Anyone else on ssris and experiencing ed as a side effect? How do you guys deal with it? It’s so frustrating that in order to take care of my mental health I have to sacrifice having a confident sex life. I feel like every time I’m having sex I’m letting down my partner somehow.
Have you considered slightly lowering your dose to test whether you can have the same benefit mentally, while slightly improved sensitivity in your penis? This helped me. I was on 10mg SSRI, and tapered down to 5mg over the course of two weeks. My mental health is the same, but I can feel my penis more.
Hey man, I was in exactly the same position. I didn’t realise how negatively it was effecting my erections until I tried to have sex with a new partner. As soon as I realised I began a hard and fast taper off, and have now been fully off the drug for about 4 days. I am starting to feel normal function slowly returning.
The problem with SSRI’s is that it can sometimes be inevitable that they cause these issues. That’s just the way they work. Flooding the brain with serotonin not only gives your brain the illusion of total satiation (meaning it doesn’t see the purpose of having sex), but it also significantly reduces dopamine (which is critical for arousal and proper sexual function).
Things you could try before stopping them might be:
- Cut out porn and masturbation completely, as well as any activities which might be overly stimulating and deplete your dopamine even further than it already is.
- 30 minutes of medium-high intensity cardio 3-4x per week. Lift heavy weights too.
- Daily sunlight, get out in nature as often as possible.
-Angion method (google this)
-L citruline - super healthy diet and healthy weight
- healthy sleep
The thing is, if you started doing all these things, it’s likely you would end up not needing the antidepressant in the first place. Doing all these healthy activities, and living as a human is supposed to live, will have a far better benefit to your mental health than an SSRI will.
Good luck
1 Like
Holy crap they should put the angion method in this app. Never heard of it before until your post. I already had sex today and just tried it after googling…let’s just say I had a full hard on (one I haven’t had in years). If it’s this easy I will be doing this to help when I am trying to have sex or just before. Good luck everyone!