partial recovery story

[Guest guest]

Hello all,

I’ve been a lurker on here for a few months, reading about

your experiences. I hope you’ll all forgive me. I myself do not have PSSD but

my boyfriend who I love very much was on Effexor for OCD for many years (a long

time before I even knew him), and a year after weaning off (which was last December),

he still had no sex drive. He has always been very open with me about

everything and had most of the symptoms that people here describe—numbness,

inability to feel many emotions, and no desire to have sex. I went to the internet to search for answers

because I had thought that once he got off the drugs that everything would

return to normal. I just couldn’t believe that he still didn’t want to have

sex, even off the drugs. He was thinking “well maybe this is how I am going to

be now, asexual.†I started doing some researching online, learned that there

is a thing called PSSD and found and joined this site. I wanted to understand better what he was going through, and find possible solutions.

I decided to write today to give you all some hope, because

he is gradually getting his libido back. It’s not 100% and I know it’s not the

same as it was when he was younger. (he’s in his 30s now). But it much better

than even a few months ago. We have sex nearly daily, and he recently remarked

to me that for the first time in years, sex does not feel like a chore or

something to dread.

This progress was not the result of any specific effort. That

is, my boyfriend is not on any kind of drugs, nor has he tried any

homeopathic/herbal remedies. He has horrible sleeping patterns (insomnia, too), smokes (but is

trying to quit) and is a social drinker. He does exercise somewhat regularly

and I think over the past few months he’s made an effort to be more social.

My boyfriend knows that I am on this site but he doesn’t

read or participate, and I don’t know if he’ll be willing to share any details

with you. But at the least I wanted to add one more story of recovery.