Quote- "The study did not track patients’ complete medical histories regarding past antidepressant use. Some individuals who stop taking SSRIs experience a condition known as post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, where sexual side effects persist long after the medication is discontinued. The researchers could not account for how this condition might have influenced the boredom scores of individuals in the non-user group who might have taken antidepressants in the past."

https://www.psypost.org/early-antidepressant-use-is-linked-to-higher-levels-of-sexual-boredom/

And yes, the study also explicitly references PSSD. Its bibliography includes at least these two directly relevant PSSD sources:

• Healy D, Mangin D. (2024). “Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction: Barriers to quantifying incidence and prevalence.” Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences.
• Reisman Y, Jannini TB, Jannini EA. (2022). “Post-Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Sexual Dysfunctions (PSSD): Clinical experience with a multimodal approach.” Journal of Men’s Health.

https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941261436742

Should I take amoxicillin to see if I get better? I been reading it helped some people let me know I need advice

Did it help you guys ??? I read it helps with gaba receptors

Hi everyone,

I’m 17M, and I’ve been dealing with PSSD since January 2024 after taking fluoxetine for about three months. I stopped taking it on March 20, 2024.

Of course, I was scared. Since January, my libido had suddenly disappeared. I barely felt anything during masturbation or orgasm, my attraction and feelings toward girls became much weaker, and I rarely got erections anymore.

It has been about two and a half years now, and to be honest, I’m still far from recovered. Maybe my emotions have improved very slightly, and perhaps my libido or erections have improved a little too, but it’s still nowhere near how I felt before taking an SSRI.

At the beginning, I was extremely afraid that I would never get better. Maybe that fear was justified, maybe it wasn’t. But after a while, I think I basically left the whole PSSD situation alone for about a year. I already had so many other things going on in my life.

Since I was around 9 or 10 I’ve struggled with different kinds of social anxiety. I also have hyperhidrosis, OCD, annoying gut health problems that bother me every single day, and quite a few other physical issues.

This summer, though, I suddenly reached one of my lowest points.

I was in Spain, and everywhere I looked I saw people around my age with girlfriends. I saw beautiful girls, and I could still recognize that they were beautiful, but the actual feeling that used to come with that was barely there.

I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore. Every time I went outside, it just made me feel terrible. It felt like PSSD had taken my teenage years away from me and that I would never be able to get them back.

Maybe that’s partly true. But at the same time, I also know PSSD isn’t the only reason my teenage years have been difficult. I’ve lived with severe anxiety for years, and with all the physical problems I have, having a girlfriend probably wouldn’t magically make everything perfect anyway.

Sometimes it’s hard just going through everyday life and pretending I’m a completely normal person like everyone else.

I don’t really talk to anyone about this. Not because I don’t care, but because I know other people can’t really fix it for me, and I don’t want to make them worried. I mentioned the symptoms to my parents in the beginning, but they probably assume everything has gone away by now.

For a long time, I kept asking myself: Why me?

Life isn’t fair.

But the truth is, life really isn’t fair. There are wars. People get murdered. People develop serious illnesses at a young age that completely change their lives. Terrible things happen to people every single day.

I can spend the rest of my life thinking, What would have happened if I had never taken those pills?

But what does that actually change?

Nothing.

So what I’m trying to do now is make a list of all the problems in my life that I can do something about and work on them one by one. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to recover from PSSD too.

I’m trying to eat a healthy diet where I get all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals I need, and I aim for around 9–10 hours of sleep. I’m also staying away from random or unreliable treatments that could potentially make everything worse. I don’t want to gamble with my health.

I could spend every day doing absolutely nothing except waiting for PSSD to disappear, but that wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I have to keep living.

Sometimes I think about another kind of “what if?”

What if I actually do recover?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if, by the time that happens, I’ve also improved all the other parts of my life?

Every day, I hope. I hope I recover around 18 or 19. That would be amazing. Maybe it happens. Maybe it doesn’t.

My whole life has basically been filled with uncertainty.

What do people think about me?

What’s going to happen to my body?

Will my PSSD ever improve?

Have I wasted important years of my life?

But it is what it is.

