The Desire the Medicine Turned Down

What the Research Actually Shows

Begin with the plain fact, because so many women suspect it and are never told: antidepressants commonly turn down sexual desire, and this is one of the best-documented side effects in medicine. In a prospective study that followed more than a thousand outpatients on these medicines, sexual difficulty — lowered desire, delayed or absent orgasm, reduced arousal — appeared in well over half of them once clinicians asked directly (Montejo et al., 2001). The point is not to frighten anyone off a medication that may be holding their life together. It is to say clearly: if your wanting went quiet after you started the pill, you are not broken and you are not imagining it. A known chemical effect is the likeliest explanation.

The second finding matters just as much, because it names the silence around this. In a large study of women taking newer antidepressants, sexual side effects were widespread — and yet the subject was raised with a doctor far less often than it occurred (Clayton et al., 2002). Women tend to assume the fault is theirs: that they have stopped loving their partner, that something is wrong with the marriage, that at their age this is simply the end of that part of life. The research reframes it. A common, treatable effect of a medication is being lived as a private failing — which means the first repair is often just knowing what you are actually dealing with, and being willing to name it out loud.

The third finding is the hopeful one, and it should be said plainly, because “killed my libido” sounds like a door that has closed for good. It has not. Desire is not only chemistry; it also responds to where attention lives. In a controlled trial, women who learned to bring mindful, non-judging attention back to their bodies showed a significant improvement in sexual desire (Brotto & Basson, 2014). That is a crucial second lever. Whatever you and your doctor decide about the medicine itself, there is real, studied ground for tending desire from the inside — through attention returning to the body — at the same time.

What Perukua Says About Desire and the Body

Perukua — the Australian vocalist and women’s facilitator whose sound and voice work has reached women in more than 63 countries — starts somewhere unexpected, and it changes the whole question. Most women meet lost libido as a problem of the couple: what is wrong with us, how do I want him again. She turns it inward first. “Sexuality,” she teaches, “is always a relationship with yourself” — and “when we return sexuality to ourselves, there is work to be done, something to clear within.” Before it is ever about a partner, desire is about your own living connection to your body. That is the ground the medicine has quieted — and it is ground you can tend directly.

She is also precise about how that connection goes silent, and it maps almost exactly onto what the medicine does. “When we are in stress and anxiety,” she writes, “we lose the sensitivity of the body. We are only thoughts. We feel nothing — yet the loops of thought keep swarming in the head.” Depression can flatten the body’s sensation this way; so, chemically, can the pill that treats it. The felt result is the same — a woman living from the neck up, watching herself from a distance. And Perukua’s way back is the mirror image of the problem: not more effort in the mind, but attention travelling back down into the body, where sensation actually lives.

What she offers instead of pressure is permission — and it is worth hearing, because so much advice about desire is really advice about performing. “It is so important,” she says, “to return to the point of balance — not to deny it, but to let it flow through you like a stream, to trust it, to open to this sensual energy and not to fear it.” She reminds women that “we, as women, are created with a very sensitive body” — that sensitivity is not gone, only muffled. This is the quiet, unforcing work at the centre of her course, Open Your True Sensual Nature: not switching desire back on by will, but un-blocking the channel so feeling can return in its own time.

And she is firm that the capacity itself was never lost. “Every woman has this natural power from birth,” she says; “in many, the channel is simply blocked.” Her instruction is almost gentle: “Focus on what matters — uncover your natural essence.” Read alongside the science, it lands as more than encouragement. The medicine may have turned the volume down; it did not remove the instrument. What can be quieted can, patiently and with the right help, be turned back up.

Why It Happens — and What Actually Moves It

It helps to know, in plain terms, why the medicine has this effect, because understanding dissolves the self-blame. Most antidepressants work by raising serotonin, and while that lifts mood, higher serotonin also tends to dampen dopamine — the chemistry of wanting and reward — and to blunt genital sensation. In other words, the two systems that create desire and pleasure are turned down as a side effect of the system that lifts mood (Montejo et al., 2001). This is why “just relax” and trying harder do so little: the mute is chemical, not a failure of love or willpower. You are not doing it wrong. A physical dial has been turned.

