Anti-depressants and cycling

Training
21

Respectfully, this comment really concerns me. If you or a member of your family have never had anxiety/depression to the point that it completely debilitates you, then you would not understand how critical seeking help through therapy and treatment is to one’s survival. Agree physical activity is a doorway to better mental health, but if you can’t even get out of bed in the morning then none of that’s gonna matter. It took me nearly having a nervous breakdown to find compassion and understanding for those going through it.

While I still take my Prozac my use of other meds to calm me down has been eliminated thanks to time spent on the bike.

Everyone is different so it will be hard for you to know about your specific circumstance. What got me over the hump of reading all the side effects was realizing how many people take these meds and benefit greatly (I also stopped reading the side effects :facepunch:).

If you saw your doc and then prescribed something for you then they felt the benefits outweighed the risks. I hope you find peace. God bless. Ride hard!

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22

Amen👆

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23

Glad to hear you are successfully dealing with issues you had. The point of my original post was so that all aspects of the issue could be discussed as is the case in a whole range of threads on this forum. Clearly the experience of yourself and others show where the use of medication has been a useful course of action, I just wanted to emphasis that is not always the ideal solution in the long term. I have at no stage questioned the veracity of specific courses of actions for individuals merely pointed out the dangers that can occur to the wider population when this course of action is routinely used by medical professionals.

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Instead of getting in on a debate of usefulness here, maybe if we could sum up everything, it’s there are multiple ways to address what you are going through. There are downsides (and upsides) to any scenario, but just know that you have support here for whatever happens. Just be sure to understand that there are side effects with the drugs, but this may still be the best situation for you, and you should never feel shame in prioritizing self care. In hindsight, my experience at the start of taking meds was so bad, I should have taken therapy more seriously at the start. I say this not to scare you, but just to make sure the whole picture is considered before making a decision.

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25

I think the point was in regards to providers jumping straight to medications, not in reference to the patients exploring their medication options. Having done a career in health care, I will attest that a surprisingly large number of providers would rather just prescribe a pill versus actually talking with a patient to try to discover the true nature of their illness. By no means am I singling out mental illness here either. The physician that prescribes an antibiotic for a viral infection is a perfect example. Yet, such abuse of medications is rampant, at least in the U.S. If it were not, we would not have the opiod problem we currently have.

I certainly do not want to shame anyone. I have close personal friends and family members who have benefited greatly from antidepressants. At the same time, I have also had a close family member who was very irresponsibly prescribed Lexapro with disastrous results. To point out that patients deserve to be adequately assessed and all treatment options evaluated before prescribing a prescription medication, regardless of the nature of the illness, is in no way shaming anyone. Cheers,

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27

I think no. I was taking something like CBD gummies which I bought on Gold Bee. I had a strong anxiety and because of this I began insomnia . I’m tired of it and I decided to overcome. It didn`t affect my physical activity. I had an even greater mood for cycling and running. I think you will have that too!

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It will take 6 weeks to settle in. Don’t bother trying to gauge it’s impact until then.

For me. It was a net gain in the rest of my life

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I feel you are quite right.
I am on them, but would have loved to try something more natural like CBD oil.
As for the effect of training, it’s better for me as I have the motivation for training. Without them I am not in the state to train.

30

Happy to see this thread. I’m going through a similar issues at the minute and weighing up the pros and cons. I don’t want to lose any fitness or drive, but I know deep down happiness is more important and will probably actually help my cycling and fitness and life in general rather than hinder it. I’ve just booked a doctors appointment to get started…

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31

So I’ve been on sertraline, generic for Zoloft, for about four months.

The initial nausea was awful, but it subsided after about 7 days. Mood improvement was immediate. For me, it’s about helping with OCD/anxiety that runs in my family and causes all of us to be fairly unpleasant people at times. My ability to patiently manage my 6 year old daughter at night was getting worse and I didn’t like who I was when she would push buttons, so that is what ultimately got me to follow in my family’s footsteps and try and SSRI.

The net effect in terms of happiness and mood has been great.

That said, I have noticed my “motivation” for my own riding is less, and recently I’ve been struggling some with nausea and lower energy again. The energy decline CAN be normal for me this time of year, as I don’t love being outside in heat and humidity personally, and we have no events here until January. So August is my normal downtime anyway.

But I am growing a bit concerned with the energy and how my stomach has felt the last week-plus. So, I’ve swapped to taking my dose in the evening, about 3hrs before kid’s bedtime so I’m ready to fight that battle (LOL) calmly and patiently, and hopefully the worst of the nausea stuff is gone by 9am the following morning and I have the energy and feeling to train.

I have family members on Lexapro, they don’t have issues with nausea but they do say they get “foggy”, and that’s about what I have felt this week alongside the nausea. Hopefully changing the dosing time will do the trick.

FWIW, I self-medicated with tons of training and riding and stuff over time, but I would absolutely obsess over missing workouts, etc., and it was all I could think about sometimes. That’s just one example of things here, but for me the net gain in happiness has been worthwhile. That said, I think it has somewhat negatively impacted my riding/training/motivation. (No weight gain or anything like that). But again, that’s after three months where I was basically not racing any longer due to other reasons, so it might just be that natural training lull. When I do train and ride, nothing feels much different. Until I took a break I was able to do the same watts and TTE stuff, raced well, etc.

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32

This is one i have years of experience with, i was born with shite genes and unfortunately that means my brain chemistry, like my cousins and aunts, went off track around age 25.

When my medication is not working, i am non-functioning, check him into hospital levels of anxiety and depression. When it is working i am the same person i was before 25. Its like a light switch for me.

Ultimately finding an AD is a search for something that works, and has the least suckiest side effects.

Overall though if you need one, it will be a net improvement on your life

Heres my experience:

  • Fluoxetine (prozac, lovan) was my first AD. Unfortunately helped a bit but didnt work in the long run for me. Didnt notice any exercise effects. Did make downstairs misbehave a bit though

-Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) - worked great for me for 5ish years. No real impacts on fitness other than the increased motivation of wanting to be alive. Brain zaps did suck every now and then, but you cant have everything.

-lexapro and zoloft - didnt work for me, turns out my liver processes most of the ssri family too quick for it to get to my brain. No fitness impacts though whilst trialling both at different doses.

-effexor (venelafaxine) - i think i lasted two days on this before i had a racing heart rate and we pulled the eject cord.

  • TMS - not an antidepressant but a treatment. Didnt work long term for me but also had very few side effects.

  • ECT - when nothing else is left you do this. It sucks, but if you get to this point cycling is your least concern. It sucked, but it probably saved my life.

I am now on nortriptyline for 6ish years, a TCA. This stuff is oldschool and unfortunately it does have cardiac impacts. My resting hr is higher and my hr doesnt seem to respond as fast when needed. As i get older will need to look for something new. BUT i want to be alive, play with my kids, be succesful at work etc.

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Having delt with depression all of mty adult life, I have to agree that antidepressants are given out too easily without looking for root causes. I just had a life changing discovery after realising my boy has ADHD, turns out that I have always had ADHD and it was this that had caused all my depression and anxiety and anger issues. Since moving to using these meds I have dropped everything else and life has been awesome. It saved my marriage too. So I would say that try to look for root causes and don’t just cover over the cracks, I wish I found this out a long time ago.

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thank for sharing! Effexor strangely has been the only thing so far to help me with both anxiety and OCD, but it does impact any sort of downstairs drive. Otherwise, it does help with feeling more like I want to live.

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Quick followup to my August post, the switch to taking my SSRI in the evening has solved my nausea and energy problems with no detriment to my sleep. Mess around with timing to alleviate side effects.

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