re: Middle aged males on antidepressants?

The shoulder being better wouldn’t hurt.

Went through a period like this 4-5 years ago when I was 35 after 2nd of 3 kids. Tried some SSRIs but decided they were not for me.

What did GREATLY help was changing my workouts to things that would actually kick my arse like heavier squats and deadlifts, sprinting. I could go 30k steps in a day but it had very little impact on my body.

My doctor also told me I was on the very low end of vitamin D range and a guy of my age/activity should be a lot higher. Started taking a daily supplement.

The return to weightlifting changed my body composition a decent amount and lost the 10 lbs of bad weight I had on me. Feel a lot better hitting 40 than I did at 35.

Won’t work for everyone but it worked better than benzos and lexapro did for me.

Also picked up playing guitar/ukulele again and boxing at the time. Having something to work towards In small increments was also awesome.

Have you tried deep breathing exercises? Long deep breathes (3 second inhale with 4 second exhale). IMO, CBD and breathing right works just as good as pharmaceuticals

Work in 10 days? For you, maybe. As others have mentioned, it takes a while for many SSRI's to work and that is assuming you immediately get the right dosage and combination. It is important to see the science behind psychopathology for what it is, and that is not a hard science. Thomas Szas' "The Myth of Mental Illness" is a good book if you are more interested. Having said that, I am by no means an expert on medicine and you would probably do better by following an actual psychiatrist's advice (like td0141) than myself or anyone else on this board. I am just offering my somewhat informed opinion and it is informed enough to know that SSRI's rarely outperform placebos. To make myself clear, if you are experiencing suicidal ideation, immediately consult an expert and be willing to try anything to keep you going.

I tried Lexapro a few years back. The weight gain and inability to keep an erection turned me off within a month.

Life is awfully hectic for me the last two months after suffering my home being flooded due to a busted water line in the attic. We have moved twice in eight weeks and I’ve been working 16-20 hours per day between normal job and house work. I’ve found that a THC pen works wonders for my anxiety lately.

What are you putting in your body? Keto/low carb can help with brain function.

Good luck.

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I’ve ready many of books on ptsd and pain and I believe my brain thinks danger is near anytime I have pain or feel sore. When that happens my body tenses up and I have a panic attack. I hate this feeling so much and over the past year I just don’t get excited for anything or care about anything.

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If your body is freaking out every time there's pain, maybe the answer isn't avoiding pain, but experiencing enough pain that it realizes pain is normal and not always traumatic. I wonder if one of those electronic muscle stimulators could help you send enough non traumatic stimulation to the area that your body gets over it.

Also, there have been a ton of articles the past year or so talking about how psychedelics appear to be really helpful with depression and PTSD. They're still illegal most places, but Denver "decriminalized possession", and with as uninterested as you seem in traditional meds, it might be worth looking into.

I had hypomania (situationally driven). Celexa helped. I took it just long enough to remember what normal felt like. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Some people give him a hard time but Jordan Peterson's work helped pull me out of a very dark time in my life. It is kind of interesting to see well-respected scientists like Andrew Huberman support some of Peterson's claims about Neuroscience. More specifically, how much of the neurochemistry within our brains is focused around duration - path - outcome. Or, as peterson puts it, through having an ideal and moving towards it. Often times, when things are feeling "wrong", it is because our goals or systems for accomplishing those goals are ineffective.

Can't live without meds. Don't sweat it.

A quack according to many.

His views on schizophrenia are laughable.