What's worse for your sex life? Benzos or SSRIs?

What's worse for your sex life (dysfunction)? Benzos or SSRIs?

I'm suffering from anxiety, and I heard SSRIs are worse.

Well it depends on how you define 'worse' but generally I'd say SSRIs by a long way.

I say it depends on how you define 'worse' because in some cases SSRIs can actually improve an individual's sex life. When you are on SSRIs you will find it much harder to achieve orgasm and most likely find that your sexual appetite is reduced significantly. However, this can be beneficial if you suffer from premature ejaculation (if you're a guy obviously). For the female of the species, SSRIs tend to kill sex drive and ability to orgasm also.

The extent to which SSRIs effect your sex drive and ability to achieve orgasm is (in my experience) very dependent on your dose. For example, for me, 40mg/day of paroxetine will totally kill my sex drive. On 20mg/day I have a sex drive and find it relatively easy to orgasm.

The thing about SSRIs is that once you're on them, they are always working whereas benzos only effect you when you are dosed.

When you are on benzos you will most likely be too sleepy and out of it to be up for sex, but you can always wait until after they wear off or have sex before you take your dose.

As far as your anxiety goes, which should be your main concern, benzos are short acting and addictive, so as a long term solution they are less effective than SSRIs. In emergency situations (such as a panic attack), when you are waiting the two weeks for the SSRIs to kick in or just to generally 'take the edge' off your anxiety benzos are great. Generally the best way (and medically most common way) to treat anxiety is with a combination of benzos and SSRIs, so a choice between the two is probably unrealistic. Most likely, if you suffer from significant anxiety, you will find yourself prescribed both.

BTW, you will probably get better answers to this q. in SLR or Health Q&A.

Good luck!

I take both, and SSRIs by a million times.

Well ive never taken benzo's so i cant comment on them, but i know when i was on Prozac, after a serious E freak out session that left me with panic attacks for a while, my sex life was a living hell. Not only could i not orgasm to save my life, but it didnt decrease my sex drive at all, so i was this like cracked out concentration of sexual energy and i couldnt do nething to relieve it....... Needless to say after i weened myself off the prozac i got some much needed relief.

benzos make me up for anything in bed (lower inhibitions, which could be bad, but 99% of the time isnt) so id have to say benzos are pretty fun for sex life, where as i know nothing about SSRIS (boring chemicals IMO) so i cant say.

When on my Xanax, the shit I take for my anxeity, the only thing I notice is HORNINESS with ssris I notice no change whatsoever

Healthy Living

SSRIs will crush your ability to have, want, or enjoy sex. if someone you have, want, or enjoy sex with takes SSRIs, that entire aspect of your relationship will effectively disappear.

They might feel bad that you're unfulfilled, but other than sympathy that's as much as you're going to get.

After awhile on SSRIs, you not only lose your sex drive, but you also cease to care that you've lost it. You forget that you had it before, but you don't miss it. Its just not who you are. This is true for guys and girls both. The medicated party is NOT going to be sitting around saying "gosh, if only for this medicine i could have really great sex right now." The thought won't even occur to them. If it did, they'd be unable to relate to it.

Benzos however... meh. Benign.

Help?

Try an SNRI. I haven't had any trouble in that department.

Wow halfoz you seem to know a lot about other people. hehe

SSRI's are known to cause lack of sex drive, and erectile dysfunction in some people. Depression and anxiety tend to cause some of the same problems. Benzo's don't have the same sexual side effect profile at low dosages, but tend to cause physical and mental dependence. I am sure you know, having taken bromazepam on a daily basis for 6 months in the past.

SNRI's as well as a few other medications do not tend to cause sexual side effects. Talk to your doc!! If you are still on bromazepam you need to bring this up (snicker snicker… no pun intended).

Hal brings up some damn good points IMO.

anxiety sucks. it can suck all the joy out of your life. pills don't work. period. they do not solve the root cause.

