I have been on and off Lexapro twice and think I need something agian.

My concern is weight gain. The first time on it, I gained 20 pounds and went off and 16 pounds came off right away, no trying. Then a couple of years later, I felt I needed it again, 25 more pounds. A year later I went off and the weight stayed on.

So now I am over 40 and 29 pounds heavier than I have ever been and getting that overwhelmed, lack of motivation and irritable feeling again. I hate to go back to the Dr. and ask for the meds again, but feel I do better with them, more in control and relaxed.

I have read all SSRI's have the side effect of weight gain. Does anyone have any experience to refute this. I would love to hear that not all anti-depressants do this.

Also, I am going to be evaluated for Adult add, a subject for another post. Do Stimulents help anyone with depression? Really for me it is more of anxiety than depression. An anxious depression is what my doc calls it.

I have experience to refute this weight-gain theory but I am not sure it will be of much help since I also have several other "idiopathic responses" to medication. I started many years ago with the whole depression/anxiety/SSRI wheel, beginning with Prozac. I was young and an undiagnosed ADD ;) and eventually decided I was not gonna live my life chained to that pill bottle and tossed the Prozac on some back road driving too fast while blasting music (and more than likely smoking a J as well).

The depression came back and I went back on Prozac, only to lose 15 lbs in a few weeks :eek:. With no appetite in sight I switched to Paxil...and the went throught the same toss-return-lose weight cycle.

I remember Celexa did not have this same affect but I tried it once and then never took it again either. I am currently on Cymbalta 60mgs,age 40, and slightly overweight.

Note: when you read the list of common side effects and first you see "drowsiness" and much further down the list you see "excitability", in this case the common effect is drowsiness, but excitability does happen less frequently and is known as the idiopathic response. My kids and I all exhibit the idiopathic response to Benadryl, for example. If we ingest it? We bounce off walls and cannot fall asleep until it wears off.