Feb 1, 2021
3 Annoying Side Effects I Get From My Anti-Depressants
Mild inconveniences at best, not sleeping for weeks on end at worst
I have been on SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) since I was about 19 years old. A few weeks ago, my psychiatrist suggested we switch to an SNRI (serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) to see if it works better.
In layman’s terms, an SSRI attacks one neurotransmitter in your brain, and an SNRI attacks two. So the theory is that it should be more aggressive in helping with depression because it’s doing more.
However, despite spending the better part of the last six years taking all these magic drugs, there are a LOT of side effects that I find no one really talks about. Unless I specifically bring it up to my therapist or NP, I would have no idea these symptoms were related to my meds.
Full disclaimer: Everyone is different. These are just my experiences (because that is all I can speak to). Someone else may not have these symptoms or someone else might have entirely different symptoms. Everyone reacts differently. While there is some research to support my take that these are side effects from my medicine, it could also be a complete coincidence.
Sweating
I was recently weaned off of Lexapro — which is a bitch and a half, by the way — and mentioned in passing to my NP that over the last year I’ve noticed that I had been super sweaty.
Now I have also been undergoing some other changes outside of my mental health that I figured was the cause. I was actively losing weight in 2019 and maintaining that weight loss in 2020 and I was under the impression that losing 50 lbs in a year would be the cause of my sweats.
I was noticing that I was sweating significantly more on my right side than my left side, which I thought was peculiar. I tried everything. Like, it was getting embarrassing. I’m a teacher, and in 2019 I was teaching in person in a classroom full of 16 and 17 years olds. You know what you really don’t want to have to deal with in front of 16 and 17 year olds??? PIT STAINS!
I tried various deodorants and antiperspirants, I tried drinking more water, I even briefly considered Botox because I saw it in a Buzzfeed video.
Now that I am off of Lexapro, my sweating has minimized to a “normal" amount. I still wear extra-strength men’s antiperspirant but I don’t sweat through my shirts anymore unless I’m exerting a load of energy. I never put two-and-two together though. The sweating started really becoming an issue when I was taking Lexapro.
According to GoodRx, the reason for sweating is because when a person takes an anti-depressant, they are affecting the hypothalamus and the spinal cord, which regulate one’s core body temperature which leads to excessive sweats.
Gastrointestinal trouble
Okay, we’re going to get a little bit gross here. But remember, everybody poops.
No one ever told me that SSRIs and SNRIs would affect your GI system until very recently. Now perhaps this is my own fault for not searching drug side effects or directly asking my doctor, but up until recently I’ve been a pretty trustworthy patient and take what the doc gives me.
I currently take Cymbalta and if I take it without food, I’m on the toilet for at least an hour. It’s horrendous, but most of the time very preventable. Sometimes I just forget to take it with breakfast.
But it’s not just when I take it without something in my stomach first. On past meds, I would experience constipation or the opposite on a near daily basis. This can very much so affect your day-to-day.
Psychopharmacology Institute says that nausea, vomiting, and stomach problems are caused when the hypothalamus is stimulated (which again, is what SSRIs and SNRIs are targeting). So it makes sense why some people are more affected than others. Some people just get nauseous while others can’t leave the bathroom.
The issue with GI issues is that for whatever reason, no one really wants to discuss it. I mentioned to my mom recently that I’d been having some troubles and she brushed it off like it wasn’t that important. Again, I know, it’s kind of gross to talk about bathroom stuff. But that is the reason I didn’t connect the dots sooner! Because no one wants to talk about it.
Vivid dreams
There are actually a lot of different kinds of prescription medications that can cause vivid and sometimes terrifying dreams, and anti-depressants are no exception. Some SSRIs and SNRIs can suppress REM sleep, which can heavily affect the way a person dreams.
I’ve always had pretty wild dreams. Ever since I was a little kid I would have insane and often times scary dreams and usually had trouble determining what was real and what was fake.
I sort of expected that I would grow out of that as I grew up but lo and behold, my dreams are just as intense and just mind-fucking.
Even worse, I have been having recurring dreams and nightmares for the last few years. And for some reason, the ones that I have most frequently, are about me being late to science class in high school OR — more recently — not actually graduating from university and having to retake a course.
I talked with my therapist about them and she said it makes a lot of sense that I would still be having stress dreams about school because I went through a lot of trauma while in university (maybe one day I’ll write about it all, but for now just know it landed me in a psychiatric hospital) and that isn’t going to just disappear.
But I had no idea that these stress dreams and nightmares would be worse on anti-depressants. They have been significantly more vivid and more realistic since starting on SNRIs, which is apparently a common side effect that no one cared to mention to me.
Now all of this is not to deter anyone from seeking help or from taking psych medications I am a huge believer in medicine being the right choice for me but I recognize that it is not the right path for everyone.
These may be somewhat minor side effects that don’t really impact my abilities to live my life, but they are a bit of a nuisance that I never hear anyone mention. Unless I specifically bring it up, no doctor I’ve had has ever disclosed it to me.
The main side effects of drugs that my psychiatrists have told me are more serious; like loss of appetite, weight gain, or suicidal ideation. But why not mention everything up front so I can be prepared? If I had known a year ago that it was Lexapro that was making me sweat, I could have done something about it sooner rather than having to stress about it and, let’s be honest, that just makes the sweating worse.
Do your research. Talk to your doctor. Talk to your friends. Again, everyone is different but even just knowing possible side effects can be validating in your experiences.