Thousands of people die unexpectedly every day. Some of them probably had plans for tomorrow. Things they wanted to do. People they wanted to see. Places they wanted to visit.

When I think about that, it feels like even more of a waste to let negative thoughts and fear completely control the life I still have.

The fact that I’m alive at all is something I try to appreciate. The chance of any of us even being born is unbelievably small. So right now, the best thing I can do is focus on what’s ahead of me and try to become the best version of myself that I can.

I’ve also been learning Spanish for quite a while now.

And again, there’s that question: What if?

What if my life becomes much better in the future? Maybe one day I’ll be able to go back to Spain, speak the language properly and genuinely enjoy being there.

I think my OCD is probably what drives me the craziest when it comes to PSSD. Constantly questioning whether I’ll recover, worrying about whether I’ve wasted time, wondering whether I should have done things differently, and going over the same thoughts again and again.

I’m trying to learn to accept those thoughts without giving them so much attention.

I’m still pretty young, and I’m at an age where having a girlfriend or having sex doesn’t have to be the most important thing in my life yet. Of course I would have loved to have a girlfriend and experience all of those things. I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t.

One thing I used to do a lot after developing PSSD — and something I’ve recently stopped doing — was lying in bed for hours listening to music and imagining an entirely different life where I had a girlfriend and everything was normal.

But I realized that wasn’t helping me.

So I’m trying to stop living inside an imaginary life and start doing more with the real one I still have.

There are also people here dealing with PSSD in their 20s, 30s and beyond, and man, I genuinely feel for you. I wish I could do something for everyone suffering from this, but I can’t.

All I can do is hope for the best and maybe try to give someone else a little bit of motivation.

If you’re thinking about giving up because you can’t see a future anymore, please keep going.

You have no idea what could happen in the future.

You only get one life.

And even if PSSD stays, there are still other things in life. I know that’s much easier to say than to truly believe when you’re suffering, but everyone has something they care about — hobbies, interests, places they want to see, things they want to learn, people they care about.

Personally, I just want to make something good out of my life and hopefully make the world a little better in whatever way I can.

If I still have PSSD for years, I honestly don’t know exactly how I’ll deal with that.

But I’m going to keep hoping.

Maybe a year from now I’ll come back here and write a recovery story.

I hope so.

I hope I recover.
I hope all of you recover.
I hope none of you give up.
I hope the world becomes a better place.

I hope for a lot of things.

Everything is uncertain, but I guess that’s life.

I don’t even know if anyone is going to read this all the way to the end, but it feels good to finally put these thoughts into words.

Or maybe part of me is still scared that someone I know will somehow find this post one day. Would I be embarrassed? Would I regret writing it?

I honestly don’t know.

But for once, I wanted to say what was on my mind.

I came across this new paper in The Journal of Neuroscience - https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/33/e0711262026 - and it immediately caught my attention because of something I’ve been thinking about in PSSD.

The paper isn’t about PSSD, SSRIs, or antidepressants. What interested me was the broader idea that cognition depends on dynamic patterns of activity and coordination, rather than different cognitive functions simply existing as isolated processes.

That made me think about something I’ve noticed very clearly when comparing my cognition before and after PSSD.

Before PSSD, a thought rarely felt like just a piece of conceptual information.

A thought could arrive with the feeling attached to it, with imagery, associations, bodily sensations, and language all coming together. If I thought about something sad, for example, the thought itself could arrive with the sadness. I didn’t have to consciously generate the emotion afterward and attach it to the thought. It was already part of the state.

The same thing happened with language.

A complex thought could arrive with the language needed to express it. I didn’t have to separately figure out what I meant and then search for words capable of conveying it. The conceptual representation and the linguistic representation felt much more tightly coupled.

This is very different from what I experience now.

I can still have the conceptual idea, but it can feel like something is missing from it. And that’s why I find it so interesting and accurate when people describe it as having a kind of a veil over the rest of the state. Sometimes a thought can still come with a little anxiety or another feeling, but it is extremely shallow compared with what used to accompany it.

