Please excuse the swearing; I was intending on documenting this for personal purposes and later decided to share.
So today is august 11th i decided to start taking an ssri tonight i’m very nervous uh when the doctor suggested lexapro though i was like you know i’ve heard of lux pro it looks like it’s a good one to start on just because like i’ve heard good things first off like and like if you look online i think it has like one of the least amount of side effects i’m
Worried about like not being able to feel happy like that super high happy feeling ever again but i think i need to do something about it because this is just getting really bad and the thing is like i feel really really good for like a week or two like i said and then get really really bad again like afterwards and the really bad period is like really long
Like a month and then whenever i feel good i like forget about the times that i was feeling really bad and then i’m like i don’t need medication i guess my goals going into this want to manage my anxiety and depression i don’t want to be this lazy person that i’ve turned into and like that i can’t get up that i feel like i just want to like lay on the couch i
Don’t exercise anymore like i want to do things that i have always enjoyed doing like going on hikes and like go to yoga classes and go running like i don’t know i just want to like live my life again i want to stop self-sabotaging so much i want to be able to think clearly and creatively and i want to have a good memory like i really want my memory to get
Better i want to stop thinking that reagan and everybody else is like out to get me all the time i want to start doing things like i said like i want to start like hanging out with people and like being more social like i used to be such a social butterfly and now i just i don’t want to talk to people like that’s the last thing on earth i want to do because it
Makes me so anxious but i guess that’s all reagan just pulled in so first day going in i’m so nervous hello so i’m going to talk about my first night on lexapro it was awful i was actually not expecting to be like so physically sick i was more expecting like being depressed or like being mentally slow but i was not expecting like feeling like i have food
Poisoning i woke up probably around like two and i just started ripping my clothes off because i was just drenched in sweat like sweat was pouring off of me i’ve actually never seen that even like when i was sick like i’ve never seen that went to the bathroom and i just started my brains out just like so much diarrhea yeah i definitely don’t feel very good
Today it’s actually weird because like mentally i feel fine like i don’t feel anxious or like sad or anything like i feel fine mentally but my body like i still feel my stomach doesn’t hurt now but i’m like very lightheaded like every time i stand up um i have to get up like extremely slowly like i literally have to be like and like lean and like breathe and
Then like breathe and then like slowly try to stand up but yeah that’s how it’s been going so far it’s going really horrible so hopefully it gets better i did call the doctor and i told them about what’s going on because i asked like a bunch of my friends if this was normal some of them were like no other people were like yeah like i was super sick for like
A week so and my sister sierra she was like yeah i was really sick for like only a day or two and then i was like almost like my stomach didn’t hurt anymore so i’m just gonna take it easy for a couple hours and hopefully the doctor will call me back and i just want to make sure i don’t have like serotonin syndrome and like that it’s safe for me to continue
Taking it that’s the update first night on lexapro was awful hello so today is day three of lexapro and i didn’t record an update yesterday because i felt like extremely normal so i started taking a quarter of a pill which is zero point quartz 2.5 milligrams i think i did pretty good yesterday like i didn’t have any anxiety and i was just like really chill
And i slept like in the evening took like a three hour nap reckon then i did go like driving we had to like go to the grocery store and stuff and the grocery store was fine but when we were like driving in the car i did feel um a little like over stimulated i don’t know i’ve been sleeping really good i just started like having these weird dreams i don’t know if
Their dreams are like thoughts or like feelings but i like had this dream thing that my brain was like there’s like these shock waves in my brain and i could like see them and it freaked me out a lot and i was like oh my god i have serotonin syndrome and i woke up and i my heart i like i felt like i like stopped i would stop breathing like i’d go and
My heart started feeling like tense um i think it was an anxiety attack because or panic attack or something because i feel fine now like my heart doesn’t feel bad nothing feels bad um and it’s it was like only that one time and i had the same thing happen like the first night i started panicking thinking like oh my god i have serotonin syndrome um reagan has to
Take me to the hospital like right now um so i woke him up and i told him about like my breath and how um i need to go to the hospital and he was like justina you’re okay you’re having a panic attack like you’re fine you just like help me and um after like just like 10 minutes of that i went like right back to sleep and i slept all through the night and i woke
Up at like nine so we slept like 12 hours and whenever i woke up this morning i felt like really tired like i wanted to go back to bed like immediately and he was like we should get up and do something and i was like i don’t want to so we ended up going for a walk i like really didn’t want to go but i’m glad i went i have noticed that um like eating breakfast um
Has been helping me feel like a lot more normal even i really don’t want to eat but um just like having a couple bites of like toast has been helping a lot i have not been wanting coffee like literally the last thing on earth i want right now is coffee my psychiatrist and the um pharmacist told me to keep taking my adderall and i haven’t been because honestly
