My depression was lifted dramatically, but not by anti-depressants (I had a hormone issue), so for me a bunch of symptoms went away at once and in it’s place I felt normal, effortlessly happy more frequently, and life just wasn’t as hard - I felt more motivated to do things, I didn’t need weeks of recovery after a stressful event, I didn’t need a weekend of social isolation after going to a grocery store. I had less of a tendency to need or crave simple rewards, like food or video games. Food became less necessary as a reward, and my behavior towards food became less obsessive.

There was a sense of feeling so “normal” and like what you imagine other people must feel like. You start to understand why your colleagues and others in your life don’t seem to be struggling so much, how they can fit so much into their lives.

I didn’t really understand depression until these experiences - I thought what I experienced was just normal up until then, and blamed myself for being lazy or grumpy or ill-tempered by nature, rather than suffering from depression and other issues.

I have taken buproprion before, and it made me have mood swings where I became manic and filled with energy, then inevitably I would crash and feel awful. It also gave me TMJ from all the extra grinding my teeth were doing, so I had to quit (so painful!).

Manic heh

I’ve lived with depression for most of my life, but in the past year or so I finally feel like I’ve started to get a handle on it with treatment. It’s been like the weight I’m dragging just lightened up some. What would break me down before I can weather a bit better now, and it’s not as taxing to just do the basic parts of living. It took trialling a variety of meds, magnets to the head, shocks in the head, and ketamine for me to get to my current stable level, but most people don’t need nearly that much.

I’d say if by the time you’re asked you’re still feeling depressed and you can’t tell if it’s better, its probably not better enough to warrant continuing at the current dose. But! I’m not a doctor, so grain of salt.

Do people recover? Asking for a friend.

When I first started lexapro I would find myself just having a good time. I’d be sitting somewhere and realize “Huh, I feel… okay.”

Not happy or excited or interested, just… okay.

And then I would think “Wait, do other people feel like this all the time?”

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Low feels more numb than dark. More like being on pause than everything is terrible. More “I’ll try again later” and less “this is never going to get better”.

I don’t remember the transition. I can’t tell you how long it took. I was only on antidepressant medication for about 18 months.

Peace.

Short answer to your precise question, for while you’re transitioning to a new treatment:

What triggers for you a strong, negative emotion, every time you’re exposed to it? I knew I was recovering when they stopped hitting the same way. In my case, I was extremely sensitive to my friendships and was ultra-tuned towards any suggestion they were growing distant from me. A late reply to a text (bad), or two friends hanging out without me (devastating) really hurt. I knew something was up once those stopped bothering me so much.

Longer ‘answer’ detailing my whole experience:

Since I was a young child I was always unhappy, worried, etc. Suicidal ideation started in my early teens. In my late 20s, at the start of the pandemic when I was unemployed, living alone, and friends I had made in grad school were all ditching town to quarantine with their families, I was in an emotional crisis and I had real doubts I’d survive. I sought out treatment again (attempts years earlier failed for BS non-medical reasons, not worth getting into). I was initially prescribed with bupropion, which while it tends to be a good first choice for many people, in my case it enhanced my negative emotions. That was very, very bad. I was quickly switched to venlafaxine (FYI while it has terrible side-effects when getting onto it they usually resolve after a couple of months).

Anyway, after a few months of being on it / some dose increases every few weeks from the initial low dose, I started to feel better. I stopped craving the endorphins I’d feel from the extreme emotions of suicidal ideation, and I stopped overreacting to negative events / perceived slights from friends (say friends A & B played golf together and didn’t invite me, even though they know I hate golf and maybe just wanted their own 1:1 hang). This is sounding like “he stopped feeling anything”, but once the stress & anxiety & rehashing of the bad parts of my childhood disappeared, there was finally room for me to become the person I had always wanted to be (goofy, care-free, smiling, relaxed). The depression & anxiety didn’t fade into numbness, it got replaced with happiness. I can honestly say I feel happy a majority of the time and I’m one of the happiest people I know; I recognize bad events but they just don’t affect my baseline all that much. It’s like - if depression is always feeling bad, and while good events momentarily help they don’t last, then I have “anti-depression”. This whole process probably took about a year.