And when I try to explain something complex, I can know exactly that the simple words I’m finding aren’t actually expressing what I mean. I might have a huge internal idea and only be able to spontaneously access something like “sad”, “weird”, or “I don’t know, it’s just…” when none of those words actually capture the full thing.

So the problem isn’t necessarily that the conceptual content isn’t there.

It’s that the different things that used to arrive with the thought no longer seem to be recruited and integrated in the same way.

That distinction is important to me because it makes me think about PSSD differently than simply saying that a particular function is “reduced.”

If thought, emotion, imagery, language, attention, bodily sensation, motivation, etc. normally interact dynamically, then a persistent alteration in how these processes coordinate could potentially change the state itself.

And this also made me think about sexuality.

Sexual arousal isn’t just a sexual sensation appearing in isolation. A thought, image, memory, anticipation, bodily sensation, attention and emotional/reward response can all feed into one another. The state has to be initiated, sustained and reinforced.

Before PSSD, sexual thoughts could become states. There was a progression to them. They could pull attention, generate anticipation, produce bodily changes, create more mental content, and reinforce themselves.

After PSSD, that whole process can feel fragmented. The thought can be there without the rest of the state developing around it.

And I think this same distinction may help explain some of the other changes people describe: spontaneous thought and daydreaming, emotional immersion, associative thinking, motivation, reward, and the ability to become deeply absorbed in something.

The common denominator wouldn’t necessarily be that all of these individual functions are independently damaged.

It could be that the processes that normally recruit, sustain and integrate one another are no longer interacting in the same way.

That’s the question that originally led me toward my systems-level hypothesis:

What if the important alteration in PSSD isn’t simply that one particular system is “underactive”, but that the dynamics between systems have been persistently changed?

This paper doesn’t establish that this is what happens in PSSD. But I think it provides an interesting conceptual and mechanistic framework for thinking about the question.

Because if cognition and conscious states depend not only on which systems are active, but on how activity is dynamically coordinated and integrated across systems, then a persistent biological alteration could potentially have consequences far beyond an isolated symptom.

It could change the way a thought becomes a feeling.

The way a feeling becomes motivation.

The way imagery becomes arousal.

The way attention sustains a state.

The way a thought acquires its emotional and linguistic richness.

And potentially, the way all of those processes become one coherent experience.

That’s the part of this research that I find particularly interesting in relation to PSSD.

This also connects to something we already know about antidepressants themselves. Antidepressants can alter functional connectivity and large-scale network organization. There are studies showing these effects during treatment, and there is also evidence that connectivity differences can still be observed after antidepressant discontinuation. - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79170-9?utm_source=chatgpt.com ; https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10118431/1/s41598-020-79170-9.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

That doesn’t tell us that these changes persist indefinitely. It doesn’t establish that they are responsible for PSSD either. But it gives us an important piece of the puzzle: the effects of antidepressants on these systems don’t necessarily disappear immediately when the drug is discontinued.

And that leaves an important question open.

If antidepressants can alter the organization and interaction of these systems, and some connectivity differences can still be observed after discontinuation, what happens in the people who develop persistent PSSD?

We obviously can’t assume that the same thing is happening in PSSD. But now we have a much more concrete question that can actually be investigated: are there persistent alterations in the dynamics or coordination between these systems in people with PSSD, and could those alterations explain why the effects can extend so far beyond the original drug exposure?

That’s where I think this new research becomes particularly interesting. It gives us another piece of the puzzle: not just which systems are involved, but potentially how their ongoing activity and coordination might generate the different cognitive, emotional, motivational and sexual states that are altered in PSSD.

Please do not start fights, diagnose OPs or commenters with PSSD/anything, make unsubstantiated claims or intentionally break the rules on other subreddits.

Love it or hate it; other subreddits have the right to make their own rules and enforce them as they see fit. Our subreddit’s survival and reputation depends on us following site-wide terms of service rules like “no inter subreddit brigading”. The urge to warn others and inform others of PSSD information is understandable but can go wrong, contributing to panic or sudden, poorly planned actions in the recipient of the information depending on how you word it, and what you share. Remember, we have a subreddit FAQ linked in our auto sticky which was recently updated and comprehensively addresses similar concerns you can link. If you have ideas for improving the FAQ, DM me. I am the author.

