I was also briefly put on SSRIs as a teen and they gave me extremely vivid nightmares but had no benefit.
Also, for the record, I don't think dislike of unleashed pitbulls is Republican coded - here in CT, all these dog rescue pages are full of Republican women who are more concerned about abandoned pitbulls than seemingly people..
It's Republican-coded among people I know. In my observation, the case for treating pits like any other dog is a combination of standard left-of-center egalitarianism plus a baseline animal rights concern, and occasionally -- definitely not always -- a exaggerated child-free progressive notion that if your kid has appeared in public and somehow startles the dog, who bites, that's not really the dog's fault.
I came here to say exactly that about pitbulls. What could be more MAGA than a pitbull?! I think being “anti-unleashed-pitbull” might be CHH’s most dem-coded position!
“It’s easily my most Republican-coded opinion, along with my hatred of unleashed pitbulls in family parks.“
Interesting about the rescues being republican-coded. My take was more “MAGA people take pride in being mean, pitbulls are mean, ergo pitbulls are MAGA.” And like “your kid should toughen up - being mauled by a pitbull builds character” - seems like a MAGA thing to say :)
Yeah, the nightmare thing is real bad. I take Lexapro because the benefits (I no longer panic to the point of stress-vomiting about family vacations! I no longer have suicidal episodes in late November and April every year!) outweigh the side effects, but the thing where my dreams are vivid enough to be completely indistinguishable from reality sucks.
In terms of SSRIs how many different ones did you try before you gave up? Wellbutrin as an example doesn't cause decreased libido and in fact gives it a little bump.
And just something to keep in mind, I know multiple people who got worse as they got older and they always had an excuse for why they didn't want to take anything and it dramatically reduced their quality of life and that of their family. It was especially regretful when, in a few cases, they relented and went on something and dramatically improved and there was great regret about all that could have been.
You don't want the kids to be out of the house and your husband wanting to enjoy your time together and he says, "Let's do X." "I don't know, with my OCD..." "Let's do Y." "I don't know, you know my OCD..." "Mom can you come out for a week to help with the new baby?" "I don't know...you know with my OCD..."
I tried 4! They all sucked. It might be different for other people but it wasn’t a good experience for me. I did find some help with Buspirone but that’s not an SSRI
RTMS has been really effective for me. You usually have to show that you've tried multiple SSRIs with no effect or serious side effects before they approve it, but seeing no benefit from 4 should be sufficient.
How odd, I have never heard this term before... (then I also thankfully remained unaware of Twitter etc until 'too late')
However it seems to align to a certain "cat ladies" type stereotype [usage pre Mr Vance] encountered in DC area in the NGO sector (having tangential exposure via my renewables financing work afraid I used the reference for a certain kind of extremely tedious perso (typically white lady with grad degree, who likely was also online lecturing others about cultural appropriate and causing Cartoons such stress on her Morocco trip).
I also took them as a teenager with little benefit. I experienced a strong urge to cut myself and this was back in the days where the idea that SSRIs could cause increased SI or ISI was considered a crank anti-psychiatry idea mostly believed by scientologists so it was extra scary. The other odd change I noticed was that I became a lot more comfortable with unethical behavior. One of my right wing conspiracy theory coded opinions is that widespread use of SSRIs may well be changing our society for the negative by making people more apathetic. But I could be wrong about that.
One of the things that drives me up the wall is people treating SSRIs like they're magic. I've had people insist that the OCD will just go away with an SSRI. I have to explain to them that a high dose SSRI, which means lots of side effects, means 10-50% reduction in symptoms. One of my psychiatrists told me that if someone tells you their OCD went into remission with and SSRI they almost certainly never had OCD because that just doesn't happen. I'm sure there are people whose dysthymia went into remission with 10 mg of Prozac but OCD is a different beast.
People are welcome to take SSRIs if they want, but they're not nearly as effective as they're made out to be.
You know, I long said (something like) this about atypical antipsychotics, which were a terrible treatment for my bipolar disorder that I tried several times. But I realized that not everybody is the same, and they might be better for some other people. I still view them as a lazy, “set it and forget it” solution that does not optimize wellbeing like a more targeted suite of mood stabilizers, but I shouldn’t overgeneralize my experience. After all, on a genetic/biological/chemical level, the same set of bipolar symptoms can be caused by different things, and that is even more true for depression.
Not discounting your experience at all. I have not loved SSRIs myself. But I do think help some people.
(SSRI+atypical antipsychotic is an increasingly common treatment for major depression. I don’t love that. People should not take atyps unless they really need to to control delusions, because side effects can be bad and some can be irreversible.)
