Writing this post while sitting in my bed crying because I feel like I’m never going to be prescribed the right thing. I’ve been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and I was diagnosed with autism when I was 17 (2 years ago). My biggest problem that I’ve had for years is EXTREME fatigue and lack of motivation. Like, I went to the mental hospital 2-3 months ago and I’ve hardly gotten out of bed since (I have community college classes starting next month).

I was on prozac from age 12-16, and when that stopped working I started zoloft, which made the fatigue and lack of motivation worse, so we added wellbutrin onto it. The wellbutrin was really the only thing that helped with the awful depression and fatigue. But it also caused my heart to beat super fast and I constantly had that tight-chest anxiety feeling, along with nausea, so I had to stop taking that.

Something I should note here is that a couple years ago I went to the doctor and I had a sleep study done to see if there were any medical problems causing it, but they basically just said I was fine and just gave me a multivitamin. The neurologist said that I could maybe start a small dose of ADHD meds like adderall, but idk I guess they never followed through with it or decided against it.

I brought this up to my psychiatrist and she said she doesn’t think stimulants are safe for me since the wellbutrin caused an uncomfortably fast heartbeat for me and others might do the same, so I was prescribed Pristiq. I did some research on it and most people said that it made them more tired. So I refused to take it, which made my parents really pissed since we already bought it, and ended up going to a different psychiatrist because the other one was going on maternity leave.

The new psychiatrist also said that she doesn’t really like to prescribe stimulants often, especially in my case with the wellbutrin, so I was prescribed trintellix because that’s supposed to do something for energy. So again I looked into it after the appointment, and of course, 90% of people’s experiences that I’ve read about say that it makes them extremely fatigued, unmotivated, and irritable, which are literally my main issues 🙃

And I’m scared to take it because I don’t want to get any more depressed and unmotivated than I already am because it’ll probably make me want to **** myself and end up back in the mental hospital. And the psychiatrist at the mental hospital is notorious for just giving everyone the same diagnosis and prescribing every single patient with lithium because he makes money from it (I refused it when I was there). And I’m scared to refuse the trintellix because everyone will be angry at me if I do the same thing again, especially since trintellix is expensive as hell. Since I already said no to pristiq before even taking it, it’ll look so bad if I call back the next day and just be like “yeah I’m not comfortable with this either because of what I read, I need something that actually works for energy”. 

I know I should just take it, and inevitably that’s what I’m gonna have to do, but I feel like if I just had a fcking stimulant that works I could actually have a life. I know people like me have found so much success with ADHD medication. I was diagnosed with autism and I feel like I’m only being treated for depression and anxiety because I don’t “seem autistic”. I’m not trying to say I need drugs to function, but I think I have issues that can’t just be treated with SSRIs.

Idk. There’s nothing I can do at this point. I can’t make anyone prescribe anything, and hell, I don’t even know how I could get it illegally even though some people do it lmao. I’m scared. I don’t want to start taking this and spiral again. Maybe I sound dumb as hell rn. Does anyone here have any experiences with trintellix?