>>21039288In my experience SSRIs are good if you have a bout of depression, went through some rough patch in life etc. and you feel like even after there's no more stressors you can't seem to go back to normal, just permanently in a dark hole. Or if there's shit going on in life where you're feeling too much crap is going on and you know you're going to get into that hard to escape black hole again, cause you've been there and you know the signs it's coming.
To overcome a "bout", level the playing field, it's fine to take for a few months. Especially lexapro cause you reach a therapeutic effect fast and there's not much withdrawal (you feel under the weather for 1-2 weeks). The positive effect can be described that after 2 or 3 weeks of taking, you suddenly realize you have a more positive outlook on things and you don't feel stress having such a tight grip over you.
For better or worse, to me it's not a "going to take them for the rest of my life" option. In the long term the weight gain is always an issue, actually increased apptetite or bad eating habits remained for months after quitting each time and had to make effort to do something about it. Plus, even with lowest possible dose, I always reach a weird kind of plateu with them, hard to describe but I have this feeling like reached some "saturation" with the medicine, also the positive outlook starts to be a little too much, start having these off character kumbaya peace&love moments where I for example don't keep at a distance people (ie. toxic relatives) that I know from experience is not a good idea to get too chummy with, get invested emotionally way too easy, things like that. I took SSRIs three times in my life for several months and each time I reach a point where I just feel like it's enough and I get off them.