I'm not thrilled with the SSRI+ atypical antipsychotic combination for depression either. Especially when it's used for depression that is not severe. We have older antidepressants like tricyclics that are very effective and don't cause malignant neuroleptic syndrome, diabetes or tardive dyskinesia. They aren't perfect -- it's easier to fatally overdose on them -- but I'm not convinced that adding quetiapine is a better idea than trying one of the older drugs.
I tried SSRIs too. Lexapro did nothing but make me gain 15 pounds (after staying around the same weight for the better part of a decade) and decimate my sex drive (got off it a year ago and still struggling with that)—also it didn’t necessarily help my anxiety and depression, rather numbed me into a zombielike form. Meanwhile, Wellbutrin made me feel a) hypomanic and b) extremely constipated. I’d rather be vaguely anxious most of the time than any of that nonsense.
I kind of miss the neckbeard stereotype. The traits were at least funny in a sense, and far more specific than “incel” (which can be used for anyone at this point). Like the OG neckbeard, Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces.
Loneliness is for sure a major factor here. That said, if we're talking about white women as a cohort, I'm much much more concerned about the alcohol use, which is totally out of control. Middle/Upper class soccer moms being admitted for detox is not an uncommon occurrence.
I've read a few things that say the 40's are kind of the unhappiest decade for people and it's often because they can be stuck in the sandwich of caring for children and aging parents at the same time, plus the midlife reckoning that can make you reassess your whole life. It makes sense to me that women 45+ would be using SSRIs, whether married or not. Also perimenopause, menopause, etc. which is no joke. Misogynists like to hate on women and make up reasons later. That's why we're hearing about liberal white women (or AWFUL women) now because they realized a lot of the women they were accusing of being miserable single cat ladies were actually married or partnered.
I find it interesting the clichés, memes, or whatever that people have regarding groups that they don't "identify" with (that's my presumption). CHH started this by referring to "Republican-coded" attributes. Others here have picked up on that, speaking about "MAGA-coding."
The general tone, it seems, is that "Democrat-coding" or "liberal-coding" are the nice and kind ones. So, you can guess what "Republican-coding" must be for the the "Democrat-coded."
It's fascinating to me how today so many - how many I have no idea - have succeeded in dicing up the world so easily, and I wonder how we've been able to do this, knowing so very few people.
I was in Berkeley, Ca in 1969 when much dicing was going on. Cops, aka Pigs, shooting tear gas, guns shot at Pigs, people streaming down onto Shattuck Ave, breaking store front windows with two by fours. My youngest son is living in Mnpls now. A lot of dicing going on here as well.
I have online friends trying to persuade me to dice it up: hate this group, hate this person. Be angry. Ever since I refused to fight in Vietnam, and likely before, when I refused to put myself in a situation where I would have to kill rather than be killed, ever since Martin Luther King was shot down in Memphis, I have refused to take up sides, one against another. This tempest in Mnpls is close to us in many ways, dividing even our family. I surprised myself last night when I actually said, "Lord, kill me rather than allowing me to be filled with hate."
My wife was recently insulted by an older man and told to go dye her hair blue and get a nose ring. If he had been more with it, he could have told her to go take her SSRI's.
There was a major push in the 2000s-2010s to talk about mental health in the same way as physical health in order to destigmatize it. In practice, though, we're trying to treat symptoms whose causes are complex and not fully understood.
We hate unknowns in health and medicine, so as a result there's a lot of misplaced certainty on how the diseases and treatments work, from both the industry and patients.
That doesn't mean mental health issues aren't real, or that the treatments we have can't help, but there's still a mindset that these things fall into the disease/cure paradigm, like an antibiotic curing an infection.
Case in point, the "chemical imbalance" theory that went hand-in-hand with SSRI prescription for decades has been discredited in recent years.
I was also briefly put on SSRIs as a teen and they gave me extremely vivid nightmares but had no benefit.
Also, for the record, I don't think dislike of unleashed pitbulls is Republican coded - here in CT, all these dog rescue pages are full of Republican women who are more concerned about abandoned pitbulls than seemingly people..
It's Republican-coded among people I know. In my observation, the case for treating pits like any other dog is a combination of standard left-of-center egalitarianism plus a baseline animal rights concern, and occasionally -- definitely not always -- a exaggerated child-free progressive notion that if your kid has appeared in public and somehow startles the dog, who bites, that's not really the dog's fault.
I came here to say exactly that about pitbulls. What could be more MAGA than a pitbull?! I think being “anti-unleashed-pitbull” might be CHH’s most dem-coded position!
“It’s easily my most Republican-coded opinion, along with my hatred of unleashed pitbulls in family parks.“
Agreed, my friend's MAGA aunt is in so many dog rescue pages where I live, and it made me notice the other MAGA types who follow those pages.
