I have suffered from lifelong anxiety my entire life. Phobias would arise, only to be replaced by new phobias and worries. I've been through a lot of the typical ones; panic attacks, choking, health anxiety, throwing up, blurting things out in public, harm ocd, etc etc. Often one at a time, but sometimes two or three. It was like whack-a-mole.
Lately my anxiety had gotten VERY bad. I was suffering from multiple panic attacks per day or week, and I was starting to get scared of going out driving and doing my normal things. I really needed to get a handle on things before any of these new fears became ingrained in my brain pathways.
I had tried multiple antidepressants over the past few years. Some gave me hives, some gave me bad side effects. Some did nothing. Some made me sleepy. However a few friends of mine told me about how Celexa was working for them so I decided to give it a go.
I'm about 4 weeks in and at about week 2 I started noticing a change. I feel SO much less anxious. It really is dramatic. I am not totally cured, I still have some stuff to work on, and I still occasionally have flashes of the beginnings of panic attacks (although much, much less frequently). But my goodness I feel like I have a handle on my life agan after feeling like my anxiety was getting completely out of control.
Just posting here because this was my 6th or so medication I tried, and I was about to totally give up on trying meds. The worst side effect for Celexa for me is a bit of dehydration/dry mouth.
I just really encourage some of you to keep giving meds a try if stuff is getting so bad that your typical CBT won't work. Sometiems our brains just cannot fight bad anxiety with just CBT and relaxation/meditation/etc alone, and needs a helping hand to get over a bad patch.
Again, I'm not cured. But this stuff helped me quite a bit.
