ways even asking this question is kinda moot. For example the antidepressant that I'm on now, duloxetine, literally saved my life and is the perfect antidepressant medication for me, however I have heard some real horror stories of people trying duloxetine and it making them MUCH much worse. Everyone is different.

Has your doctor prescribed it to you? If so, you should take it as prescribed, take good care of yourself, and see how it goes. If after a couple of weeks it's not helping at all, or if you're getting worse, go back to your doctor and try something else.

 

[plumbus-nine]

Alcohol generally is kind of an antidote to antidepressants, many people report that and I can confirm. They'll work better without ethanol, independent of the amount.

Fluoxetine is a 5HT2C antagonist and a sigma agonist, both potentially beneficial properties (excessive 5ht2c activity is said to be responsible for a bunch of SSRI-related side effects) but the affinities for these two targets is much lower than for the serotonin transporter, meaning one needs higher dosages to reach them. Also the compound builds up slowly in the brain and remains there for quite some time, it inhibits its own metabolism (and that of a handful other drugs - watch out for interactions) which also makes it good as a tapering aid..

In general I think, after like a decade on various (mostly venlafaxine) modern-generation antidepressants, that they cause more harm than good in many cases specially when used without strong indication and over infinite periods of time. Tolerance builds slowly but steadily and eventually you'll need a SSRI just to achieve baseline, then you'll need a stronger one, then you'll need two agents - addiction? Yeah. Anybody I talk to denies it but there's no prove cause the studies all only catch a very limited timeframe, and recommended dosages, in before antidepressant-naive or even drug-naive individuals etc.pp.