Interesting about the rescues being republican-coded. My take was more “MAGA people take pride in being mean, pitbulls are mean, ergo pitbulls are MAGA.” And like “your kid should toughen up - being mauled by a pitbull builds character” - seems like a MAGA thing to say :)
1000% re: Pitbulls. I love pitties, and as a lib I can assure you the vast majority of pitbull lovers I encounter are MAGA. Would love to see a poll.
I promise if you polled anti-vaxxers almost 99% would profess love for pitbulls.
Yeah, the nightmare thing is real bad. I take Lexapro because the benefits (I no longer panic to the point of stress-vomiting about family vacations! I no longer have suicidal episodes in late November and April every year!) outweigh the side effects, but the thing where my dreams are vivid enough to be completely indistinguishable from reality sucks.
In terms of SSRIs how many different ones did you try before you gave up? Wellbutrin as an example doesn't cause decreased libido and in fact gives it a little bump.
And just something to keep in mind, I know multiple people who got worse as they got older and they always had an excuse for why they didn't want to take anything and it dramatically reduced their quality of life and that of their family. It was especially regretful when, in a few cases, they relented and went on something and dramatically improved and there was great regret about all that could have been.
You don't want the kids to be out of the house and your husband wanting to enjoy your time together and he says, "Let's do X." "I don't know, with my OCD..." "Let's do Y." "I don't know, you know my OCD..." "Mom can you come out for a week to help with the new baby?" "I don't know...you know with my OCD..."
I tried 4! They all sucked. It might be different for other people but it wasn’t a good experience for me. I did find some help with Buspirone but that’s not an SSRI
NDRIs aren't SSRIs either. It's a different class of drug with a different method of action. Just something to keep in mind.
RTMS has been really effective for me. You usually have to show that you've tried multiple SSRIs with no effect or serious side effects before they approve it, but seeing no benefit from 4 should be sufficient.
Wellbutrin isn’t an SSRI
I didn't think the term was being used so pedantically.
It’s not really pedantry, the drugs work very differently and in many cases one will help and the other won’t.
How odd, I have never heard this term before... (then I also thankfully remained unaware of Twitter etc until 'too late')
However it seems to align to a certain "cat ladies" type stereotype [usage pre Mr Vance] encountered in DC area in the NGO sector (having tangential exposure via my renewables financing work afraid I used the reference for a certain kind of extremely tedious perso (typically white lady with grad degree, who likely was also online lecturing others about cultural appropriate and causing Cartoons such stress on her Morocco trip).
Clearly the answer is to go on manly yet queer *SNRIs*, then you can be a twice divorced with kids bisexual slut like me 😎🤣
Didn't you post this already? It was a good article but I got confused since you didn't make a note it was a repost lol.
Yes, every Saturday I remove a paywall from a paid post and normally I clarify that but today I forgot!
As a fellow SSRI hater, I feel seen!
I also took them as a teenager with little benefit. I experienced a strong urge to cut myself and this was back in the days where the idea that SSRIs could cause increased SI or ISI was considered a crank anti-psychiatry idea mostly believed by scientologists so it was extra scary. The other odd change I noticed was that I became a lot more comfortable with unethical behavior. One of my right wing conspiracy theory coded opinions is that widespread use of SSRIs may well be changing our society for the negative by making people more apathetic. But I could be wrong about that.
One of the things that drives me up the wall is people treating SSRIs like they're magic. I've had people insist that the OCD will just go away with an SSRI. I have to explain to them that a high dose SSRI, which means lots of side effects, means 10-50% reduction in symptoms. One of my psychiatrists told me that if someone tells you their OCD went into remission with and SSRI they almost certainly never had OCD because that just doesn't happen. I'm sure there are people whose dysthymia went into remission with 10 mg of Prozac but OCD is a different beast.
People are welcome to take SSRIs if they want, but they're not nearly as effective as they're made out to be.
You know, I long said (something like) this about atypical antipsychotics, which were a terrible treatment for my bipolar disorder that I tried several times. But I realized that not everybody is the same, and they might be better for some other people. I still view them as a lazy, “set it and forget it” solution that does not optimize wellbeing like a more targeted suite of mood stabilizers, but I shouldn’t overgeneralize my experience. After all, on a genetic/biological/chemical level, the same set of bipolar symptoms can be caused by different things, and that is even more true for depression.
Not discounting your experience at all. I have not loved SSRIs myself. But I do think help some people.
(SSRI+atypical antipsychotic is an increasingly common treatment for major depression. I don’t love that. People should not take atyps unless they really need to to control delusions, because side effects can be bad and some can be irreversible.)
