I haven't had a date in 5 years and I feel like life is passing me by, which gives me a huge amount of existential anxiety. In the past when I did date I found that it would completely take away my depressive symptoms.
Well then, if it has such a big impact, the solution is not more antidepressants that kill your libido, but to work on getting back into the dating scene. Are you getting depressive because of the lack of social interaction/dating, or is it the depression that made you get out of social interactions ?
Both.
I spent a lot of time last year going out and trying to meet people, to no avail. Trying to meet people just dumps me into an extremely dysphoric depressive state when I fail, so I have developed a very strong aversion to going out. I'd rather take pills to calm me down and stay home reading a book. I know there is the internet blah blah blah but it doesn't work. I know this is self-destructive behavior, but at this point I am going to need more than just a pep talk to fix things, if anything can be fixed.
I'm quite familiar with this situation, having lived nearly all my life with chronic anxiety and social phobia, to the point where my life and my career have been built around minimising social interactions as much as possible. Things got better with years and with more exposure , but I still have periods where I can barely leave home or even answer the phone for days.
The thing is, it's a vicious circle, a loop that you have to forcefully break at some point. Lack of social interactions makes you depressed, getting depressed makes you even less likely to have social interactions, wich in turn gets you more depressed, etc.. It's a downward spiral.
Some people can live perfectly happy with minimal social interaction and don't feel the need to have a partner, but obviously it's not your case ( mine neither ). Whatever depression I might have, it's been always secondary to my anxiety. Lift the anxiety, and every symptom of my depression vanishes immediately. Wich is why antidepressants ( especially the SSRI sort ) have been absolutely useless in my case, while most anxiolytic or dopaminergic substances helped one way or another. And your depression seems very secondary to your social life, since it completely lifts when you dated.
In my case, I know that I will never be a social animal, I'm pretty introverted and prefer ( and enjoy) to work alone , but I still need a certain amount of social and romantic/sexual life to maintain good mental health. There is simply no way around it, no matter how hard I tried to do without it.
So unless you live in the middle of the desert, in prison or severely handicapped, there's no reason you should give up on dating. Use supplements, social strategies, technology , whatever it takes.
I don't know what part of the world you live in and what's your particular situation , but Internet did work for me, it's been a (social) life saver. I wish I could just talk spontaneously with strangers in real-life, but I can't, so I'll take second best. Maybe dating thru Internet only really works if you live in a big city ( my case ), I don't know, perhaps the pool to choose from is much smaller in your area.. But I wouldn't give up on it.
Apart from using the Internet and dating sites if needed, what I could recommend from experience to help break that downward spiral and get active again in dating as a priority :
- Buspirone : It works for a very small minority of people ( and is therefore considered pretty much a failure, despite whatever statistics the pharma company tries to push on ), but when ( and IF) it works and you're among the lucky ones , it has many advantages over benzos. Lower cognitive impairement, no tolerance/withdrawal issues, and not only it doesn't negatively impact libido, but it actually enhances it ( it did made me a bit hornier and gave me better erections ) probably due to its effects on D2 receptors.
It's dirt cheap, and has a very benign secondary effect profile, the most serious being strong nausea/dizziness. Unfortunately for me , the dizziness was so strong I had to give up on it ( and is one of the main reasons so many people can't tolerate it), but you might be more lucky. Worth a shot if you didn't already.
- Sulbutiamine : among it's effects , it made me more talkative, more social, more motivated but also slightly less sensitive to negative interactions, less fear of rejection. And no negative impact on libido whatsoever. Check this thread if you haven't already :
http://www.longecity...-the-long-term/- L-Tyrosine :for some reason, it only works if I take CDP-Choline for a few days before taking the tyrosine, maybe because of the dopamine receptors upregulating effect of cdp. When of the best combos I found for motivation and getting out of a rut. Although I find Sulbutiamine's social effects more powerful overall.
- Uridine could give similar results, but I don't have any experience with it yet. I have some coming in the mail soon.
- Sam-e : this can be truly powerful in terms of motivation and energy, and for social interactions. Be careful however if you're very prone to anxiety like me, as it can increase it and make you irritable. its'a cofactor of the PNMT enzyme wich increases conversion of norepinephrine to epinephrine. It was too much for me, but it is absolutely worth a shot. And it has a libido boosting effect.
- Magnesium, Kava, Picamilon are decent additional choices to add , mostly because their anxiolytic effect has no negative impact on libido, and no serious cognitive impairment.
- If worse comes to worse, a small dose of a benzo during social interactions will make you less sensitive to rejection/failure. As long as it's used in a very occasional manner, and at the smaller doses possible, there shouldn't be any serious issues. They do have more cognitive impairment than Buspirone/Kava/Magnesium in my experience.
If buspirone works for you, I would stack either Sulbutiamine , Tyrosine or Sam-e with it for the additional push in socialising/motivation and positive libido effect.
Remember , it only takes one person wich you like and get along with, and all the frustration about social interactions is forgotten.It's worth it.