60% of women on SSRIs report a drop in desire.Here's how to support it — without touching your meds.
After 18 years in women's mental health, I lost count of the women who sat across from me convinced they'd fallen out of love, or that it was "just their age." Almost none of them had been told the truth: the drug that saved them was flattening the very thing they were grieving.
In nearly two decades treating women's mental health, I have watched the same quiet heartbreak play out in my office hundreds of times.
A woman comes in doing well. The antidepressant worked — she can think again, work again, get off the bathroom floor in the morning. She is not sorry she takes it. But she sits down, folds her hands, and after a while she says the thing she's been carrying alone: somewhere in there, she stopped wanting. Her husband reaches for her and she feels nothing. Not distaste. Just a flat, faraway nothing.
"The pill is working. So why do I feel nothing when he reaches for me?"
For years these women blamed themselves. They told me it was stress, then their age, then — on the hard nights — their marriage. They'd quietly grieved a part of themselves and never once suspected the small orange bottle on the nightstand. And here is what almost none of them had been told:
The medication raising the serotonin that steadies your mood also turns down desire. It's one of the most common side effects there is — and the reason your drive went dark has nothing to do with your age, your marriage, or you.
📋 What I see in my practice
The real reason your desire went quiet
Your antidepressant works by raising serotonin. More serotonin steadies your mood — that's the point, and for you it did its job. But serotonin has a second effect the leaflet buries: at the levels that calm your mood, it also blunts desire and arousal. It turns down the same dial that used to light up when your partner looked at you a certain way.
Why this is so easy to miss
The mood lift and the numbness arrive around the same time, so it feels like you changed. It doesn't announce itself. It just dims, slowly, until one day you realise you can't remember the last time you wanted anything. Here's what the research actually shows:
How the thinking has changed
For a long time women were simply told to live with it. That's shifted:
Mood first, everything else later
SSRIs transform depression care. Sexual side effects are noticed but treated as a minor footnote — something to put up with.
It's not rare — it's the norm
Careful studies show most people on SSRIs experience lowered desire or arousal. "Common" turns out to be an understatement.
Emotional blunting recognised
Researchers describe the flat, faraway feeling as its own effect — not depression, not the person, but the medication turning the volume down.
Support desire without touching mood
Focus moves to options that work away from serotonin — so a woman can get desire back without gambling the stability she fought for.
Your medication scores high where you need it — steadying your mood. The problem is the things it turns down as a side effect. Here's the gap, effect by effect:
Illustrative of the mechanism. The point: steadying your mood and supporting desire are two different jobs — and Maca+ works on the one your medication turns down.
Why the obvious fixes backfire
The reason your medication dims desire is that it works on serotonin. So every obvious fix means touching serotonin — which is exactly why they threaten the mood you depend on:
⚠ Going through serotonin
✓ Going around serotonin
You shouldn't have to choose between your mind and your marriage.
That was always a false choice. There's a way to support desire that never touches your medication.
The better question to ask
For years the only question on offer was: "How much of my desire am I willing to give up to stay well?"
The better question is: "Can I support desire through a different pathway — and leave the serotonin that keeps me steady completely alone?"
That reframes everything. You're not trying to undo your antidepressant or muscle past it. You're supporting the part it turned down, through separate wiring, so nothing about your mood has to change. That's the whole reason I started talking to my patients about maca — specifically maca, and specifically for this.
Why Maca+ — and why this one
Maca is a root from the high Andes that women have used for generations for energy and desire. What makes it genuinely useful here is the mechanism: maca is understood to work off non-serotonin pathways. It isn't a hormone. It isn't an antidepressant. It doesn't raise or lower your serotonin. So it can support the part the drug turned down without disturbing the part the drug keeps steady. It sidesteps the problem instead of fighting it.
What makes Maca+ different from the maca on the shelf
- ✓Non-hormonal, non-serotoninSupports desire through a separate pathway — it leaves the medication you depend on alone.
- ✓Triple-variety, not singleRed, black and yellow maca together — most shelf maca is one weakly-dosed variety.
- ✓High potency that absorbsMore than 1,500mg per serving, with black pepper so your body actually takes it up.
- ✓A routine you'll actually keepTwo capsules with your morning coffee. Nothing to time against your antidepressant.
- ✓Under 80¢ a dayOn the 3-bottle bundle — made in the USA, and less than the coffee you take it with.
What's actually in the capsule
Four ingredients, each doing one job — and none of them touching serotonin:
Red maca
Red maca is the variety most associated in the research with women, mood and libido. It anchors the blend around the exact thing that went quiet.
Black maca
Black maca is the variety most tied to stamina and daytime energy — the "I have something left for myself at the end of the day" feeling.
Yellow maca
Yellow maca is the everyday base variety for overall vitality, rounding out the blend so it supports you broadly, not in one narrow spike.
Black pepper
Black pepper extract helps your body absorb what it's given — so a high dose on the label is a high dose in you, not most of it flushed away.
