I recovered 80% from PSSD and was happy, then took meds again
Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2023 2:20 pm
Please forgive me as I am posting a slightly edited version of what I posted on Reddit. For the record my story of recovery is on this forum and has been referenced from survivingantidepressants. But I do not want to dox myself.
I got PSSD back in 2010 after 6 years of Lexapro. Within a span of A few weeks my genitals became numb. My ejaculate became lower and then over the period of 8 months I lost total connection from my genitals, had very low ejaculate, severe genital anesthesia and no libido. I was totally impotent
I was devastated but I took stock and solace in a website called paxil progress which has since been shut down. There were plenty of cases of PSSD there and people recovered. I then moved on to surviving antidepressants where I am a more known case of PSSD recovery. I would post my screen name over there for verification but I'm worried about my identity and compromising that. Suffice it to say someone did post a link to my recovery here on this forum. I got curious today and searched my screen name.
I never recovered fully But trust me, when I say I didn't care about that. I recovered to the point where I was so happy with my sex life. It wasn't something I thought about anymore. A lot of my recovery was what I like to call, persistent recovery or persistent dysfunction. Meaning when I was in a relationship sometimes things would feel almost 100% better. My orgasms were extremely intense. Sensitivity would come back. And sometimes after sex for the period of 6 or 7 days I would feel connected to my genitals again. Morning erections came back. I had a voracious libido. When I would be single I would become asexual again. However, I would still have decent orgasms and decent erections. I think a physical recovery happened over the period of one and a half to two years. This happened from age 23 to 26 or so. I'm now 35.
This last year my mother was diagnosed with ALS, I was under the care of a doctor that had me convinced I have narcolepsy despite the fact that I don't and I'm doing much better now. And I also got intrusive tinnitus which i have now habituated from. From. Because of all of these I was suicidal and had to go back on medication. Zyprexa. And a few other ones. But the one I think that has made this most recent PSSD worst was I took a vibbyrd for 7 days. I feel so stupid. I should not have taken those pills. Especially the vibbyrd. I knew better but I was in a mental hospital and a doctor convinced me because I was so vulnerable. I should have taken the Zyprexa and refused the other stuff. At least I knew what Zyprexa and remeron would do to my body. The vibrid was a complete question mark, And an SSRI.
Currently it's much harder to reach climax again. Sometimes I have decent orgasms. Sometimes I have a little more sensitivity. Sometimes I feel very horny. But overall I feel much more disconnected and sexual stuff is more of a chore. I still feel very mentally horny and attracted. It's just my body can't respond currently like it did after I had mostly healed from PSSD. The numbness is significantly worse again and the orgasm quality is down and ejaculate quality. And while that sucks. It also gives me hope. Considering my first recovery I felt these things as well and slowly over 8 or 9 months. I started seeing signs of life. By a year and a half. I started seeing significant recovery. After 2 years a lot. And after 4 years I was satisfied with my new normal. More than satisfied. I had rock star sex. I also have to consider that over the last year and a half I've been through incredible trauma that resulted in me being hospitalized and was severely depressed to the point of suicidality. Also, my mother is dying in front of my eyes. So there can absolutely be some mental component at play as well.
Let me explain though. I got to a point where I didn't think about PSSD for 5 years. I didn't think about myself as having a sexual problem. If I had been born that way i would have never thought of it as a problem. That's how satisfied I was with my life. I would be able to get spontaneous erections during sex and have what I called Rockstar sex. Then I would go through periods where the PSSD would come back. This was like this for 10 years. But I always knew it would come back and so it became my new normal and I was very satisfied with it.
When I first got it, of course I was devastated in suicidal. I checked myself into a hospital. When I got out. I purposely dove back into life despite feeling the anhedonia and complete disconnection from my genitals. I decided I would still try to sleep with girls even if I couldn't get it up or really feel much. I still wanted to be with women and over a few months I would start to feel my dick move when kissing. Barely. Not an erection but it would move. And I would be able to get off with them through manual stimulation. It would feel okay. Then one night a few months later I somehow had sex while drunk and the orgasm felt pretty good. Then in the next relationship I noticed that after 2 months me and my girlfriend could have sex and that the orgasm felt really good and that after the orgasm my genital anesthesia went down 90% for a couple weeks. My ejaculate got much more and much thicker. Then over the course of another year or two it just got better and better and better. I was having sex up to 15 times a week sometimes.
There was some sort of physical recovery. I don't know how or why that happened. I was determined to not let PSSD ruin my life. I was determined to be vulnerable with women and I was determined that eventually things would work. There was something about the connection with women instead of being alone. That really sped up the recovery. From my cursory googling around different websites. It seems like oxytocin is probably the chemical at play in that. It literally was the difference between having PSSD and not when I could get emotionally connected with the right woman. Again. I am still married and my wife is very supportive. But I am absolutely upset right now. I don't know whether or not I can recover but I'm not going to give up. Just like I didn't give up 10 years ago.
