What were your experiences with Sertraline? I’m scared it’s not going to work for me.

[ivytina]

Hi everyone can anyone pls describe their experience with sertraline and if it worked after all? I started with 25mg and now I’m taking 75mg. I have been on this dose for a week. Through these past 5 weeks i was living in hell. My anxiety was a roller coaster and didn’t go away and I’m scared that sertraline isn’t going to work for me. I have to take ativan everyday for some anxiety relief. Can you please share your thoughts? Thankyou so much 🙏🏻

[mits123]

Hi ivytina

I have been on sertraline for many years now and all I can say from my own experience is, it does work.

It is not a magic pill and will take sometime to settle with one of the side effects being increased anxiety, not what you want to hear when in the grips of a horrible mental health crisis

It can take up to 8 weeks for you to get the full benefit of the medication and this will not be wake up one morning and all your anxiety will be gone but gradually day by day and even hour by hour you will start to feel a little better and more hopeful

Please do not worry about it not working, give it time, however if the worse should happen and it is just not for you there are lots of other medications and yes I understand the scary prospect of this, it happened to me when citalopram started working against my body instead of working with it, I dreaded changing to sertraline but it was a lot easier then I thought, reality normally is not as bad as us anxious people think.

Try and stay strong and keep telling yourself tomorrow is another step forward, be kind to yourself and only do what you can do, baby steps

[ivytina in reply to mits123]

Hi mits123, thankyou for your encouragement. What dose are you at? and how long did it take you to feel better?

[mits123 in reply to ivytina]

I am 50mgs, did think I needed to increase a few times but I have adopted the wait a week and see, which usually sorts itself out, I sometimes think we forget that is quite normal for anyone to feel anxious or sad but if you suffer from anxiety or depression you automatically think that you are going backwards, panic and increase dose when it is not needed

It took me about 8 - 12 weeks to say I was truly better, but as I said it is a gradual thing, I knew I was slowly getting better when I could have times in the day when I could think/concentrate on other things rather then living in my head and questioning how I felt constantly