Do Aspies React Much More Strongly to Antidepressants?

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I don't have BP. My doctor ruled it out, based on my lack of insomnia, mostly normal sleep schedule, and peaceful demeanor during less-depressed times. So thanks for caring, but I don't expect this to happen.

My guess is like most things autistic it's a case of extremes. Some will react much more strongly, some will react much more weakly.

I got a very strong benefit from a ridiculously low dose of Paxil (about 2.5 mg, average dose is 20+ mg) even after the first dose--it totally changed my mood from bitter to positive. On the other hand I also got side effects that are normally only seen at much higher doses (bad insomnia, slight blurring of vision just as it was starting to work, strong jitters about 24 hours later, and even pronounced effects on functioning "down there"). Once it was out of my system, I went on 5-HTP and had a very dramatic response even at about 15 mg (common doses are in the hundreds of mg). No side effects in this case, just bright mood, but calm and restful, unlike the hyper manic-like optimism from for example caffeine. At one point I even felt like mundane things were hilariously funny. As I got used to the 5-HTP I got up to ~30 mg/day, though some days I need more like 50 because I don't feel it working as much.

So yes, some of us can be very sensitive, both in positive and negative ways.

When I take Risperidone or Seroquel I get the lowest baby dose possible and literally nibble a corner off the pill. I would estimate that my Risperidone intake was roughly .06 mg (one quarter of .25 mg).

I've been on Sertraline 5 years now, and I must say they do help. Before I went on them, I kept losing control of my emotions and having angry outbursts, and was very difficult to live with. So I tried Sertraline, starting off with 25mg, and I had no side effects. I wasn't sure if they were working or not, so I went up to 50mg, and ever since then I have not had ONE angry outburst. I've had panic attacks, depressive episodes, excessive crying and anxiety, but no angry outbursts. I have been easier to live with, and being emotional, anxious and having panic attacks every now and then are still easy to deal with, as a lot of non-Aspie women get emotional and anxious. So I haven't hit myself or yelled abuse at those I love since I have been on Sertraline.

The only thing is being on Sertraline has made my ADHD seem 'worse', which is how I got my ADHD diagnosis. But I prefer that to outbursts any day. Also being on Sertraline has brought back my travel sickness. I used to get travel sickness as a child but then grew out of it when I was about 16 or 17, but as soon as I started taking Sertraline at 24, I began getting travel sickness again for some reason. Also I do find I have attacks of nausea, which I put down to being on Sertraline, even though I've been on them almost 5 years.

I'm quite happy on Sertraline, which is why I hate it when I come on here during a panic or depressive episode and get told to switch my tablets or up the dose. I'm not being ungrateful, I know people mean well when they suggest that, but I prefer to stay as I am. I take other meds too, like sinus meds and sometimes antisickness meds if I feel too sick (the doctors know about my severe emetophobia), so I rather just stay on 50mg of Sertraline. The truth is, I don't really want to be taking antidepressants at all, but I kind of had no choice, because the outbursts I used to have made me feel like an angry, hateful, psychotic lunatic. I mean, nobody wants to see a loved one whacking themselves in the head in frustration because they hate themselves, or repeatedly kicking a poor defenseless door in just because it's snowing outside or some other first-world problem that is causing all this distress for them. I just couldn't go on like that. I felt like it was tearing my family apart, and I don't know what the neighbours thought.

Do be weary of the withdrawal effects with Venlafaxine. I took the 37.5mg twice a day (standard tablets; not XR) for about a year. When I stopped taking it, the withdrawal effects were rather bad.

I was able to go a day or two without it though if necessary. I hear some people barely manage with one missed dose.

Otherwise it did work fairly well as an antidepressant.

Oh Venlafaxine was the first one I tried. I was given the lowest dose, and I opened the pill and ate only one of the mini pills inside. I almost immediately became moody and angry. My mind focused on negative thoughts. Tried it several times and felt horrible every time. Other SSRIs and SNRIs had similar effects on me. I suspected that my problem wasn't serotonin at all. Alcohol also makes me cranky and has been that way all my life. I'm on olanzapine / Zyprexa now and feel pretty good. Olanzapine is supposed to reduce serotonin. I take only half of the lowest available dose and I still have all the feelings, but can weather any storm. For most medications I take only half the dose and they seem effective enough.

OP you seem very talkative right now. Have you always been this way?

My doctor prescribed me Effexor (venlafaxine) because of my concern about weight gain. Otherwise, he might have given me something else. Well, for the first 3 days, I felt as depressed as before. I was almost ready to call my doctor and chew him out, until I noticed the drug kick in hard and fast. I went from feeling really low to flying high as a kite in a matter of 24 hours. As for weight gain, I actually lost 5 lb since I started taking the drug. No crankiness, no anger, nothing! I actually felt the total opposite: giddy and smiling for no reason. One interesting effect from mixing with alcohol, though, is the intensified reaction (in a good way) to sensory input, like the makeout incident. Something to do with all the extra serotonin in my brain. Conversely, it seems like most aspies have lower serotonin, due to the ongoing misery they experience in their lives.

For me, the talkative part fluctuates. I used to post on this site a lot more than now. I soured on it sometime in 2012, and again last year. With the new interface, the constant CAPTCHA glitches, the server downtime, the mods' anti-male bias, and the favoritism for specific members (not me), I migrated to another, NT-oriented site. I now use WP for only for issues directly related to AS, rather than for general social questions So it may be odd for me to be "very talkative", but it's totally unrelated to my antidepressant meds.

