Depression/ anxiety

[Jewels_]

Hi, I was on lexapro for about 5 years for depression and anxiety. Worked great. Then one day started making me jittery, restless legs syndrome etc. since then I've tried about every ssri and they all give me horrible side effects. I took cymbalta for a short time helped at first then crazy mood swings. At this point I am so frustrated and thought I was the only one that had this problem. I now see a lot of people have struggles with it. I am considering trying the Prestiq. I currently take clonzapan for the anxiety and it works but I'm still struggling... No social life at all and hard to even work. Any opinions would be helpful. Just want to feel normal agiain and get my life back.

[Paxiled]

The snri category is much more stimulating than the ssri category, so if anxiety is your main problem these drugs can be a problem.  But if your main problem is depression and that's the cause of your anxiety, they can be helpful.  Make sure you're very careful about stopping these meds -- stopping abruptly or too soon even on a taper can cause withdrawal that your psychiatrist may not recognize as withdrawal.  In all this did you ever see a therapist who specializes in anxiety treatment to see if you can solve this so you can get away from the meds that are no longer working for you?  No guarantee this will work, but if it does you're cured, whereas meds only treat symptoms and as you've discovered often stop working after awhile and it's not so easy for your brain to adapt once you've been on them.  Sometimes a timeout for awhile is necessary for some people so the brain can get itself reoriented.  Don't know if this is happening with you, but it does sound odd to get a new side effect five years after starting a drug.  That either indicates it stopped working or possibly your brain has gotten burned out on drugs that target serotonin.  Another category of med that might help is the tricyclics.  The side effects are usually constipation and dry mouth and headaches, but they work as well as the ssris for some people and don't have as much of a weight gain problem and tend to be easier to stop taking.  But if the clonazepam has you maintaining, given what you've been through, I'd give therapy a good hard shot.