It's been 2 weeks and 3 days now and the main side effect of chronic tiredness seems to be abating nicely although somedays I still want to lay around way too much. Now as for results, so far so good, I much more levelled in my day to day mood and approach to things.

I left a job after 15 years earlier on in the year after my social anxiety in that job became very bad and helped create a mountain out of a molehill type situation. I will blog about that one day but not now. This was the first time I have left a job where I felt it was neccessary for my mental health and I took it bad.Basically now I am bouncing back from depression,moving back to my home town, finding new work and trying to restore some kind of decent level of mental health. I have an awesome wife and two beautiful kids so giving up is not an option.So now it's CBT and meds for me not to mention the sensible and logical input from my wife.Hence the Paroxetine.

I was presrcibed Pristique earlier on in the year which was hell so it's been no meds for me for months except the occasional Xanax,(I actually prefer to be drug free) but Iv'e been struggling so here I am nearly 2 and a half weeks into this new(for me) SSRI. So as I said I feel more level in mood and approach to things, I feel like I am getting some strength of character back (through more fleible thinking) so that should help me to develop the thoughts and attitude I need to focus on the here and now and let go of past events and people who I'm still upset with. I still have the OCD type intrusive/obsessive thoughts but they don't seem to bug me as much now these meds are kicking in. At the moment i'm only taking 20mg daily so I guess I'll need to decide whether I want to increase the dose eventually or not, that should be simply a case of monitoring my progress or lack there of.So for now it's a cautious so far so good

Sometimes when I get down about mental health related issues and start swimming too much in self pity I need to remember to kick myself and be a little grateful for what I have. A wife who is very supportive and never complains, two extremely awesome little boys, supportive family,pretty good physical health and we are making enough to get by on.

Iv'e paid a big price over the years for recreational drug use as a teen but as Bill Cosby said on one of his records 'don't ever challenge worse' , cause as I've found out many times things can always be worse!
Good luck to all the people on this forum who are suffering.

Ok so I have been having trouble with OCD type thoughts for a quite a while now and have had SA since I was 18 yrs old, I am 46 now. The thoughts are of the distressing kind, very annoying and make me feel like a low kind of person. I am seeing a Psychologist now and he has recommended an SSRI in conjunction with CBT. It's been a week and two days since I started on Paroxetine and so far all I seem to have gotten from it is an insatiable desire to sleep all the time and the occasional feeling of dread.

I am determined to give it a real chance to work though so I will just have to try and plow through the side affects and see what's on the other side. I am currently only taking 20mg per day.At the start of the year while going through a work crysis I was given Pristique to try by my doctor but that was hell on earth and it made me a little gun shy of meds,anyway like I said I wil give Paroxetine a chance and see what happens. Wish me luck ok?!