Living with SSRI Antidepressants

Product Name and Strength

SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexapro are prescribed to millions worldwide, yet their lived realities extend far beyond the sterile language of pharmaceutical leaflets. While biomedical research frames antidepressants in terms of "efficacy rates" and "adverse events," there are profound, often contradictory ways SSRIs reshape selves, relationships, and daily existence.

My research emerges from a critical gap: the disconnect between how SSRIs are understood in medical sciences and how they are experienced—as forces that change emotions, alter libidos, or enable survival.

Researcher and Witness

I write as both social researcher and someone who has SSRI use.

Like many in my study, I’ve faced the dilemma of weighing relief against alienation when taking SSRI antidepressants.

This dual perspective informs my commitment to situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), where lived experience is not anecdotal but foundational to critique.

Research questions

• Agency and Ambivalence: How do individuals negotiate the tensions between SSRIs’ therapeutic promises and their bodily/social disruptions? (E.g., emotional blunting, sexual dysfunction, or productivity gains.)
• Beyond the Brain: How do SSRIs circulate through ecologies—from gut microbiomes to workplace demands.
• Digital Spaces: How do online communities (like Discord support groups) reframe living with SSRIs beyond the context of the clinic?

Disciplinary Foundations

• Medical Anthropology: Explores SSRIs as cultural objects that have a life of their own (Van der Geest & Whyte, 1989).
• Science and Technology Studies (STS): Treats SSRIs as "actants" (Latour, 2005) that co-produce realities.
• Care Studies: Examines "tinkering" (Mol, 2008)—how users adjust doses, swap drugs, or quit covertly.