Antidepressants and sexual side-effects

[Ravenous]

Hi everyone. Sorry if this is the wrong forum but I have a problem.

For a big chunk of my life I've dealt with depression and anxiety. I have a friend who's a doctor and he put me on meds. I was on Paxil but now on Effexor XR 75mg.

For the most part they work pretty good but lately I've started feeling down again and he suggested I double the dose. Now the real problem is that when I'm with a woman I'm able to get an erection but it doesn't last long. It might only last 10 minutes or so. At 150mg it's even worse.

 

So anyway the doctor prescribed Viagra and it seems to work (only tried it once) but at $10/pill it's not really practical and I really don't want to take one 30 min before every time.

 

I started talking to a girl and I have a feeling that I need to get this problem taken care of but at the same time when things don't exactly go my way (i.e. I don't hear from her for a little while I start getting really anxious) so I can't exactly get off the meds. In my experience when I get off the meds and things are going ok it's fine but once something goes bad I start turning into a real mess.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions? And sorry if my thoughts seem to be all over the place.

[therookie]

Yes, I do have a suggestion. Ask your doctor to take you off the Paxil and to put you on Wellbutrin. This drug has less sexual side effects.

 

WOW! 150 mg is a lot to me! You should talk to your doctor about this dose....

[insofar]

Wellbutrin is awesome. If anything, your sex drive will go up. I was on Cipralex previously and it did bad things to my sex drive, switching to Wellbutrin has more than reversed it.

 

Unfortunately I've heard bad things about the withdrawal effects of Effexor. Be very careful as you're weening off of it. link removed has more info (ignore the site name, they're just making fun of themselves ).

[Ravenous]

I was on Paxil but then tried something else and then finally to Effexor. The first time I talked to my doc about the sexual side-effects he prescribed Wellbutrin to take WITH Effexor, not instead of. I did hear that Wellbutrin works differently so maybe I'll talk to the doctor about just going on Wellbutrin.

 

Insofar, unfortunately I know very well about the withdrawls of going off Effexor (sometimes forgetting my doses for 2 days, or quitting cold turkey when I was seeing someone). They're pretty bad but usually go away for me within 3 days.