Anyone familiar with or have any experiences with SSRI-induced emotional blunting?

[lmfao]

Back in July I made the commitment to start tapering off. I was struck with inspiration when I felt a dimension of emotion I hadn't felt for a long time, by listening to a nostalgic piece of music for the first time in a while.

I've been going off sertraline/zoloft extremely slowly. Was initially 100mg but now 25mg. I've felt better in a few ways from going off, but the emotional blunting overall is still here. But it's also been difficult, like I'm on a treadmill. Running to stay stationary, as I slowly have less and less of this drug as a crutch. 

It feels like I've been in this flat emotional state forever, due to whatever filters on my consciousness distort my perception of time. But that's the nature of various illnesses and mental ailments, you get the perception they will last forever, unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm just very sick and tired of flat affect, so I'm probs gonna speed up my tapering off. Being cold turkey 2 weeks from now. 


In the back of my mind is a seed of doubt about whether antidepressants (which I've been on for 3 years since I was 17 and joined the forum) are causing emotional blunting or if it's just me. I feel fairly confident in saying that they did cause it, but since I've been in a slightly weird state of consciousness, slightly dazed and dissociated, disconnected from my past, my brain is just foggy and I can't judge.

Edited November 30, 2020 by lmfao

[soos_mite_ah]

I have been experiencing emotional blunting as well on Zoloft (50mg). I've been on this medication for a week now so I'm sure it will be a couple more weeks til I start seeing benefits. Since my body is still adjusting to it, I have been getting some side effects which include blurry vision, nausea, and loss of appetite. As far as my mood goes, I do feel my emotions and I know what's going on but I don't feel the full intensity of those emotions. Most of the time I find myself switching between feeling apathetic, neutral, or peaceful which for me and where I was at before emotionally isn't a bad thing. I've also noticed that I have trouble crying with the medication for some reason as well so there is that. 

[lmfao]

Yeah, that sounds similar to how I get it. 

Seems like you're on a different phase of the journey with them, since I'm almost off them now after a long time on them. And you're just starting, I wish you luck. Although maybe you've been on other antidepressants before, and it isn't you being new to them. 

 

Just be weary of using it for years on end. I wouldn't want to project my shit onto someone else, so ignore what I say if that's so best for you. But I'd tell anyone using antidepressants to be careful if they end up using them for a long time. 

Iirc, doctors like to get people on a course for at least  6 months, which is a long time. 

Zoloft has a low half life, and low half life drugs are the most rough to come off of. You have to taper off very carefully and slowly. 

Edited December 3, 2020 by lmfao

[soos_mite_ah]

This is actually my first time being on an antidepressant. In fact, I've never been on any type of psychiatric drugs before. I'm wary about drugs that change your consciousness/ perception including when it comes to alcohol or weed. Gonna be honest I'm still nervous about the Zoloft. I hope that I won't have to take them for too long but from what I know about the reason why I'm on them, this is likely a temporary thing. 

But yeah I've heard that getting off of Zoloft may be tricky and that you need to slowly reduce your dose and how it isn't a thing where you can just stop taking them. 

If you don't mind me asking, what is it like trying to take antidepressants and doing i guess self-actualization type of personal growth. Did it help/ hinder you? I'm curious to know about your experience. 

[Enlightenment]

Venlafaxine blunted my emotions when I was on it but it was why I took it in the first place. Have you tried any psychedelics after being off of SSRI's?

[lmfao]

22 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

But yeah I've heard that getting off of Zoloft may be tricky and that you need to slowly reduce your dose and how it isn't a thing where you can just stop taking them. 

If you don't mind me asking, what is it like trying to take antidepressants and doing i guess self-actualization type of personal growth. Did it help/ hinder you? I'm curious to know about your experience. 

@soos_mite_ah I started taking SSRI's a several weeks before I joined the forum. It was only around that time I learnt about all this theory and new self-help and spirituality world. So I can't tell you really how it changed self-help for me. 

I can talk about how some of the effects they've had on me, which I can roughly judge due to fluctuations in my medications (because if I took the same dosage all the time, it would be a constant). There was a period of time I ran out of meds and didnt take any for a month as well. 