I would say originally it took me four years to get to the point where I was happy with things again. Again, I would always get a lot of questions about. Did it recover 100%. And I want you to know that when you recover, when it's not 100%, you don't care about 100%. You're just happy to have your life back. So hold on to any improvement. And if it goes away. Remember windows and waves. It always comes back. I would also recommend that you be vulnerable and open to new experiences. Don't let the idea of 100% recovery be your obsession in life. Find any little pleasure that you can. I know that can be really hard when you feel disconnected from your genitals or your orgasms are muted or even mostly pleasureless. I know it can feel embarrassing and shameful. But I do feel that if you dive back into your life and reclaim your body and reclaim your own identity about your body, at the very least, you can still enjoy what you do have. This may not be true for everyone. And even perhaps in my significant current PSSD I still have it better than others. I don't have emotional blunting. I do feel very alive and good. But this PSSD thing does suck.
I do not know if I will be able to heal again. I do not know if given a year or two, like before, if my body will be able to repair again. I suspect it will and I know now that I will never take any psychiatric medications ever again. I was off them for about 12 years. I was on remeron for one year and didn't have any PSSD issues so I got bold and I paid for it other experimentations. I am having some days where I am very horny, I am having sometimes wear my ejaculate is better and I am shooting further. It does seem to be getting better in the ejaculate category. I do have some days where I'm very horny. I am waking up with morning erections again. And every now and again when my kiss my wife my dick responds and I feel horny. So there are little signs of life in there. And I'm trying to hold on to those as I did 12 years ago.
If nothing else, I want people to know that I absolutely recovered from PSSD to my satisfaction. Maybe not 100% like the way they work before medication, but I didn't care about that. I was happy and living a great life. I'm not suicidal. I still have some function and I'm off medication and can now let my body heal. I will report back if there are improvements. Love to you all.
Oh and one other thing, my recovery was simply based on time and exercise. There was no supplements. No medication. Nothing. It was just a natural recovery overtime. I did take lots of supplements like yohimbine. I took lots of fish oil. Vitamin D. A lot of Chinese herbs. But I think that was all buying time while things got naturally better.
One last thing. I've seen some things on this forum that inferred that most people that get PSSD don't recover. First of all, I consider a recovery. Anything that gets you back is satisfying sex life. I don't think 100% recovery should be the only thing that's considered recovery. I don't think it's the right language to use. Another thing. People that recover don't come back and post here on this forum. And another thing, many people probably don't come to forums like this in the first place so would never report it, or report it getting better
I got PSSD back in 2010 after 6 years of Lexapro. Within a span of A few weeks my genitals became numb. My ejaculate became lower and then over the period of 8 months I lost total connection from my genitals, had very low ejaculate, severe genital anesthesia and no libido. I was totally impotent
I was devastated but I took stock and solace in a website called paxil progress which has since been shut down. There were plenty of cases of PSSD there and people recovered. I then moved on to surviving antidepressants where I am a more known case of PSSD recovery. I would post my screen name over there for verification but I'm worried about my identity and compromising that. Suffice it to say someone did post a link to my recovery here on this forum. I got curious today and searched my screen name.
I never recovered fully But trust me, when I say I didn't care about that. I recovered to the point where I was so happy with my sex life. It wasn't something I thought about anymore. A lot of my recovery was what I like to call, persistent recovery or persistent dysfunction. Meaning when I was in a relationship sometimes things would feel almost 100% better. My orgasms were extremely intense. Sensitivity would come back. And sometimes after sex for the period of 6 or 7 days I would feel connected to my genitals again. Morning erections came back. I had a voracious libido. When I would be single I would become asexual again. However, I would still have decent orgasms and decent erections. I think a physical recovery happened over the period of one and a half to two years. This happened from age 23 to 26 or so. I'm now 35.
This last year my mother was diagnosed with ALS, I was under the care of a doctor that had me convinced I have narcolepsy despite the fact that I don't and I'm doing much better now. And I also got intrusive tinnitus which i have now habituated from. From. Because of all of these I was suicidal and had to go back on medication. Zyprexa. And a few other ones. But the one I think that has made this most recent PSSD worst was I took a vibbyrd for 7 days. I feel so stupid. I should not have taken those pills. Especially the vibbyrd. I knew better but I was in a mental hospital and a doctor convinced me because I was so vulnerable. I should have taken the Zyprexa and refused the other stuff. At least I knew what Zyprexa and remeron would do to my body. The vibrid was a complete question mark, And an SSRI.
