I’ve sought help for my bladder problems since they started and no one ever took me seriously. They started after being put on Zoloft. Out of nowhere I suddenly had to pee very badly all the time, i’d be up all night having to pee but when I’d go to the toilet nothing would come out it was horrible. Even if I did go the urge wasn’t relieved. I told this to my prescriber and she just said Zoloft isn’t known to cause that. I did my own research then and found many others who also complained of bladder issues, turns out serotonin plays a large role in bladder contractions and SSRI’s of course impact serotonin.
Anyways when I quit the Zoloft it improved DRASTICALLY. However it was still there and still annoying, my bladder was never the same. I experimented dropping all the rest of my medication but nothing seemed to help me make any more improvement. 2 years later exhausted went to a urogynecologist who laughed at me and said I was too young to be having bladder problems, and that my medication shouldn’t have caused any long term damage.
3 years later I still have problems. However I noticed that being on certain antipsychotics actually greatly improved my bladder issues. Then I took pharmacology and learned anticholinergic medications are used in the treatment of overactive bladder, and certain APs have strong anticholinergic properties, specifically the ones I had realized had been helping me! So I tell my primary care doctor about this and once again I get the same spiel “you’re too young to have bladder problems, your med shouldn’t have caused long term damage” and I’m like how useless are those statements. I clearly do have bladder problems despite my age and no they shouldn’t have caused long term issues but clearly they did. Can we skip the statistics and get to the what can we do about this part?
Anyways she eventually agreed to set me up with a urologist and they’re going to run some tests on me. They’re supposed to call me so I’m impatiently waiting. I’m tired of the stupid bladder thing. I want to go back to peeing 3 times a day instead of like 10 times in the morning and 10 times at night. It messes with my sleep.
summary: doctors for years haven’t taken me seriously about my long term bladder issues Zoloft caused and it pisses me off. I’m seeing another urologist soon and I’m going into real testing stuff this time I’m tired of being told that I “shouldn’t be having” issues because of my age, medication, etc
Yes I have, and let me tell you if I didn’t my life would be absolute garbage quality. I don’t know if I’d even still be alive today. I am so tired of being told I shouldn’t be experiencing things or am not experiencing things or being treated as a statistic. I’m not a statistic.
I have been having the same issues as you when I started my lexapro. I have been on it for probably aliitle over two years now. At first it made me have to go alot and now it just mainly feels like I can’t empty my bladder all the way. Last week they finally told me I have an enlarged bladder. I have a urologist appointment coming up in a few weeks now.
I had some of the same problems as a teen and young adult, but mine had nothing to do with meds. It turned out to be mental. I’m not saying that’s what yours is, just that it was the case for me.
I would be sitting in class, and suddenly I would feel tremendous bladder pressure, to the point that I was terrified I was going to piss myself if I didn’t get to the restroom very soon. There were times I ran out of class to the restroom, but there would be nothing there but an empty bladder. The feeling would then go away. I would deliberately dehydrate myself to try to lessen it, would take “pre-emptive pisses,” as I called them, before classes in which I knew it would be difficult to get a restroom break.
It was terrible, in addition to the terrible depression I had. It didn’t go away until I got on an AP, when I was a 23 year old med student. I suffered through eight years of that. I suppose you could call it an odd sort of tactile hallucination, since I was feeling something that wasn’t there. I don’t know what else to call it, other than an hallucination, since I wouldn’t call it a delusion - I seriously felt it.
Is there any chance you could be experiencing something similar?
I have bladder issues too. I’ve had chronic infection because the drs wouldn’t take me seriously. Anyway the inside of the bladder is supposed to be pink. Mine is now literally black from infection. I’m on antibiotics for 6 months now to see if it helps. I’ll get more biopsies in January. We don’t get taken seriously because we are mentally ill. It’s discrimination