Got a headache? Here's a bandaid!

that's pills.

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Definitely not benzos, player!!! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO

SSRI's crushed my sex drive, as did the OCP. It took a while after I cut the SSRI's out for my sex drive to come back.

Gary Gnu said:

Wow halfoz you seem to know a lot about other people. hehe

SSRI's are known to cause lack of sex drive, and erectile dysfunction in some people. Depression and anxiety tend to cause some of the same problems. Benzo's don't have the same sexual side effect profile at low dosages, but tend to cause physical and mental dependence. I am sure you know, having taken bromazepam on a daily basis for 6 months in the past.

SNRI's as well as a few other medications do not tend to cause sexual side effects. Talk to your doc!! If you are still on bromazepam you need to bring this up (snicker snicker… no pun intended).

Hal brings up some damn good points IMO.

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Nope, I'm on Rivotril now. I feel much better

My last serious relationship lasted two and a half years. Around the two to three months towards the end, she went on an SSRI, and although from what I understand about them (which really isn't a lot) they can take a while to be effective. I didn't noticed a difference in our sex life after she started the SSRI, but that's because they maybe hadn't began to reach their effectiveness yet. Also, our sex life was wickedly distorted by that point in the relationship anyways, due to my opioid use. Not that the original poster mentioned those, as it's obvious, but opiates/opioids will blow a hole through any sort of normal sex regiment in a relationship. Sure, you can get some advocates chalking up the pros of half-assed, doped out sex with orgasms nowhere in site for either of you, but in reality, opioids and sex don't mix.

SSRIs: maybe, but limited experience
benzos: n/a
opioids/opiates: two thumbs down (regarding long term anyways)

halfoz said:

SSRIs will crush your ability to have, want, or enjoy sex. if someone you have, want, or enjoy sex with takes SSRIs, that entire aspect of your relationship will effectively disappear.

They might feel bad that you're unfulfilled, but other than sympathy that's as much as you're going to get.

After awhile on SSRIs, you not only lose your sex drive, but you also cease to care that you've lost it. You forget that you had it before, but you don't miss it. Its just not who you are. This is true for guys and girls both. The medicated party is NOT going to be sitting around saying "gosh, if only for this medicine i could have really great sex right now." The thought won't even occur to them. If it did, they'd be unable to relate to it.

Benzos however... meh. Benign.

Help?

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Agreed. I had two relationships fucked over because of my lack of sex drive/passion during sex/enjoyment while on an SSRI.

And I was an adolescent male, so I should have been jumping her bones.

other people?! lol. i'm speaking from personal experience complements of both Zoloft and the evil, evil, evil, evil Effexor.

when you're a guy, and you can't get it up, don't care, and can't remember why you ever did care... you are in a sad place. sadder than depression.

i've been in a couple of relationships where the above was painfully proven to me as the non-medicated party.

lamictal is your only hope.

when I was using SSRi's I had all sorts of side effects... delayed orgasm among them. It was actually quite hard work getting there. But it never did take away my horniness or indeed change my relationship into a sexless one.

May I ask why are you suffering from anxiety. Are they any other contributing factors? stress related? any drug use/problems?

The reason that I ask is that SSRI's and Benzo's have their uses but as you have already noticed from some of the replys, it's a real case of different strokes for different folks. AND in alot of cases these drugs are a band aid solution, often over prescribed which just leads to great problems down the track.

I'm certainly not trying to make light of your situation but what I'm asking for I guess is a bit of background re: your anxiety if you want to share. That might be a good place to start before deciding on which of these options will be best for you.

I’m currently prescribed 3x1mg clonazepam/day. I haven’t beet to psychotherapist, only psychiatrists, but in my opinion 95% is stress (main in in family, maybe some times in the society) and 5% everything else (drug use during all these years [6] was minimal)

SSRIS have improoved my sex drive if anything and as an extra bonus the orgams are better :D No complaints at all

Im taking fluxentine(prozac)