Edit: this is random, I don't know if it's worth noting or not, but I discovered meditation a few months before starting SSRI's. And I got mystical experiences straight away, and later I struggled to get them as much casually (I've been casual this entire time with it) 
--
*But despite that, drawing arrows of causation is difficult. It's a lot easier and lot more accurate to talk about a bunch of external correlates which go together, it's a lot harder to say what exactly caused what. You get into chicken and the egg circles.
--
I was on citalopram before I moved onto Zoloft. Citalopram eventually started to feel weird and emotionally blunting, not working much, so I moved onto Zoloft. When I was on Zoloft, it felt good for a few months. But then it stopped giving many positive benefits, and the bad things crept up.

Zoloft did more damage to me than citalopram. So it's idiosyncratic to the person. 


Certain emotions and dimensions of emotions are rarely experienced by me anymore ( * caveat with what I wrote above, but I'm fairly confident in attributing causation here). The rare moment I got a taste of that emotion again, it sparked inspiration in me to start coming off anti depressants. 

Today I started feeling withdrawal symptoms of recently decreasing dosage again

Edited December 4, 2020 by lmfao

[lmfao]

15 hours ago, Keyhole said:

I have been on ssris in the past and currently have flat effect as well as the other symptoms that you describe, I don't know if it came from medication or mental illness or trauma.

Do you have PTSD?

@Keyhole Maybe "complex PTSD" ,aka gradual trauma, if you count that. Constant internal issues with my environment that built up, and when you're a young kid with autistic traits it's difficult to communicate how you're feeling to those around you, even if they have the best intentions. My parents are immigrants who grew up in very different circumstances to me, so there's a clash in communication.

I was surrounded by very heavy dogmatic stage blue things growing up, but also hyper competitive stage orange. 

Edited December 3, 2020 by lmfao

[lmfao]

@Enlightenment Nah, I'm still coming off SSRI right now. One day inshallah I'll take when I'm more stable and off these things. I'll be trying to use them slowly for therapy and shadow work rather than like spirituality or going extreme with it to understand non-duality. 

Did you get off SSRI's? Did the emotional blunting go away?

Edited December 3, 2020 by lmfao

[Corpus]

SSRIs are in some ways a triumph of marketing over substance eg they have not been demonstrated to be more effective than the older tricyclic antidepressants but do have the benefit of being much less lethal in overdose and have a less broad range of side-effects. This is not to understate the side-effects that many do experience especially in the initial few weeks of use (gastrointestinal effects being particularly common). Certainly they do help many people (but so do the tricyclics) and emotional blunting is "regarded as a good result" in others when the spiky edges of ones depressed mood become smoothed out, but this is not a restoration to a "happy state" but more like an attenuation of the misery.

Depression seems to be a label attached to a constellation of subjective/observable features and elicits a reflex response of the application of strategies from a fixed list without a consideration of how these features are produced. IMO, these include life experience and programming, biology, neurochemistry, genetic aspects etc, but we live in a quick-fix, do-what-you-can time where it becomes expedient (but superficial) to smear filler to the cracked plasterwork rather than evaluate the underlying brickwork for problems.

[Enlightenment]

14 hours ago, lmfao said:

Did you get off SSRI's? Did the emotional blunting go away?

I'm still getting off slowly. Emotional blunting goes away as my dose decreases

 

3 hours ago, Corpus said:

this is not a restoration to a "happy state" but more like an attenuation of the misery.

Depression seems to be a label attached to a constellation of subjective/observable features and elicits a reflex response of the application of strategies from a fixed list without a consideration of how these features are produced. IMO, these include life experience and programming, biology, neurochemistry, genetic aspects etc, but we live in a quick-fix, do-what-you-can time where it becomes expedient (but superficial) to smear filler to the cracked plasterwork rather than evaluate the underlying brickwork for problems.

There is no cure for major depression yet. SSRIs, therapy, tricyclics, or other drugs are all ways to decrease suffering and cope with a major depressive episode until it runes its course and goes away. Major depression is an episodic illness, about 95% of episodes last 2 months to 5 years, once triggered there's not much we can do to stop it. Blunting of emotions is good in MD cause it may be a difference between committing suicide and not committing suicide during a peak.

[Lyubov]

17 hours ago, Enlightenment said:

Venlafaxine blunted my emotions when I was on it but it was why I took it in the first place. Have you tried any psychedelics after being off of SSRI's?

I've taken this before and it was quite helpful for handling intense fear episodes as well as chronic fear and all the delusional thoughts that come with it. Its down side is that it does blunt emotions some (maybe -30% of intensity?) and makes it harder to cry. It also takes some time to get off of but if done properly it isn't so hard. Emotional blunting will also subside as well over time while coming off. Having a therapist or other avenues of emotional release and healing while coming off can speed up the process of gaining sensitivity back.