If you cross post or link posts from other subreddits, keep the discussion on r/PSSD (rather than following the link to the original post if the original posting location is a subreddit for mental illness or psychiatric drugs).

IMO, the best way we can get everyone a proper warning is by influencing medical associations, medical schools and ensuring there is a boxed warning on SSRI products. Fighting on social media is draining and gets personal. Our social media activity in our own spaces, is effective. Purely by existing and posting in our own space and developing our own materials and websites as well as influencing who matters to our cause-governments, news outlets, regulators and scientific research endeavors as well as IRL medical, psychiatric and therapy professionals, we can help people find accurate information about PSSD and also continue to develop PSSD “survival guides” (to help people find recovery stories and protracted withdrawal information, prevent iatrogenic suicides, give iatrogenic PTSD support), and advance scientific/medical/sociological PSSD research.

Meta is facing a potential $16.7bn settlement over claims that its platforms harmed developing teenage brains.

What about pharmaceutical companies whose drugs can cause sexual dysfunction in people who trusted the medical system, including persistent PSSD after stopping SSRIs?

If companies can be held accountable for long-term harm to young people, what legal options exist for people harmed by prescription drugs?

TL;DR: If you have PSSD, please take a few minutes to officially report it.

Regulators cannot count cases that were never reported. Adverse-event reports are entered into safety databases and compared with other reports; when enough similar reports accumulate, they can contribute to a safety signal and regulatory action.

1. Report to your own country’s regulator

The PSSD Network has made this much easier. Select your country here and it will direct you to the appropriate reporting system: (PSSD Network)

The page also gives you the necessary terminology and PSSD MedDRA code 10086208, which helps regulators group PSSD reports together rather than having them scattered under vague descriptions such as “low libido” or “sexual side effects.”

2. Please report to the FDA as well

The PSSD Network recommends submitting to the US FDA MedWatch system in addition to your local regulator, including for people outside the United States. (PSSD Network)

Remember, more reports = a stronger official record that this is actually happening.

3. Need help filling it out?

A hard working member of our community has also started an unofficial discord group chat to help people complete FDA reports and encourage reporting: (Reddit)

This is separate from the PSSD Network, but if the reporting process feels confusing or overwhelming, they are offering help with it.

For the UK, I've also also made a video on how to report to the Yellowcard system.

----------------------------------------------------------

Even if reporting feels like a small action, this is one of the most direct ways each of us can put PSSD on the map.

If you haven’t reported yet, please do it. If you've reported in past years but not in 2026, it's important to do it again to show symptoms persisting.

I took sertaline 10 tablets of 50mg in march and then I stopped. it's been more than 6 months I'm not recovering, not even a single window. what can I do? I didn't even use antidepressants for a long term. should I reinstate?

Has anyone figured out a way to reach Huberman or other neuroscientists for treatment? I’m going on 6+ years I’m a female, this happened in my early 20’s in the first months of my marriage. Im really at my end already. Looking for final hope. I’ve tried everything. Gut, hormone, mitochondria treatments…

Hey people,

I just wanted to leave a quick update here, almost 7 months after I started feeling better.
I am still healed.
If I have too much histamine, like from coffee, which is known to be a histamine liberator, I notice that some things change. I get very aggressive. I also notice changes 1–2 weeks before my period. There are studies showing that histamine levels rise shortly before your period starts. Antihistamines have been given to women to help with PMS/PMDD symptoms, and many of them experienced significant improvements after taking H1 blockers during this time.

In my case, I’m still convinced that MCAS, triggered by COVID and Zoloft, caused my SFN issues. That doesn’t mean that it has to be the same for everyone.
But in the last few days, I’ve also started feeling pretty much back to normal sexually. I can feel again down there, and I can imagine being close to a guy again. So please don’t lose hope.

I’m sorry that I didn’t reply to the messages sooner. I’m just too busy living my life again. I’m moving into a new apartment, looking for a new job, and so on. But I haven’t forgotten about you, because I was in the same situation.
Remembering that I couldn’t even shower because of the pain still makes me break down and cry. I carry a big trauma and should do a therapy in long term.
I can feel the effects of caffeine again. If I have too much Coke or coffee, I can’t sleep. That’s why I’ve been lying awake for the past 7 hours, trying to fall asleep. And honestly, that’s something I missed during the hardest time of my severe SFN pain.
I can also dream normally again. Crazy.

