I have never taken Lexapro and honestly don't know a thing about it. If it is similar to Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, or Wellbutrin (and yes, I know they aren't all the same - some w/dopamine and some just SSRI), please be careful. If it's compeletely different, save yourself a few minutes and stop here
A couple months ago, I would have told you I've been taking anti-anxiety/anti-depressants for a few years with no side effects other than decreased libido (not to say that's nothing, but it was the only problem I was aware of).
As of a little over a month ago, I'm teetering on the brink of divorce from a man I love very much and would never have intentionally hurt, and I blame the medications about 90%. When my husband finally told me how he'd been feeling (I'll get to that), I was so upset that I forgot to take my Effexor for several days. Wow! Despite all the horrible things we were going through, I realized it was the first time I'd felt alive in years. I had more energy, more enthusiasm, more interest in both sex AND affection (great timing, huh?), and fewer migraines (which is what they were prescribed to prevent/reduce in the first place). I'd thought about going off them before, but I was SO afraid I'd turn into a crabby, miserable b--ch (I had stopped for a day or two a couple times in the past, but as soon as I felt the tiniest bit edgy, ran right back to the bottle). Nothing of the sort happened, at least after about a week (if I'd been a little crabby at first, I probably passed it off as REAL problems and just got through it). I know it's not ideal to go off all at once, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone when you can go off gradually, and I wouldn't have done it intentionally; but I'm sure glad I did it one way or another.
Now here's the problem. What my husband told me is that he felt like he'd been carrying the load since we'd been married - like I wasn't interested in participating in any kind of partnership. He is very affectionate, very gentlemanly (still opens car doors after eight years), and on top of all that, he was the only one working (we relocated several months ago for his job and I literally never bothered getting one - no excuse, just didn't bother). Basically, I have been a zombie since about a year into anti-depressants. They were ok at first, but when they didn't help my migraines, doctors (and I've seen at least four different ones - a primary and neurologist in both our old and new cities) kept increasing the dosage. I thought it was great that nobody pushed me to see a psychologist, and I really didn't want to be bothered with it. In retrospect, some sort of therapist would have probably recognized that I, in the simplest terms, wasn't living my life - at all. I had no desire to do anything, and once we'd moved, didn't even leave the house sometimes for a couple days at a time. Obviously depression probably snuck in there too, but the symptoms were pretty much there before the move, and I definitely wasn't depressed then - just indifferent. I was indifferent to the obvious signs of depression, absence of motivation, to drifting farther and farther away from my husband (and the effect I knew deep down inside it was having on him), and to the fact that I both needed and (again, deep down) wanted to work. Well, we're trying to work it out because he wants to love and nurture the newly "awake" me, and he understands intellectually that I wasn't doing it maliciously and there were extenuating circumstances -- but he's worried about whether he can get past years of feeling rejected and unappreciated (ok, the fact that he should have done something drastic much sooner is a communication issue that we also have to work on, but that's too far off topic for this particular thread).
I guess all I'm trying to say is please be very aware of any changes you experience, even if it doesn't feel like a big deal -- at that point, you're not necessarily the best judge. I am a reasonably intelligent person and would have described myself as self-aware, so if you think you are immune to such idiocy (I would have thought I would be), I hope you're right, but ...
Just for the sake of disclosure, I was on Prozac first, complained about the complete absence of libido so Wellbutrin was added to Prozac, no change so Wellbutrin was increased to replace Prozac, no change anyway, so new neurologist switched to Effexor because it had a better record with migraines (I'd freakin' like to know with who, but again, not the point here).
Anyway, please just be careful. I no longer think doctors should be prescribing mood-altering medications without psychological follow-up. Doctors these days just don't spend enough time with patients to make the kind of observations these medications require. I DO think they're fine in reasonable doses for short periods of time, like to get you through a difficult period. But what does it mean that I took anti-depressants for all that time only felt anti-depressed when I stopped? Sure, I was less likely to snap at people, but at what price? And frankly, my quick temper (although not what Rx was for, it was the only nice effect) hasn't come back, perhaps just because I broke the ugly habit, and probably would have found the same thing after six months of low-dose Prozac.
Sorry to be so long-winded about this, and it's probably not really even what you're looking for here, but I can't just NOT warn people now when I hear they could be heading down a similar path, even if the extreme results don't happen to everyone.
