Your sex life on anti-depressants

Written by Yasmine Alice

Photo by Justin Rosenberg / Model Cherish Waters

Have you ever heard of this presumption that if you start taking anti depressants your sex life will end? What about “meds turn you into a zombie”, “you won’t have any emotions” and even “your shrink will dump you in the loonie bin”? Well, I want to debunk these statements and for that, I’ll take you on a short journey of my life. 

I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder, CPTSD and Panic Disorder in December 2017. Maybe I had anxiety for a long time, but it had never really surfaced in an obvious manner before. Until one day, I was hospitalised with 250 bpm heart rate lasting for 8 hours. I was watching  Britain's Got Talent with my mum and suddenly, I got up from the sofa and announced that I'm dying. I couldn't control my thoughts, I was shaking all over, sweating and freezing, constantly thinking I lost my mind and that I  would never be normal again. My heart was about to explode and my brain was melting. This was a severe panic attack and it lasted way too long. From this day onwards, I started to have 10 to 15 of these a day. Life  was unbearable. During this time, I was working as an actress, doing  commercials and filming movies. I was a TV reporter for multiple news channels. On set, I was extra-comedic, uber-professional and energetic. In  my mind, I was slowly losing it. I went on holiday in the remote Moroccon deserts with no hospital in sight. How do you ask for an ambulance from a Berber on a camel? Oh hello, I’m having a panic attack, can you please call for an ambulance from 3 hours away so they can come all the way here to tell me nothing is wrong with me? Nobody knew I was struggling and losing my mind in a constant battle with my own physical self. Because I didn’t tell a soul. 

Why was this happening now? As you might have guessed, I had many traumatic events in my life, which I never acknowledged. Because I never had the time to, one trauma would be followed by the next. Once I told a psychiatrist the "stuff I would consider traumatic”, she just stared at me, jaw dropped. I was in a relationship for a year with a man in 2017. Let's call him Dicktard, because why not. So, Dicktard and I met on a dating app and everything was all great in the beginning. I was lonely, he lived close by and I liked the attention. We dated nearly a year with plans to get married.  Unbeknownst to me, he was a narcissist; a true medical definition of a narcissist who enjoyed manipulating, causing emotional harm and degradation. See, now I know that when you spend your childhood and adolescence in trauma, you seek that in your relationships during your  adulthood. It's called trauma-addiction. And for some reason, I never told  any of my friends about his toxic behaviour. Maybe if I had, they would have told me to dump him and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

Dicktard enjoyed lying, making me feel like I was an idiot (which is very difficult to accomplish when you’re a lawyer who speaks 5 languages and makes a very good living), telling me I would never succeed and that  something was awfully wrong with me on daily basis. And I believed him. Was Dicktard the hottest man alive? Au contraire, he wasn't. Was Dicktard amazing in bed? See, up until my relationship with Dicktard, I always envisioned myself as "kinky" or "sexually enlightened". I went to a lot of fetish parties, I would tell people I'm "pansexual", I was all, "look at me, I'm so liberated". But I wasn't. I would have relationships, some would last long, some wouldn't. But  I never actually enjoyed sex. Like ever! I would go to all these swingers  events and BDSM parties to simply watch, but never to touch. I was curious  but miseducated. 

I used to date this real hot rapper with a banging body and a decent sized you-know-what. I was dry as the Sahara desert on a 50 degree Celcius noon. And that was common with me. At one stage, I completely lost my  ability to orgasm. I could do so back in the day when I was 19, 20 years old.  Then poof, it was gone. Let's go back to Dicktard. Sex was awful. I hated it. I would be happy if we just didn't. Then I would get all up in my head thinking “damn girl, you're only 27, you should be doing it all the time!”. So then I would initiate it, only to regret it. Something was just not clicking. See, our vaginas, (and I'm addressing my cis-female readers here because I have no empathetic understanding of a penis) they are so in tune with our minds! And Milady didn’t even know who she belonged to.

Dicktard dumped me via text as I was boarding a plane with my 2 best friends en route to Tokyo for our dream holiday that we planned for a whole  year. He was living in my flat and looking after my cat, so I had to have  contact with him. But he decided to block my number. Imagine the anxiety I  endured for 3 weeks. Was he torturing my cat? Selling my furniture? Who knew. After finally having the courage to see a psychiatrist, I was put on  medication. It took a fine minute to find the right one; some meds made me  faint, some made me sleep. But finally, I met the right one. 20 mg dose of Fluoxetine, good-ole Mr Prozac was my prince in shining armour. Man, it was  bliss… No more crazy panic attacks or brain-melts. I just felt mediocre and it was awesome. I didn’t love myself or have any boundaries to protect my psyche. I  didn't shelter my energy space because I didn't know how to. Sex was not  even a part of my language during this time because I wasn’t a sexual being.  So I found my composure and serenity in therapy, yoga, meditation, tantra,  EFT and energy work. I had so much to unravel. 

After year-long self-improvement, I woke up one day and decided to have sex. All the anxieties of "is he the right one?", "what is my body  count?", "I had sex with him, now we must get in a relationship", "you're 30,  you should be married by now”… They were all gone. I just wanted to enjoy  myself! So I asked this hot baller I knew from Instagram out on a date. Then finally, I had an orgasm within 5 minutes of intercourse and it was heavenly. Since that day, I keep having orgasms. Not just ordinary ones. Sometimes they last for a whole minute. Even the people I have sex with are surprised. I'm so good, I don’t even need an emotional connection. I’m emotionally  connected to myself. Because I’ve accepted and forgave my past. Our vaginas and our minds are connected. I was having multiple orgasms on anti-depressants. I came off of them in August 2020, and I'm still having strong, solid and long-lasting orgasms. Fireworks in my vagina. A  deep dive into the Atlantic Oceans of Genital Heavens. My only advice is to not be judgemental towards anti-depressants. We don't all walk the same path. Some of us have seen some real sad stuff. And  it takes a minute to comprehend and come to terms with it. If your doctor  prescribes you meds, take this time to heal and learn to love yourself.

Yasmine Alice is an actress, tv reporter and producer based in London. She is originally from Istanbul and has moved to the UK in 2008 to attend law school. She is a feminist cat-lover who spends her time daydreaming about becoming a mermaid. You can find more of Yasmine’s work on her website and on her instagram