Funnily enough the one I used to take (Escitalopram) apparently has been found to begin permanently altering brain function after only a few hours of first ingestion. I was pretty happy with it. No pun intended
Not comment OP but I got off recently after about 1.5 years - still very happy :) Although admittedly I did have some infrequent spouts of rebound symptoms for a few weeks, but those were pretty manageable.
Also, kind of happy to be off it right now honestly, heat is something that doesn’t go along well at all with SSRIs.
For me it was around the same time Mo3 mentioned they took, maybe a bit more than one year and a half. It's been long, so I don't remember precisely.
However I was in a quite sorry state before... I was having several panic attacks a week. My therapy alone was also not working well, I was doing twice a week. After starting it, everything started falling into place. I never had a panic attack again.
I never had any downside whatsoever from taking them (didn't know they don't go well with summer!), including the regular complaints, it wasn't really a burden on me other than having to buy them monthly and take them every day.
I would like to see more discussion of the role of SSRIs in treating anxiety, rather than depression (which always seems to be the default focus). I also suffered from panic that went away completely with SSRIs. I have never had issues with depression, but these medications gave me my life back.
Interestingly the reasoning from my doctor for me taking Escitalopram was that it was good for anxiety, so I guess there's at least some anecdotal evidence from doctors about its efficacy...
Escitalopram is specifically prescribed for anxiety disorder at least in my country of residence. I think it’s considered one of the top options for GAD/panic disorder generally.
Source? Im not aware of research that shows “permanent” alterations from a single dose, unless someone is really stretching the definition of “permanent”
Pointing to alterations isn’t really helpful without context. An anti-depressant should induce long-term helpful alterations in order to alleviate symptoms.