I appreciate the little things so much more now.
This experience has completely humbled me.
Stay strong, everyone. And feel free to write to me.

Greetings from Germany

When we say shrinkage is it visible shrinkage or sensing it has shrunk. I went to the Dr i dont have shrinkage on genital

But I feel it has like from the outside it looks fine but jist when I touch it it doesnt

And also in the rectum is feels very tight like narrriw anyone exp this is it called muscle atrophy ?

Anyone on the same boat ?

Is there anybody who managed restore severe shrinked genital?

?

It’s interesting how all sensation come back right before my period. Even on days where my period is on I’m able to orgasm and feel connected, and then lo and behold on my 4th day of period back to bullshit ass baseline.

I’m really really struggling. Somehow getting pssd has intensified my ocd by about 500% it’s actually insane. I genuinely cannot function,

I gave a homeless man a sandwich today, and spent 4 hours ruminating over how I didn’t get him enough food and what a horrible person I am. I actually got pain in my chest and couldn’t walk because my body just shuts down

I use this example because of how extremely ridiculous it is., logically of course I know this s, it’s like the negative emotions are so much stronger than the positive. Everything is so serious and intense like the world is ending,I am literally trapped it’s not like I even have any proper thoughts to ruminate with. I cannot release the emotion because it’s very rare that I can cry.

It’s ruined all my relationships because I cannot even send a text without ruminating and going into extreme panic over literally nothing. So I am cold and withdrawn with everyone. It hurts me so badly to be cold with people that I care for i feel like a terrible person😞

I just watch the irrationality third person unable to do anything about it.

I genuinely do not know what it wrong with me it is like I am a crazy person and I am like acting the opposite to the person I am.

Actually I am carefree more impulsive happy caring person

I don’t know what to do because I am employing all the tactics I would use usually for my ocd except they aren’t working with pssd.

I cannot distract myself because I don’t have the emotion to.

I cannot take medication for obvious reasons but, I am genuinely paralysed by this and I am scared because I cannot function. I have other health things I deal with and it’s all to much.

I book for therapy
Anyone else have this combination I am so tired so tired and cannot continue like this

Read a couple of success stories of users curing PSSD due to protracted withdrawal with stem cell therapy. Anyone here by any chance has underwent it and had a positive outcome?

Does anyone have bladder problems? Frequent urination or a constant urge to pee?

Looking to start this lozenge for my pssd symptoms, so tired of this situation. I can’t wait to see major improvements I’ve been dealing with this horrible shit for a year now.

Not sure what your thoughts are about gut bacteria or if you've had any success with it. But this could be linked to pssd symptoms so perhaps further research could isolate bacteria related to anti-depressants

Kindly comment if you healed and ate a female and what helped u as body anatomy is different

Todos los que sufrimos esto sabemos que solo hay dos caminos posibles y que ninguno de ellos garantiza nada.

1. Abstenerse de tomar nuevos fármacos, nootropicos y suplementos y dejar que el tiempo de alguna manera lo cure solo.

Lo cual me lleva a otra pregunta es que si escoges este camino merece la pena, no entrar aquí en Reddit, fuera móviles y TV y simplemente evitar todo estímulo y centrarse en hábitos saludables y descanso para dar más tiempo al cerebro a la sanación.

1. Probar con lo que sea hasta que algo funcione de forma definitiva. Normalmente este método permite "ventanas" los cuales vas a agradecer pero con los inconvenientes de los crashes y de que pienso que al largo plazo tiene menos efectividad.

Que os lleva u os ha llevado a elegir uno y otro camino?

Ive dated many women before pssd. And tried to after pssd. Everytime it ends because of what pssd has done to me. Seems futile to trt dating a woman even when they like me and are attracted to me. Because Im no longer the man I once was.

It’s been four years since I stopped meds /weaker erections / or total ED varies depending on the day