Once that is clear, the way forward is not one move but two held together. The first is medical, and it is not the same as suffering in silence or quitting the pill: there are real, well-established options — adjusting the timing of the dose, lowering it, switching to a medication less prone to this, or adding something that counteracts it — all of which belong to you and your prescriber, never to a decision made alone at the bathroom sink. The second lever is the one you can begin today, whatever the medicine is doing: bringing attention back into the body, which the evidence shows genuinely moves desire (Brotto & Basson, 2014). And a third, quieter shift underneath both — separating pleasure from performance — so that sensation is allowed to return without the pressure of having to arrive anywhere.

One honest caution belongs here, plainly stated. Never change or stop an antidepressant on your own; sudden changes can bring their own harm, and the decision needs your doctor. If sex has become painful rather than simply less wanted, that is a medical matter in its own right and deserves a doctor’s attention. And if the fading of desire arrives inside a flat, heavy low mood that sits on most of the day for weeks, that can be depression that is not yet fully treated — also a reason to talk to your doctor. Perukua is an artist and a facilitator, not a doctor, and these practices sit alongside proper medical care; they do not replace it.

A Practice for When the Medicine Quiets Desire

Here is a way to answer “what now” that respects both halves — the medical one and the one that is yours to begin. It asks for one honest conversation, a few private minutes a day, and a little patience, not a transformation on demand.

First, bring it to your doctor, and name it plainly. Say directly that your desire, arousal or pleasure changed after starting or raising the medication. This is common and your doctor has heard it many times; you are not complaining, you are giving them information they need. Ask what options fit you — timing, dose, a different medication, or something added. Do not adjust or stop anything yourself. This single conversation is the step most women skip, and it is the one that opens the medical door.

Second, return attention to your body — daily, and with no goal. Sit privately, and instead of reaching for your phone, place one warm hand on your heart and one low on your belly. Breathe slowly, letting the out-breath run longer than the in-breath, and on a few exhales let a soft “Huuu” travel up from the belly. If the mind keeps swarming, curl and release your toes, or press thumb and forefinger together and rest all your attention on the faint pulse there — small tricks that pull attention out of the head and back into sensation. This is not foreplay and it is not a test; it is simply teaching the body that it is safe to be felt again. This gentle, attention-first work is the heart of Perukua’s Open Your True Sensual Nature.

Third, touch without a destination. When you feel ready, and only then, let touch — your own or shared with a trusted partner — become about curiosity rather than arrival. Warmth of skin, texture, breath, the simple fact of being close, with no obligation for it to lead anywhere. Separating pleasure from performance takes the pressure off the very system the medicine has slowed, and it is often where the first flickers of feeling quietly return.

In Closing

“Antidepressants killed my libido, what now” is one of the loneliest questions a woman can type, and it deserves a truthful, two-part answer. The effect is real, common and chemical — not a sign that you have stopped loving anyone or that this chapter of your life is simply over. So the first move is to bring it out of silence and to your doctor, where real options live. And the second, which is entirely yours, is to keep tending the connection the medicine has quieted — attention returning to the body, a few honest minutes a day, touch freed from performance. As Perukua reminds us, every woman carries this capacity from birth; the channel can be blocked, but it is not gone. What can be turned down can, with the right help and a little patience, be turned back up.

This piece touches on medication and mental health. It is general information, not medical advice, and Perukua is not a doctor. Never change or stop an antidepressant without your prescriber. If low mood, emptiness or hopelessness lasts most of the day for two weeks or more, please reach out to a doctor — and if you ever have thoughts that life is not worth living, contact a local crisis line or emergency services. You do not have to carry this alone.

References & Quote Sources

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