And yeah it sounds silly "oh my muscles are sore" no I'm talking muscle spasms and tightness. I was on ssris for the past 5 years (3 years of wellbutrin at the end) and had to start taking muscle relaxers because my back and hips were so painfully tight the muscles were literally injuring my ligaments and shit, but I stopped Wellbutrin and suddenly I barely need my muscle relaxers.

I'm fucking serious, I just thought there was something else going on hearing about all of these depressed and mentally ill people having chronic pain, turns out ssris can give you chronic pain.

It's changed my life in such a positive way.

I take Paroxetine for OCD and I feel so much less anxious every day, I don't wake up mid panic attack any more, I'm able to tackle my horrible thoughts much easier using therapy techniques (these thoughts will still come, they always will, but they become so much easier to beat down) and issues I didn't even think were caused by my OCD (problems with articulating myself verbally because of brain fog, desire to reach out to others, sleep problems) have started to really be mended.

In the beginning I will say this - my immediate side effects for the first week or two were really bad. Terrible nausea, major anxiety (as in crazy absurd unexplainable fight or flight when I'm at my workplace, I genuinely was thinking shit like I've GOT to get out of here whilst I was just chatting to a customer) issues with sleeping, eye twitching, excessive yawning, etc, however getting through those two weeks to have months of calm, be free from constant anxiety, and want to live again is worth it.

Also, adderall being a squirrel is funny to me bc that means it's highly likely meth is also a squirrel. Ah yes strung-out squirrel spending 3 hours sorting good acorns

He gives me trust fund nepotism vibes, but not in the “I’m an entitled brat” way, more in the “I know I kinda got special treatment but I’m still gonna do my best with the opportunities I was lucky enough to receive” way, but that’s more of a personal headcanon than anything. He gets lighthearted flack from the other meds for getting in on recommendation.

(Doodle of Zoloft with the Zoloft Blob from those old commercials‼️)

Zoloft was approved in the US on December 30th of 1991 on recommendation from the FDA Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee, which, funny enough, had convened regarding Prozac on September 20th of that same year, their vote exonerating Prozac and letting his parent company Eli Lilly off the hook for the controversies that had been going on.

Similar to how Prozac is related to the antihistamines, Zoloft is related to the antipsychotics (distantly) and the norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (parent compound). His parent drug was tametraline, but side effects caused its development to be stopped in 1979, which allowed sertraline to be developed from it. Zoloft and Celexa actually have a very similar creation, both being developed from an NRI drug that either showed or was likely to show concerning side effects that halted its development and meant it never hit the market, allowing it to be turned into an SSRI. (Technically tametraline is norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor but given a lot of NRIs weakly act on other neurotransmitters, it’s close enough).

They’ve got super thick fur, I designed him with that because when I was on Zoloft all I did was sweat constantly and feel overheated lol, but depending on what I end up personifying the NRIs as (which I need to decide because there’s a bunch I wanna draw) it’ll probably make sense family wise as well.

The way Pfizer chose to market Zoloft lead to an upset between companies. Zoloft hit the US market in 1992, (the same year as Paxil) and had been on the European market as early as 1990 (Paxil had been on the UK market as Seroxat since 1991). Once again, similar to how Celexa was developed and released later than some of the other SSRIs, Zoloft was as well, and Pfizer knew this. To counteract this fact, Pfizer took to advertising Zoloft as “cleaner” than the other SSRIs (mainly Prozac and Paxil, the two biggest SSRIs). Despite not having much, if any, clinically relevant research on their side, the constant pushing of the idea that Zoloft was somehow safer and cleaner helped make it a worthy contender in the market space. Technically Zoloft was the first “enantiomerically pure SSRI drug to hit the market” so that’s probably where that came from. The parent companies of these meds responded to each other as they all fought for dominance on the market. Zoloft was Prozac’s other closest competitor aside from Zoloft. It was only when Lilly realized Prozac had an advantageously long half life that wouldn’t cause nearly as severe discontinuation syndrome that they were able to shake the other two meds off of Prozac’s tail.

(This should say 1992 not 1993 oopsie)

Prozac would’ve met Zoloft first, as they both had launched in other countries before Paxil did, however, Zoloft is closer to Celexa and Lexapro than they are to Prozac and Paxil, who bonded over shared struggles that Zoloft didn’t have. Celexa and Lexapro had a lot more in common with him, both age, experience, and personality wise, and him and Celexa were seen as the “backing chorus” to Prozac and Paxil, the two biggest SSRIs. Zoloft was considerably younger than Prozac and a bit younger than Paxil when he hit the US market.

Zoloft kept his nose squeaky clean compared to Prozac and Paxil, with Prozac’s prime being entangled with controversies about him as a medication (80’s-early 2000’s) and Paxil’s parent company GSK getting into plenty of hot water by withholding and suppressing unfavorable data on Paxil, among other things regarding the medication (early 2000’s to mid 2010’s).

Honestly, Zoloft has a very standard history compared to Prozac, and even to Paxil. They were wrapped up in the same black box warning issues of the early 2000’s, but so was every other antidepressant at the time. Zoloft experienced the blowback from Prozac’s controversies like the other SSRIs did, but still looked up to him as a leader and role model all the same. I remember being surprised to learn that Paxil was the other big SSRI back in the day because it seems like literally everyone I meet is on Zoloft. I’ve got friends on it, my sister is on it, a bunch of her friends are on it, and if I’m talking to someone about antidepressants, there tends to be a good chance they’re on Zoloft as well, even I’ve taken Zoloft. He’s a good guy, he’s the “and Brian” of the group honestly, just an all around decent dude who leaves the drama to the other crazies of his class. They do their job and do it well, he’s soft spoken compared to the high-energy personalities of Celexa, Lexapro, and Paxil, and it’s one of his strengths. He’s empathetic and emotionally intelligent, able to provide comfort as well as confidence that he’s able to protect whoever needs it. They were also the second SSRI and third overall med that I officially designed, he has a special place in my heart 🩵🤍

(Art by @/craftzombie on Instagram who I’ve commissioned to draw all of my medication designs)

everyone who takes any medication should be aware of it, but imo people who take antidepressants should especially know what this shit is because it can very easily make or break the deal.

example: i was prescribed 50mg of sertraline. the amount in my body on the first day i took it was 50mg, but on the second day it was 50mg + ¼ of the 50mg from the previous day, because Zoloft (and any other sertraline med) has a half-life of 24 hours. That ¼ did me in. I lowered the dose to 25mg daily, now i'm fine.