With the supervision of my doctor I am in the process of getting off venlafaxine. There’s nothing wrong with staying on it forever if need be, but some of the newer theories of how these drugs work suggest that your brain grows new neural circuitry as it adapts to the drug, and it’s the new circuitry that actually helps. If that’s true, then once the new circuitry is grown the drug isn’t actually needed anymore. We’ve been slowly decreasing my dose, monitoring my mood, and so far I’m still feeling great. I’m now on the lowest dose, and if things continue as they have then I won’t need a refill in 2 months.

Every time I share my experience I want to clarify a few things:

• For those who may get onto venlafaxine - it’s terrible side effects should fade over time. I almost quit taking it at first but I’m glad I continued.
• Some medications work for some people and not for others, while others work for them but not for the first group. Probably depression & anxiety are just symptoms of different afflictions. We can see the common symptoms but we don’t know which affliction causes it, but each affliction needs its own treatment. As a result the best you can do is keep trying treatments until you find one that works for your affliction; there are so many out there that there’s probably one for you.
• Related to the above, but therapy may help. It wasn’t super effective for me but it didn’t hurt either, but depending on the underlying cause you may have better luck with it.
• I’m going off venlafaxine because whatever underlying cause of my symptoms appears to have been permanently cured. That won’t be true for everyone - some diseases require ongoing medication to treat. Don’t go off your medication without your doctor’s supervision & approval; you’ll need your mood monitored to ensure it doesn’t worsen and some of these medications should never be abruptly stopped.
• One of my biggest regrets was not pushing harder earlier in my life for treatment. While my baseline is happy, I do get pissed thinking about how much I unnecessarily suffered and that I didn’t get to enjoy most of my 20s. If a reader (yes, you) are chronically unhappy and unsure whether to get treatment, just go for it.

I’ve been diagnosed with depression twice now and I’ve been on Sertraline/Zoloft both times, smallest 50mg/day dose.for about 6 months each time. Towards the end of it I had clear signs that I got better.

Main two observations:

1. I no longer got angry or frustrated. This was especially noticeable when I was looking after a 1 year old and then 3 year old on the second time. Specifically when the little one screamed irrationally.
2. Good days Vs bad days. Before starting the meds I think I had no good days for 3 months or so. Even when I did fun things or family days out. I wasn’t able to enjoy the good parts of life. After meds for a few weeks. I started to have good days, and then more and more of them. I still don’t have all good days but there are definitely more than when I had no meds

Anyways it was a slow and gradual progress for me and never that obvious in the moment, but upon reflection over the last few weeks it was usually visible.

Hope you manage to get better!

Depression is so very hard. Its unbelievably hard. I spent most of my life depressed. 13 to 50. Not being depressed is weird. I don’t know who to live without it. I tried drugs, they made it worse. Suicidal tendencies made it hard to take drugs. My first break was laughing at a kids movie, it was a real laugh. I broke down and cried. It was the beginning of getting rid of depression. Maybe 10 years before I was out of it. Things slowly changed. Lines like, “it is what it is,” helped. I work on mindfulness. I avoid thinking about anything that has negative emotions. Really, I avoid thinking. Mostly, you need to change the way you think and behave. I am not the person I was. I act and do things differently. Be willing to change anything to get out of it. Fear of change kept me in it for a long time. Good luck. You are not alone. You might be able to become a survivor. Keep trying.

It’s like boiling a frog in water or weight change over time. You don’t notice it until one day it hits you. It like, faded away but you didn’t notice because you’re so used to it. So you relish it and enjoy it until it inevitably comes back. It’s like a roller coaster but slow and shitty. Gotta have the rain to appreciate the sunshine as they say.

