SSRI question

December 29, 2005

How long have you been off the zoloft? My experience with an MAO

inhibitor was that it took about a week of lowered dosage for

depressive symptoms to return.

A better treatment option would have been one-at-a-time trials of the

3 meds, staring with the most likely, to isolate the disorder

responsible your symptoms. If things have improved for you since

dropping the zoloft, and if improvements stay, then you have narrowed

it down to hypothyroidism or hypogonadism. I guess two disorders can

exist simultaneously, but more often a single endocrine system

malfunction messes up other systems.

Hope your symptoms stay gone.

I am on TRT (depo shots), synthroid, and 200 mg Zoloft a day.

These were all started at the same time so it's unclear which of

these was responsible for the improvement in my symptoms (which were

the typical hypogonadism symptoms - lethargy, lack of energy,

depression, etc.). I have recently stopped taking the Zoloft for 2

reasons - first and most importantly, sexual side effects. I had

almost no sex drive before starting these three treatments (because

of the hypogonadism), and my sex drive improved minimally upon

treatment. Since transitioning off the Zoloft over the course of 2-4

weeks my sex drive has improved substantially, and I'm hoping it will

continue to do so. My question is, how long after stopping the Zoloft

should I expect the depression to return, if the Zoloft was helping

the depression? ----

December 29, 2005

HI Ben I was treated for Major Depression before they found me to not be

depressed. I was on so much AD drugs I had to go into Re-Hab to get off the

drugs. I never felt better in AD drugs and was on time 5 yrs. When a Dr. found

me to have low T and put me on TRT them feeling went away and never came back.

This is my story and the story of many men so go from there.

Phil

Ben <btcarter777@...> wrote:

Hey guys,

Since we have been talking about SSRI's recently, I figured I'd pose this

question here. I am on TRT (depo shots), synthroid, and 200 mg Zoloft a day.

These were all started at the same time so it's unclear which of these was

responsible for the improvement in my symptoms (which were the typical

hypogonadism symptoms - lethargy, lack of energy, depression, etc.). I have

recently stopped taking the Zoloft for 2 reasons - first and most importantly,

sexual side effects. I had almost no sex drive before starting these three

treatments (because of the hypogonadism), and my sex drive improved minimally

upon treatment. Since transitioning off the Zoloft over the course of 2-4 weeks

my sex drive has improved substantially, and I'm hoping it will continue to do

so. My question is, how long after stopping the Zoloft should I expect the

depression to return, if the Zoloft was helping the depression? My mood has not

really changed since I stopped it which makes me optimistic that it will stay

good, but I know that the effect on mood is not going to change overnight, as

soon as I stop the drug. So, for anyone that knows about this stuff, how long

after stopping an SSRI will it take for its effect on mood to drop off? One

month? 2? More?

Thanks,

Ben

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December 29, 2005

Thanks for responding. I reduced my dose to 100 mg/day for about 2-3 weeks, then

quit cold turkey about 2 weeks ago. So far no noticeable changes, so that would

be fantastic if I could stay off the Zoloft. You are right that it would have

been more prudent to start the treatments one at a time...actually, I started

out with JUST the Zoloft - but at a lower dose of 100 mg/day. After about 2

months on this with no improvement, my doctor upped my dose to the maximum used

(200 mg), and it was at this time that my hypogonadism and hypothyroidism was

diagnosed. So it wouldn't have made sense at that point to stop the Zoloft just

to see if the testosterone and thyroid medication would do the trick,

particularly because most doctors regard Zoloft as a pretty safe drug.

I had an MRI to try to rule out a pituitary tumor, but it's still uncertain

exactly what is going on...right now my doctor and I are thinking that I have

always been hypothyroid but it has been undiagnosed, and the hypogonadism is a

more recent thing. I went through an eating disorder about a year ago, and it's

possible that that caused a general pituitary slowdown (which would account for

the low thyroid and testosterone levels) -- or that it just caused the

hypogonadism (and the throid issue was preexisting).

Right now I am also kind of confused about what to do next because I have been

on depo for about 8 months and I don't think that my body has lost the ability

to produce testosterone - I think it was caused by the eating disorder and

should slowly return now that I am at a healthy weight and everything. But at

the same time, I don't want to quit the supplemental testosterone because I felt

so horrible before I was off it. My doctor does not specialize in endocrine

issues, so although he's a good doctor he's not really up to date on this stuff

- does anyone have any recommendations (or a link to a site that deals with

these issues)?

Thanks,

Ben

Summers <rsummers@...> wrote: