Agreed, mostly. I would place sex at a pretty high place on my pyramid. What would be lower, however, is the need for relationships/contact. I would far rather have a good relationship without sex than good sex without a relationship.
To relate this to the topic of the thread, my entire reason for wanting to be more social is because contact with people is extremely pleasurable to me, and I want it badly. The few times that I have had contact in a relational sense, briefly(and very mildly) involved with a girl in highschool, it was only things like hugs, hair-playing, and stuff like that, but it was a hugely great feeling, better than opioids as I compare the memories. I can endure loneliness. I am not going to be driven crazy because of it, but I am afraid that, by taking an SSRI, the blunting would prevent that sort of feeling, and, to be honest, I don't care for socialization if that were to occur. What is the point in reducing how much I care about it in order to get it (in a sub-desirable form)?
This is why I don't understand SSRIs for social anxiety. Aside from my specific problems, if we assumed that someone was totally resistant to the side effects and had super-concentration, and the only purpose was for the reduction of social anxiety via the dampening mechanism, it still seems like a HUGE compromise. I mean, yeah, the emotions can be overwhelming, especially when negative, but why not increase ability to deal with them instead of repressing them or try to only decrease the negatives? Is it to be more functional is a job/school or something? Does anyone have a counter to this? I can see how things like panic/severe depression could be justified this way when they make it impossible to enjoy anything anyway, so less of good and bad emotions is okay as long as it is less of the bad which were dominating your life in the first place, but in social anxiety, taking away part of the want to be social so that you can be more social seems counter-productive. Maybe I am stuck in the nootropic mentality that medicines should ONLY do good with extremely little harm.
Am I wrong about how this works? I would be interested in hearing how SSRI has helped your anxiety/social anxiety without a general dampening of emotions. Depression not so much included here, as depression itself can be mood suppressing, and probably increases in BDNF that cause an exit of depression are what cause the net increase in emotionality, but, hey, if you want to tell your story, I am not going to stop you :D.
I have that need aswell, what I mean is as an animal we have this driving force to procreate, the biological imperative, and if you are horny enough it's enough to push through any anxiety. I don't just want sex by any means, but there's no relationship if you don't even speak to them, and the horny-ness can help with that to begin with, after that fap away.
My emotions are definitely blunted while on Venlafaxine (SNRI) right now, but I still feel, I just walked my dog and was laughing while he tried to mate with another dog much bigger than him (he's a corgi). It doesn't make you a complete robot, at least in my experience. It may even seem worse than it is because when people stop taking them, the full emotions will come back and they might seem much more intense than normal because you're not used to it, just a thought.
Also I can't really tell if it has helped with my anxiety, I started it in october last year after I came home from university after being there for 1 week (couldn't handle it), when I got back I got my dog and I think that helped a lot by forcing me to leave the house nearly every day, so it's really hard to say, I still have a long way to go though. I would say if your anxiety is stopping you from doing anything, you should at least give an RI a try (Escitalopram?).
