Disclaimer- I’m not saying that Sertraline is the sole reason I got into debt but I can assure you that if I never went on Sertraline I wouldn’t have anywhere near the amount of debt I currently have.
About 8 months ago I got prescribed 50mg of Sertraline for social anxiety. Most of my anxiety was due to a toxic work environment but I did have some financial anxiety as well. My debt before sertraline was very minimal. At the time I only had one credit card that I payed off every month and a small car loan that was gonna be paid off within one year.
Within one week of taking sertraline I spent close to a thousand dollars on music stuff (I’ve always been a musician) which went on my credit card. Looking back I wish I saw that as a clear sign to stop the medication. It worked so well for my anxiety that I literally didn’t worry about anything financially. It didn’t take long for me to have a handful of credit cards that I maxed out.
Three months into taking sertraline all my credit cards were maxed out and I started taking out high-APR loans from online lenders (massive mistake). I was taking those loans out to consolidate credit card debt but once some of my credit cards were paid off I just ended up thinking I had more money to spend.
Then of-course I thought that I needed a super nice car so I ended up getting a 12 thousand dollar car loan. Everytime I bought something it felt so good but that good feeling would only last a few days to a week before I was shopping online for my next possession.
A couple months after I got the car I randomly decided to quit my toxic job and try to work side hustles until I land a full time position. Long story short that didn’t work out well since sertraline KILLED my motivation and I just bed rotted 4 out of 7 days a week. Life went downhill very quickly since I started missing payments on my loans and paying rent late. Most of the stuff I bought I had to sell on Facebook Marketplace for half of what I paid for them just to get by. Now I have all this debt without much to show for it😭 I started borrowing money from family members to just survive and it didn’t take long for me to hit the breaking point.
Thankfully I was finally able to land a full time job and I was noticing that my motivation was non-existent which I knew was from the sertraline. I decided to quit cold-turkey and WOW that was the best decision I’ve made in the past 8 months. I finally have motivation again and I actually laugh more often than I did on sertraline. It felt as if the fog lifted from my conscious and now I can focus on getting myself out of this hole I reluctantly dug myself into. My debt total is close to 25k which includes personal loans, credit cards and my car loan.
My advice to anyone out there considering taking sertraline or anything similar would be to be extremely careful with the decisions you make while on them. After my experience I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone unless they absolutely needed them to survive. Since being off my anxiety did come back but now I can use that energy as fuel to climb me out of the hole I’m in. I know I really wasn’t in my right mind when all of that happened so I try to give myself some grace. This is all definitely one big lessons learned for me lol