What You Must know About Antidepressants.

What You Must Know About Antidepressants.

The Shocking Truth behind the SSRIs

Dr Andrew Rynne.

Already this year I have dealt with four people, all of them women incidentally, though they could have as easily been men, suffering from gross sexual dysfunction as a result of having taken antidepressants sometime in the past. All four were suffering from varying degrees of the sexual dysfunction called Persistent Sexual Anaesthesia and all four had similar sorties for having been on a medication called Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors or SSRIs for short.

And I’m only a small-town medical practitioner who happens to have a small Internet medical practise to help people with sexual problems. I mean to say, if I have seen four sufferers of this horrible condition in five months, then this can hardly be a rare problem now can it? Persistent Sexual Anaesthesia following the use of SSRIs is a common problem and yet nobody seems to be doing anything about it, or for that matter, seem to know anything about it.

Here is a brief synopsis of these cases:

Case No.1. A woman aged 32. She gave history of having been on Cipralex 10 mg daily for one year up to three years ago. Shortly after having been put on them and ever since discontinuing them as she describes it, it takes her “forever” to reach an orgasm. She still has sexual desire but reaching orgasm is, in her own words, “a lot of work”. At times this can be so difficult as to make her wonder if its worth all the effort!

Case No.2 This is a 37 year old who had been on Concerta 56 mg daily for two years. She was put on these to treat her Attention Deficit Disorder. Concerta is not an SSRI but is described as a psycho-stimulant and amounts to the same thing as it affects brain chemistry. Having been on this medication for a few short weeks, this woman began to notice that her orgasms were not as intense. This deteriorated over time such that she eventually could not say if she had an orgasm at all or not. Although off all medication now for two years, her sexual feelings have not returned. This is sometimes called Sexual Anhedonia.

Case No.3. This is a lady age 42. Because she felt very low after a breakup in a long-term relationship five years ago, her doctor put her on Zoloft. When this did not seem to agree with her she was switched to Lexapro. She remained on this medication for just over a rear. While taking it and ever since discontinuing it she has lost her ability to reach orgasm or to experience it, to know if it happened or not. She is utterly devastated and distraught and I am at a loss to know how I may help her. If you have any suggestions will you please let me know?

Case No.4 Finally, this is my most recent casualty to the SSRIs. She is a 40 year old woman from Australia. Three years ago she was going through a hard time so her doctor put her on Zoloft, then Effexor and then Lexapro. She has been off all medications now for over two years. But her sexual anaesthesia persists. She has no feelings – meaning that when her husband stimulates her sexually she feels nothing at all. This is putting a huge strain on her marriage and she fears the worse. Again I’m at a loss as to know what I can do to help her.

Here are just four cases collected by this small-time medical practitioner in a matter of five or six months. If I’m seeing this then so must hundreds of thousands of other doctors be seeing it out there? This problem must be known about by the medical profession and the drug manufacturers alike. And yet there is still nothing in the patient information leaflets to warn people of these terrible potential lifelong side effects.

This seems to be a case of everyone for themselves. If you are ever asked to consider taking a SSRI antidepressant then my strong advice would be to think long and hard about it first. If you value your sex-life I would give them a wide berth.