That sounds really awful right now and sometimes adderall makes me have more anxiety so i don’t want to like cause a panic attack um since tomorrow’s monday and i do need to go to work i was thinking about just like trying to take some adderall today and seeing how it it feels um and to make sure it doesn’t like throw me into a full panic um here at home so like
If i do take it tomorrow at school i won’t like have a full-on panic attack like at school so um one more side effect that i’ve been noticing is like every time i wake up i have been seeing like dots everywhere like i’m going to faint um but it’s only whenever i first wake up and it goes away like within the first hour of being awake so it’s like still really
Early in the day these have been like the longest days of my life oh yeah i forgot to mention i haven’t pooped since thursday when i had like all the diarrhea the first night so far yesterday was fine but today it’s pretty poopy hello so i wanted to come on here and make a week update on lexapro a week in to taking lexapro is whenever i started really getting
Some major and serious side effects so what started happening was um everything was continuing from day three like the last time i recorded to um a week in with the constipation um i was constipated for literally five days actually no it was six days when i did start you know making the poo um it was like really really hard sorry if this is tmi but like
This is the reality of what i was experiencing so that was a very minor side effect the other thing was i started getting like swollen lymph nodes um it was actually on one side in particular it was my right side it just started swelling and swelling and getting bigger and bigger and it felt like a literal egg like a size of an egg so yeah that was the first
Concerning side effect that i started experiencing around week one with the swollen lymph node i started getting um ulcers in my mouth like canker sores but they were in my throat is where they started and it was only on the side with this swollen lymph node which was weird started getting canker sores in the throat and then i started getting kicker sores on
My like inside on my cheek i started having increased amounts of panic attacks um and they were mostly at night so what that looked like is i was sleeping first off i do want to say like i was sleeping super super super well but what the panic attacks were looking like at night was i would wake up at like two three in the morning and my heart was racing um so
At first i didn’t know what this feeling was until i really started trying to be mindful of like where is this feeling coming from and i like would check my heart rate and it would feel super fast and that’s how i knew i was probably having some type of panic attack and um talk to my therapist about this i’ve been going to therapy for years by the way um to
Manage my anxiety and my adhd um so i talked to my therapist about this and we implemented um more strategies for dealing with like body anxiety because this was not mentally induced this is like my body just experiencing anxiety which is new for me because normally before i started medication it’s always my brain starting the anxiety which then causes my body
To have the the anxiety experience but this was like my body creating the anxiety and then my brain being like what the hell is going on like i’m not telling myself to panic right now so that was really really weird the first week and i also did want to mention one more side effect that is really really big and um it started at about day four or five i started
Having sorry if this is gross but vaginal bleeding and i was not supposed to be on my period so that was really weird and it was like a full-on period and it kept going until my normal cycle started and i had my normal cycle so that was really weird i told my doctor about it and he was like it might be because you having increased anxiety and it’s probably
Not the lexapro so um yeah so those are the major side effects that i was experiencing for the first week i definitely did see a major change in my mood in my sleep and the biggest one is how i was talking to myself mentally was so much more healthy than i was experiencing before i started deluxe bro um which is weird because i with all the research that i
Was doing it looked like people weren’t really experiencing like positive side effects until like a month in deluxe pro but for me i definitely did start seeing a major mood increase within the first week besides the crazy side effects that i was experiencing and then the last thing that i wanted to note on here is that i did start taking my adderall um with
The alexa pro and surprisingly even though like like i said the last thing that i wanted to do was take that adderall with it because adderall sometimes can make me have more physical feeling anxiety than mental um and i was scared it was going to throw me into a panic attack however um the adderall really did help me um in the first week and interestingly
I was taking a lot less adderall and i felt like it was working better which is really interesting and something major that i did want to know on here for myself so i’m i take 30 milligrams a day well that’s what i’m prescribed but the last week i was taking um like 15 milligrams a day and i felt like it was working as well as the 30. but i think that’s all
For the updates i have for the first week i don’t want this to deter anybody who is trying to fix their mental health um because everybody’s body is really different and you’re not really gonna know until you try um a lot of my friends are on lux pro and they love it and they didn’t have any of these side effects so yeah just don’t let this deter you but
This is my experience and i didn’t want to share this with anybody that you know might be experiencing the same thing so you feel like you’re not alone because this is you know a really scary thing to be going through but yeah i guess thanks for watching and i will make more update videos bye
Transcribed from video
Lexapro (Escitalopram) Week 1 Experience By Justina Stanislaw
