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Comment by elliotec | Hacker News Reader

Same. I'm a big time psychedelic advocate, and relatively frequent consumer.

Prozac actually saved my life. Psychedelics since have certainly enhanced it, but they could not accomplish what prozac did. I can go into more detail if interested.

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Please do, I’m genuinely interested in your experience because, in my experience (!!) with family and acquaintances, I’ve only ever see Prozac as a part of a turn for the worse. I do acknowledge I might not be aware of cases where it was neutral or positive, however.

What was your experience like? And do you still take it?

> I’ve only ever see Prozac as a part of a turn for the worse.

You might be interested in the book "Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty"[1] by Patrick Radden Keefe. Although it focuses on Oxycodone and other painkillers it touch on Prozac and other SSRI's. Quite the eye opener...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Pain

When mental health is so bad it messes with work and personal relations one may feel obligated to share. When things start going well there's no need to explain what's going on. I've seen many that it works for and some where they just had to keep looking at other options.

Ditto with family. One antidepressant led to another, and then to another, and on to deeper depression, suicide attempts and more. Finally landed through the prescription pill grapevine on Xanax, which by far, without any comparison whatsoever, was the most persistently destructive and frightening. Like dropping a nuclear bomb on the whole family, for years and years.

I don't mean to bring other classes of drugs in, only to note that it is _very common_ for someone to go in for one thing, find it doesn't work, and then to start tweaking / adding / combining in an attempt to find a solution, and that's where the real problems often live.

SNRIs nearly killed me and SSRIs were not much better. LSD saved me. So there is some anecdata.

Same here, but sertraline.

Wouldn't be here today without it.

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