I have done battle with depression my whole life. Despair and lethargy have left me hopeless. The first time a doctor suggested medication, she did so with a caveat: The pills — in my case, Prozac — might cause me to gain weight and could make it hard to have an orgasm, standard warnings with many antidepressants. “So I’ll be fat and frigid?†I joked. “How will that make me less depressed?†Still, I took the pills. Anyone who’s suffered with clinical depression knows there comes a point at which you will make pretty much any trade-off to feel well again.
But I didn’t just lose my ability to have orgasms. I gained the torturous sensation, during sex, of almost … almost … almost … then nothing. No release possible. No matter what. I could only let the clock tick down and wait for my arousal to subside. Maybe I was prepared to give up orgasms, at least temporarily. But I was not at all prepared for this taunting, slow-motion disappointment. It felt like cosmic confirmation of depression’s worst self-loathing: I wasn’t worthy of joy. I wasn’t entitled to pleasure. My new willingness to seek comfort and intimacy from sex had turned into a joke on me.
I was not amused. And neither was my husband, who had been cast in the role of unwitting torturer. We’d always been great together; now, when he got me excited, I got mad. “I told you not to do that!†I’d say. “Don’t make me feel good — it feels horrible.†Not our sexiest moment.
The story has a happy ending — even if, for a while, I didn’t. Knowing that my depression wasn’t life-threatening, I told my doctor that this medication was impossible for me, and luckily she agreed. It took time and a lot of experimentation, but eventually we found a solution that lifted my blues, gave me back my energy and didn’t turn a central pleasure of my life into an untenable pain.
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