Why Destroy Your Sexuality With an SSRI?

However, this line of reasoning may be inherently flawed; aspirin may relieve headache, but we do not therefore conclude that headaches are caused by low levels of aspirin in the brain.

Having had a lover whose life was never made better by massive doses of SSRIs I've never taken the serotonin hypothesis seriously. Indeed when he enduring two months of sheer Hell to kick his Zoloft addiction - not that psychiatrists label it as such - his life became slightly better.

The SSRI induced sexual dysfunction certainly didn't not make our relationship or his life any better.

SSRIs are 1) an easy way for a psychiatrist to feel they've done something; 2) a way for psychiatrists, particularly those who help the poor to deal with a patient quickly and move on to the next person on the assembly line; 3) a way for America's pharmaceutical companies to add yet more billions to their pockets.

Maybe I wouldn't have found my ex-lover dead on my dining room floor if he'd been offered something more useful than an addictive drug like Zoloft.

Consumer advertisements for SSRIs in the U.S. "typically claim that depression, or other psychiatric condition, is probably caused by a chemical imbalance of the neurotransmitter serotonin, and that SSRIs correct this imbalance," lead author Jeffrey R. Lacasse, MSW, a PhD candidate at Florida State University College of Social Work in Tallahassee, told Medscape. "They routinely use visual portrayals of a nerve synapse demonstrating the action of SSRIs, showing a 'chemical imbalance' which is then 'corrected' by the medication."

Gordon McCarter, PhD, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the College of Pharmacy of Touro University in Vallejo, California, agreed that the evidence for an "imbalance" in neurotransmitters causing depression is "circumstantial" and "more and more tenuous." He noted the dearth of studies showing any measurable difference in serotonin or norepinephrine between depressed patients and controls, with the limited positive findings based on suicide victims. Dr. McCarter was not involved in the PLoS Medicine essay.

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