I'm not thrilled with the SSRI+ atypical antipsychotic combination for depression either. Especially when it's used for depression that is not severe. We have older antidepressants like tricyclics that are very effective and don't cause malignant neuroleptic syndrome, diabetes or tardive dyskinesia. They aren't perfect -- it's easier to fatally overdose on them -- but I'm not convinced that adding quetiapine is a better idea than trying one of the older drugs.
As a man who is on SSRIs and owns a fedora…I don’t know what to think.
The “58%” chart seems not very good. It’s in absolute numbers instead of percentages. I’d want to know what percentage of each demo is on SSRIs. There are more 45+ white women than 45+ white men, for instance. And population grows over time so yeah absolute numbers will go up for everyone. I have no doubt that white women are the biggest SSRI demo, but that chart doesn’t give an accurate sense of the scale. (Here’s the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/health/antidepressants-withdrawal-prozac-cymbalta.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IlA.4Elk.eLa3c9RCJUSw&smid=url-share)
Also, more people will have done /anything/ for 5+ years when they're older.
That was my first thought on seeing that graph! Without being adjusted for population size it is a meaningless graph
I tried SSRIs too. Lexapro did nothing but make me gain 15 pounds (after staying around the same weight for the better part of a decade) and decimate my sex drive (got off it a year ago and still struggling with that)—also it didn’t necessarily help my anxiety and depression, rather numbed me into a zombielike form. Meanwhile, Wellbutrin made me feel a) hypomanic and b) extremely constipated. I’d rather be vaguely anxious most of the time than any of that nonsense.
I kind of miss the neckbeard stereotype. The traits were at least funny in a sense, and far more specific than “incel” (which can be used for anyone at this point). Like the OG neckbeard, Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces.
Well written, m'lady! *tips fedora*
Loneliness is for sure a major factor here. That said, if we're talking about white women as a cohort, I'm much much more concerned about the alcohol use, which is totally out of control. Middle/Upper class soccer moms being admitted for detox is not an uncommon occurrence.
I've read a few things that say the 40's are kind of the unhappiest decade for people and it's often because they can be stuck in the sandwich of caring for children and aging parents at the same time, plus the midlife reckoning that can make you reassess your whole life. It makes sense to me that women 45+ would be using SSRIs, whether married or not. Also perimenopause, menopause, etc. which is no joke. Misogynists like to hate on women and make up reasons later. That's why we're hearing about liberal white women (or AWFUL women) now because they realized a lot of the women they were accusing of being miserable single cat ladies were actually married or partnered.
It doesn’t make sense to be anti-SSRI because you took them for a short time and you had a side effect. One has to balance the good and the bad.
I find it interesting the clichés, memes, or whatever that people have regarding groups that they don't "identify" with (that's my presumption). CHH started this by referring to "Republican-coded" attributes. Others here have picked up on that, speaking about "MAGA-coding."
The general tone, it seems, is that "Democrat-coding" or "liberal-coding" are the nice and kind ones. So, you can guess what "Republican-coding" must be for the the "Democrat-coded."
It's fascinating to me how today so many - how many I have no idea - have succeeded in dicing up the world so easily, and I wonder how we've been able to do this, knowing so very few people.
I was in Berkeley, Ca in 1969 when much dicing was going on. Cops, aka Pigs, shooting tear gas, guns shot at Pigs, people streaming down onto Shattuck Ave, breaking store front windows with two by fours. My youngest son is living in Mnpls now. A lot of dicing going on here as well.
I have online friends trying to persuade me to dice it up: hate this group, hate this person. Be angry. Ever since I refused to fight in Vietnam, and likely before, when I refused to put myself in a situation where I would have to kill rather than be killed, ever since Martin Luther King was shot down in Memphis, I have refused to take up sides, one against another. This tempest in Mnpls is close to us in many ways, dividing even our family. I surprised myself last night when I actually said, "Lord, kill me rather than allowing me to be filled with hate."
My wife was recently insulted by an older man and told to go dye her hair blue and get a nose ring. If he had been more with it, he could have told her to go take her SSRI's.
There was a major push in the 2000s-2010s to talk about mental health in the same way as physical health in order to destigmatize it. In practice, though, we're trying to treat symptoms whose causes are complex and not fully understood.
We hate unknowns in health and medicine, so as a result there's a lot of misplaced certainty on how the diseases and treatments work, from both the industry and patients.
That doesn't mean mental health issues aren't real, or that the treatments we have can't help, but there's still a mindset that these things fall into the disease/cure paradigm, like an antibiotic curing an infection.
Case in point, the "chemical imbalance" theory that went hand-in-hand with SSRI prescription for decades has been discredited in recent years.