Page 96 - Cosmopolitan - UK (April 2020)
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come, trying to finish myself, and
I have questioned why I’m still
taking citalopram. Feeling light-
headed and horny, the temptation
to quit the tablets entirely becomes
all I can think about.
But this would not be a good idea
for me. Taking citalopram didn’t just
dramatically improve my life – it
saved it. A period of depression had
left me confined to my
only took pills for a matter of days, “Sex doesn’t have crumb-filled, sweat-stained
but two years on, symptoms remain. bed, sleeping throughout the
For some, these sexual issues could to be the traditional day and an insomniac during
be down to the depression itself, the night. Pleasures became
with SSRIs merely exacerbating heterosexual penis- pleasureless, emotional pain
the problem. Dr Juliet McGrattan, became physical self-harm.
a health expert and former GP, says, in-vagina way” But finally, medication
“When you’re depressed, there are galvanised me.
chemical changes and imbalances in Although SSRIs have faced
the brain that make you stop enjoying depression. Unfortunately, few of some fierce criticism that debates
things in life, and that includes sex. these have taken place. In addition, how helpful they actually are, and
Sometimes patients would come to the effects and speed of the much is still unknown about their
me concerned about a lack of sex medication varies from person to workings (and even about depression
drive and after exploration we would person – so it could be positively itself), it’s clear that they do work,
work out that depression was the impacting your mood, while still in some way, for most people. In
underlying cause,” she explains. To compromising your sexual function. 2018, the largest-ever review of
truly separate which symptoms are antidepressant trials (including
†
caused by depression itself and what’s Coming off to come some that weren’t SSRIs) showed
a side effect from the drugs, a large There have been times when I’ve that every single one of the 21
study would need to be conducted been holding my anaesthetised studied, including citalopram,
on adults who don’t suffer from penis in my hand, desperate to worked better than a placebo.
96 · COSMOPOLITAN
