What SSRIs worked/didn't work for you?

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Is there a way of knowing in advance?

No way knowing in advance:

Paxil: Did nothing.

Celexa: Gave me involuntary homicidal ideation

Wellbutrin: Not an SSRI, but still an anti-depressant. Gave me panic attacks.

Zoloft: Helped correct a certain level of baseline anxiety I was not even aware of, helped give me a perspective outside a lot of my self-defeating depressive thoughts, which made it easier for me to understand why they were simply wrong. I am currently not on Zoloft, but I still know what I learned on it. I will probably restart it in the near future as it helped my fibromyalgia pain rather nicely, but right now it doesn't mesh well with my muscle relaxers or pain killers (as in, the combination causes severe headaches) and since Zoloft doesn't help me sleep, it's temporarily stopped.

The problem is that it can take months to determine that an anti-depressant medication doesn't work.

If family members of yours reacted well to a particular one its more likely that you'll react well to that one.

Personally:
Prozac: Made me forget random things (like I'd do my homework and forget to turn it in), and didn't seem to help at all (but that might have been because they were medicating me for anxiety for AS traits... dunno, might have also had the social anxiety).

It is probably worth note that if you're particularly sensitive to medications, the recommendation is to start at 1/3 the dosage that others start at. Many people who are autistic do this, and some who are not (like my dad).

There is no way of knowing in advance.

Paxil made me more socially confident but I ultimately felt emotionally 'bland' and I also had some annoying side effects so I stopped taking it.

After that I gave up on SSRIs (and medication in general, eventually).

Enjoy yourself

Sometimes a top-notch psychiatrist can make an educated guess about what you need by using a computerized EEG, but most of the time they have to match your symptoms with the most common effects of different meds and then switch them or the doses until you get relief from symptoms.

Personally, the older tricyclics work for me. The latest sample packs a pharmaceutical salesman left your doctor is not always the greatest. Sometimes newer classes of meds won't work as well as older ones.

Like others have said, there is no way of knowing in advance of how you'll react to a particular medication. Also, just because some people had a horrible experience with a particular med doesn't mean you will. A typical starting point would be something like Prozac, Paxil, Celexa... sometimes you have to go through a few medications until you find the right one.

I'm currently on Effexor XR which is a SNRI and works on serotonin and norepinephrine. Celexa and it's closely related cousin Lexapro pooped out on me, Wellbutrin XL made things even worse (my new doc says it's not a good one for people with severe anxiety) and Paxil did nothing other than make me very constipated. The thing is with most antidepressants is that they tend to dry you up so drinking extra water is usually needed.

Citalopram, escitalopram and sertraline all did nothing for me.

None of them did anything useful for me: we worked through the whole selection. I'm now on a tricyclic antique called Imipramine, which is proving reasonably good.

Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Serzone, Effexor, Cymbalta (SSRIs) -- didn't work + intolerable side effects.

Remeron (a non-SSRI) -- didn't work, extremely sedating + appetite * 100; couldn't function on it.

Wellbutrin (??) -- didn't work, sort of like a mild stimulant.

Parnate (MAOI) -- didn't work, stomach pain to the point of becoming non-functional.

Trazodone (tetracyclic?) -- made things worse by setting off a horrible experience that I don't know a name for.

reboxetine (SNRI) -- didn't work, made a blood pressure problem worse.

Doxepin (tricyclic) -- works, caused some weight gain, sedating enough to help get to sleep but not so much as to make me groggy in the morning.

Amitryptiline (tricyclic) -- works, hopefully will allow for the loss of some weight put on from Doxepin. I'm happy with it.

So it takes a few months to know and the hit rate is about one in five. Screw that.

Yeah there's no guarantees and as the others have said there seems to be a much higher side effect rate amongst people with AS. I used to be on Citalopram which messed my stomach up permanently. I have to take stomach pills now to stop getting indigestion and stomach ulcers. Not pleasant. I tried to come off Citalopram and had withdrawal that was so severe I nearly killed myself. nothing to do with depression, the pain was agonising, like a million volts of electricity shooting through my body. I had to go on prozac just to stop the withdrawal effects, but the prozac has really helped calm me down a lot. I had some pretty bad anger issues before and it seems to have got rid of them. I think meds should only be used as a LAST resort.

Other options include finding ways to change your circumstances to undermine the cause of your depression, and learning ways to cognitively identify and undermine it. You don't need medication for that, and there's evidence that therapy can help just as much, as long as the therapy is suited to your cognitive style.

For me, I needed some way to step outside enough to see how my thoughts were self-destructive and wrong, and once I could do that, it became a lot easier to cope with depression - and the medication helped a lot with that, but so did getting my AS diagnosis.

I take paxil ..... I can't live without it, tried to go off 2 times but, without it my anxiety is debilitating which is why I went on it in the first place, I can actually sleep, poop, eat and generally function in life
Paxil(5mg a day) brings me from low function to high function

I have only tried Celexa ( Citalopram). I felt less anxious within two days, which I enjoyed. Later I was less depressed, and had greater capacity to focus and motivate myself. Eventually I found myself more open to suggestion and manipulation, which I disliked.

No SSRIs worked for my OCD and panic attacks. The ones I took were: Zoloft (two different trials), Lexapro (which my mother and her dad take for unipolar depression), and Prozac. The only OCD medication that works for me is the tricyclic anti-depressant Anafranil. It was the first OCD medication, and its anti-obsessional effects have always been tied to how it works on serotonin more so than the other tricyclics. (This is why the SSRIs were subsequently developed.) However, I am a VERY strong believer that Anafranil works for me because of how it is NOT selective for serotonin. It also works on norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine, and other neurotransmitters. I believe that serotonin alone is not the answer to why my brain doesn't work properly.

Citalopram did nothing for my depression and may actually have made me worse overall. It certainly had some nasty side-effects for me including but not limited to: lethargy, drowsiness, nausea, sexual dysfunction, laughing or sobbing uncontrollably, increased aggression, dizziness and the infamous electric shocks and "brain zaps". Definitely a drug to use, as they say, at your own risk.