I did on Celexa. First really bad side effects getting used to it. And then later on it started working too good and made me fearless in a bad way. Disinhibition. It did pretty much cure my severe generalized anxiety though.

Make out incident?!
I've not noticed any captcha issues, downtime, bias or favoritism, so perhaps those things have stopped?

Yup. I described it farther upthread. I made out with a girl I met quite recently: not a stranger and not a girlfriend. (Which, in my opinion, is most challenging for aspie men: a stranger can easily be faked out, and a girlfriend already has developed feelings.) And I think it was the antidepressant that changed my personality, enough to trigger that girl's attraction to the point of her making out with me without expecting a relationship in return. Although some of it may have to do with me reading "how to pick up women" materials too.

I still see lots of those things, although not downtime. And I still hate the new interface. YMMV.

For many years, I was also put on Zoloft and simply left on it because I was told I had "anxiety" because of "brain chemistry imbalance" and apparently it was something I was not supposed to have (though I now realize that what I had then was not anxiety by any means - I was just a depressed teenager who was barely surviving mainstream high school). Many years later with high school only a memory, I had had enough and stopped taking them without looking back. My parents claimed they could tell if I forgot to take one, but the doctor said that such a thing is not possible.

Due to a series of traumatizing events several years ago (including a death in the family and certain national events), I developed "genuine" anxiety and was put on a generic variant of Lexapro for the last two years. It seemed to help a little bit, but the anxiety never really went away and I still get "triggered" easily. Worst part was that it made my insomnia and daytime drowsiness so much worse that every night was a fight to go to sleep and every day was a fight to stay awake. Since getting off of them, those side-effects went away, but I'm still struggling with the withdrawal symptoms (headaches, nausea, rebound anxiety, etc.)
The doctor wants to try an SNRI, but I'm not so sure due to the potential side effects and withdrawal symptoms. I think counseling/therapy is the best way to go.

Go with your doctor. I have nothing but great things to say about Effexor XR (75 mg). I had only minimal side effects: a little bit of vertigo and mouth dryness, which went away in 5 days at most. I also got the biggest euphoria, that I had only 3 times in my whole life: when I lost my virginity in 2005, when I went on a cruise in 2012, and when I took Effexor this year. And apparently, it let me influence a woman I already knew to make out with me. That NEVER happened to me before; it was always either a stranger I just met or my girlfriend. (Or an escort, but shhh. )

Do NOT, under any circumstances, come within 10 feet of a counselor/therapist. They may work for NTs who have the social skills in dealing with them, but they're dangerous for aspies. If anything, they'll make your anxiety and depression worse than you came with. (They are, after all, interesting in you coming back and paying them.) I saw one for about 5 years when I was a teenager. She was manipulative and emotionally abusive, although she sometimes accused me of manipulating her. My mom, however, loved her; my dad had a reserved "she seems nice" reaction. She'd ask me "how did that make you feel?" and DEMAND an answer. And when I gave her one, she'd say "That's not how you felt; try again." Or she'd poke at my emotional buttons or make me talk about sad stuff until I'm crying, and then stare at me and smile, like she enjoyed watching me cry. To add insult to the injury, when my parents came to pick me up, I had to put on a happy face and pretend like nothing was wrong; sometimes I'd excuse myself to the bathroom and splash cold water on my eyes, so my parents wouldn't see the redness from me crying and start asking questions.

Many a time, I asked her to get me some "happiness pills" (or maybe "happy pills", I forgot what I called them). She's always dodge my request with a joke, a cliche, or a non-sequitur. I quickly figured out that she didn't want me to feel happy (because you're allegedly supposed to feel sad for therapy to work), so I took to self-medicating with alcohol. I was 12, mind you! Today, I'm very happy to finally get my hands on the "happiness pills" I've been wanting, and yet I'm saddened that it took me 20+ years to get them.

Wait- WHAT!? You know what, nevermind. I don't want to know.

In any case, I'm glad to hear the medication was helpful. There's no telling how you would have reacted as a kid, since age differences can be really strong in a lot of these kinds of medications. It's good that you're in a good place now though.

Well, ANYTHING is better than how I was feeling as a kid. Although come to think of it, I saw that therapist in 1994 thru 1999. Prozac, the earliest SSRI, was invented in 1987; heck, not only wasn't it widely known, it wasn't even genericized until 2001. Effexor, by comparison, was invented in 1994 and genericized in 2006. It's a scary how recently good antidepressants came about: in my lifetime. Perhaps the psych industry realized there were more profits in making people happy than in keeping them sad (like my therapist was doing).

So her not giving me good medications might have been due to banal lack of knowledge. But one thing still bothers me: Why wasn't she more honest about it? Why did she deflect me in a glib, callous way, rather than go over out the risks antidepressants could have? (I know about the risk of suicide, but I was suicidal already, so meh.) Or even tell me that the "happiness pills" I wanted didn't exist (yet).

Going back to the thread topic. Obviously, it's normal that I'd feel better from Effexor. But how much better I feel is just astounding! Like, "Holy ****! (poop) This is unbelievable!" astounding. And from a low dose to boot. I read people's testimonials about Effexor, and most of them weren't anywhere near as glowing as my own. Many of them were actually quite negative. Did it work so well on me because of my AS? Or why?

Doctors gave me Effexor in 2006 during a stay in hospital. I had to come off it within two weeks because it gave me panic attacks out of the blue. It also made my blood pressure soar.

A shame, really, because I've known people who take it and it's great for their depression. No good for mine.