Before I was diagnosed, I tried the Zoloft my brother wasn’t taking, and that kinda put me in a numb cloud. I dealt with things better but it smashed down the good stuff too much so I gave up on that.

Tried a girlfriend’s free sample pack of something that wasn’t working for her, and that worked pretty well. Just leveled me out. It was harder for me to get frustrated and angry, and I just had a better baseline feeling. That was fairly early internet, so we had no clue what the pills were, so when they were gone, they were gone.

I don’t know how much any of that would have helped because I was still around my family, which was the prime source of my depression.

About 9 years ago, I hit a low point in life and decided to deal with this in an appropriate manner after realizing I’ve had depression for about 20+ years. Doc gave me Lexapro and said it would take 2 weeks or so to kick in.

I swear the next day I felt like a new person. The doctor said it doesn’t work that way, but I felt what I felt. Maybe I was just bone dry on serotonin and just a little bit was a shock to the system, who knows.

It didn’t make anything better, I want to be very clear on that. Before the pills, my insides were like a sponge. Anything that happened to me would soak in and get held onto. Bad stuff from my past, my own self esteem issues, any perceived slight someone gave me, whatever, it was all soak into my head and stay there until I blew up or panic attacked, etc.

What happened with medicine is now like I had an emotional raincoat. Most of that stuff would still hit me, but it would run off instead of soak in. The intrusive thoughts were there, my stressors were still there. But I could deal with them as they came up. I wasn’t still trying to get out from under a pile of them every time another hit me.

I could still get sad or depressed for no reason, but it felt like something I could handle instead of that being the only thing I could be. And that got better with time.

This year, I’ve been having problems again so I’m going to need to check in soon to discuss if I need to change something. I’ve been feeling slightly depression more often, I’m low on energy, and I’m losing interest in a lot of things I enjoy. There’s no real new stressors I’m aware of, so I’m not sure what’s going on.

I feel I’ve had a luckier time than many with medication, but even so, it isn’t a silver bullet, it’s still a chronic condition. Working meds just get you to the same starting line as “normal people” for you to deal with your day. You’re still running the same obstacle course every day, but you’re not starting way behind. Hope that was some help.

I used to have depression before I started HRT. I would dwell on all the world’s problems, and feel despair, and cry at night, and be quicker to anger when people annoyed me. Then within a week of starting HRT - not saying this would work for everyone, but it worked for me - my baseline magically got higher, most of the time I felt ok, found it easier to enjoy things, ignored the world’s problems, was calmer and less judgemental.

I’ve been having depressions since i was 12. I’m 44 now.

From the beginning i have been able to pinpoint the reasons for my depressions. I’ve been a caretaker of both my parents, leading to financial stress as well. In 2020 my father died, and i decided to cut back the contact with my mother, and deal with my financial problems.

I can honestly say i’m no longer depressed, and i don’t take any meds.

At first, all my days where black. Then they went to grey, and now i have a grey day every once in a while.

For me it helps that i learned to recognize the thoughts that would spiral me down the dark path. I have a playlist of music that makes me happy. I will play it whenever the need arises.

When i was depressed, even getting up in the morning was tiresome, i had no energy for anything at all. Along the way when the depression got less and less, my energy started to return as well. Noawadays i work 40 to 60 hours a day, and i love taking long walks with my dog. For me those where the moments i started to realize the depression started to go away :)

It feels like the floor is lifted, honestly. The low isn’t as low, and there’s maybe some more energy to do basic tasks. That’s the level of incremental progress I look for. It takes forever, and is super frustrating, but patience over a couple months is key, and always remember the side effects come first. Look for some kind of incremental change at least 4-6 weeks later. Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself either — if your provider (hopefully a psychiatrist and not a PCP) isn’t listening to your concerns, find one who will. Best wishes to you, and I hope something clicks soon.