Have you considered other medications? I take 20mg of Lexapro a day for it and it’s no exaggeration to say my life has experienced a sea change for the better. There are many meds to try all with different side effect profiles and different efficacies in different people.
The one I tried that caused it was Zoloft. I assume the other SSRIs will also cause tinnitus by way of raising serotonin levels. But for the brief week before the tinnitus hit, it very much felt like a sea change for the better.
As I understand it, Buspirone might be worth asking your doctor about — it’s not an SSRI or a benzo, and appears in some studies to lower serotonin levels in animal brains. Anyway, worth bringing up with your doc if SSRIs are out.
But I'm only on 10... If I could talk to my doctor I would definitely ask for more (though I hate the side effects) but it's impossible to get an appointment now :(
Hey, here's a thing: I was on 10mg for a year, and it did almost nothing, and I went up to 15mg and literally everything changed overnight (which breaks my mental model for how that works, but fine). I was doing frequent mood check-ins and there's a dramatic effect from the day after I went to 15mg. Could be placebo, but I was super skeptical when the doctor suggested increasing the dose. Now I'm on 20mg 4 years later and it's perfect.