Currently it's much harder to reach climax again. Sometimes I have decent orgasms. Sometimes I have a little more sensitivity. Sometimes I feel very horny. But overall I feel much more disconnected and sexual stuff is more of a chore. I still feel very mentally horny and attracted. It's just my body can't respond currently like it did after I had mostly healed from PSSD. The numbness is significantly worse again and the orgasm quality is down and ejaculate quality. And while that sucks. It also gives me hope. Considering my first recovery I felt these things as well and slowly over 8 or 9 months. I started seeing signs of life. By a year and a half. I started seeing significant recovery. After 2 years a lot. And after 4 years I was satisfied with my new normal. More than satisfied. I had rock star sex. I also have to consider that over the last year and a half I've been through incredible trauma that resulted in me being hospitalized and was severely depressed to the point of suicidality. Also, my mother is dying in front of my eyes. So there can absolutely be some mental component at play as well.
Let me explain though. I got to a point where I didn't think about PSSD for 5 years. I didn't think about myself as having a sexual problem. If I had been born that way i would have never thought of it as a problem. That's how satisfied I was with my life. I would be able to get spontaneous erections during sex and have what I called Rockstar sex. Then I would go through periods where the PSSD would come back. This was like this for 10 years. But I always knew it would come back and so it became my new normal and I was very satisfied with it.
When I first got it, of course I was devastated in suicidal. I checked myself into a hospital. When I got out. I purposely dove back into life despite feeling the anhedonia and complete disconnection from my genitals. I decided I would still try to sleep with girls even if I couldn't get it up or really feel much. I still wanted to be with women and over a few months I would start to feel my dick move when kissing. Barely. Not an erection but it would move. And I would be able to get off with them through manual stimulation. It would feel okay. Then one night a few months later I somehow had sex while drunk and the orgasm felt pretty good. Then in the next relationship I noticed that after 2 months me and my girlfriend could have sex and that the orgasm felt really good and that after the orgasm my genital anesthesia went down 90% for a couple weeks. My ejaculate got much more and much thicker. Then over the course of another year or two it just got better and better and better. I was having sex up to 15 times a week sometimes.
There was some sort of physical recovery. I don't know how or why that happened. I was determined to not let PSSD ruin my life. I was determined to be vulnerable with women and I was determined that eventually things would work. There was something about the connection with women instead of being alone. That really sped up the recovery. From my cursory googling around different websites. It seems like oxytocin is probably the chemical at play in that. It literally was the difference between having PSSD and not when I could get emotionally connected with the right woman. Again. I am still married and my wife is very supportive. But I am absolutely upset right now. I don't know whether or not I can recover but I'm not going to give up. Just like I didn't give up 10 years ago.
I would say originally it took me four years to get to the point where I was happy with things again. Again, I would always get a lot of questions about. Did it recover 100%. And I want you to know that when you recover, when it's not 100%, you don't care about 100%. You're just happy to have your life back. So hold on to any improvement. And if it goes away. Remember windows and waves. It always comes back. I would also recommend that you be vulnerable and open to new experiences. Don't let the idea of 100% recovery be your obsession in life. Find any little pleasure that you can. I know that can be really hard when you feel disconnected from your genitals or your orgasms are muted or even mostly pleasureless. I know it can feel embarrassing and shameful. But I do feel that if you dive back into your life and reclaim your body and reclaim your own identity about your body, at the very least, you can still enjoy what you do have. This may not be true for everyone. And even perhaps in my significant current PSSD I still have it better than others. I don't have emotional blunting. I do feel very alive and good. But this PSSD thing does suck.
I do not know if I will be able to heal again. I do not know if given a year or two, like before, if my body will be able to repair again. I suspect it will and I know now that I will never take any psychiatric medications ever again. I was off them for about 12 years. I was on remeron for one year and didn't have any PSSD issues so I got bold and I paid for it other experimentations. I am having some days where I am very horny, I am having sometimes wear my ejaculate is better and I am shooting further. It does seem to be getting better in the ejaculate category. I do have some days where I'm very horny. I am waking up with morning erections again. And every now and again when my kiss my wife my dick responds and I feel horny. So there are little signs of life in there. And I'm trying to hold on to those as I did 12 years ago.
If nothing else, I want people to know that I absolutely recovered from PSSD to my satisfaction. Maybe not 100% like the way they work before medication, but I didn't care about that. I was happy and living a great life. I'm not suicidal. I still have some function and I'm off medication and can now let my body heal. I will report back if there are improvements. Love to you all.
Oh and one other thing, my recovery was simply based on time and exercise. There was no supplements. No medication. Nothing. It was just a natural recovery overtime. I did take lots of supplements like yohimbine. I took lots of fish oil. Vitamin D. A lot of Chinese herbs. But I think that was all buying time while things got naturally better.
One last thing. I've seen some things on this forum that inferred that most people that get PSSD don't recover. First of all, I consider a recovery. Anything that gets you back is satisfying sex life. I don't think 100% recovery should be the only thing that's considered recovery. I don't think it's the right language to use. Another thing. People that recover don't come back and post here on this forum. And another thing, many people probably don't come to forums like this in the first place so would never report it, or report it getting better