Self-reported by women who took maca consistently for antidepressant-related loss of desire:
Self-reported outcomes; individual results vary. Maca+ works alongside — never instead of — your prescribed medication.
Support the part the drug turned down.
Non-hormonal, non-serotonin, works alongside your antidepressant. Less than 80¢ a day on the bundle.
Start with Maca+Free shipping · 60-day money-back guaranteeThere's a real trial behind it
This is the part that moved me from "worth a try" to "worth recommending." Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital ran a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of maca root in women whose sexual function had been dampened by their antidepressants — the precise situation these women are in.
Over 12 weeks, the women taking maca reported greater improvement in sexual function than the women taking an identical-looking placebo. And the benefit was clearest in postmenopausal women — the group most likely to be reading this.
The pattern from the placebo-controlled data: a look-alike placebo drifts; maca climbs. Illustrative of the trial's direction, not exact figures.
Illustrative of the direction reported in Dording et al. (2015), MGH. Individual results vary; Maca+ works alongside your prescription.
A plant, tested properly, against a placebo, in women with antidepressant-related loss of desire — and it came out ahead, most clearly in women past menopause. That is a great deal more than a nice story on a label.
What women tell me
I'll let them speak for themselves. These are the kinds of notes I hear once a woman realises it was never her fault:
"I spent two years convinced I'd fallen out of love with my husband. The Lexapro saved my life and I'd never stop it — but I'd quietly grieved that part of us. Three weeks after I started Maca+ I reached for him first, and I burst into tears. It wasn't gone. It was just… waiting. And my mood never wavered."
Diane H. ✔ Verified · on an SSRI 4 yrs
"61, postmenopausal, six years on Celexa. I'd made my peace that that part of life was over. I was wrong. Six weeks in and I've had to completely revise that opinion. It doesn't touch my mood at all, which is the only reason I was willing to try it."
Patricia N. ✔ Verified
"The energy came back first — I noticed that in week one. Then, slowly, the wanting. My husband asked what had changed. I told him I finally understood it was the medication all along, not us. That conversation alone was worth it."
Maureen B. ✔ Verified
What I find most compelling is when women track how they actually feel over a few weeks. It stops being a vague hope and becomes a pattern:
A composite of what women commonly report after about 12 weeks of consistent use. Individual results vary.
*Anonymised composite of self-reported tracking. Not medical advice; individual results vary.
Ready to feel like yourself again?
Support desire through a different pathway — and leave the medication you depend on exactly where it is.
Get Maca+ — less than $0.80/day60-day money-back guarantee · free U.S. shipping over $50Questions women ask me
Will this interfere with my antidepressant?
Do I have to stop or change my medication?
Is it hormonal? I don't want hormones.
How long until I notice something?
Is it just an energy boost or a placebo?
What if it doesn't work for me?
My honest recommendation
Maca+ is not an antidepressant, it won't treat depression, and it is never a reason to change your prescription. It's for the woman who did everything right — who got well, and quietly lost a part of herself in the process — and who wants that part back without gambling the stability she depends on.
After eighteen years of watching women blame themselves for something that was never their fault, this is the thing I can stand behind: non-hormonal, works through a separate pathway, backed by a real placebo-controlled trial in exactly this situation, and safe to take alongside the medication you're not willing to give up. If you recognise yourself in this article, you are not broken — and you don't have to choose.
✓ Who it's for
- ✓ Women on an SSRI/SNRI whose desire went flat after starting it
- ✓ Anyone who's been blaming their age, their marriage, or themselves
- ✓ Postmenopausal women — the group the trial helped most
- ✓ Women who will not risk their mood by switching meds
- ✓ Anyone who wants a non-hormonal option they'll actually keep up
Who it's not for
- ✕ Anyone hoping to stop or replace their antidepressant
- ✕ Women expecting an overnight switch-flip
- ✕ Anyone unwilling to take it consistently for a few weeks
- ✕ Those who'd rather not run it past their own doctor first
It was never your age. It was never your marriage. It was never you.
Support the part the drug turned down — and keep everything that's keeping you steady.
"I'd stopped going to bed at the same time as him just to avoid the moment. Now I don't. Same medication, same steady mood — one new thing in the morning."
Susan D. ✔ Verified
"The line about feeling 'nothing, not distaste, just nothing' — I'd never seen it written down. I thought it was only me. It wasn't the drug's fault I was warned about, but I'm glad I finally know."
Carol W. ✔ Verified
"On Effexor and stable and I will not risk that. This doesn't touch it. Two months in, mood rock steady, and the rest is slowly coming back."
Janet T. ✔ Verified
"My daughter sent me the article. I cried — not because I was sad, but because it wasn't my fault and it wasn't him. Ordered that night."
Rachel P. ✔ Verified
"Took about five weeks for me, not the two some mention. But it came. Energy first, then the rest. Worth the patience."
Brenda L. ✔ Verified
"I take it with my coffee so I don't forget. That's the genius of it — everything else I 'should' do I forget, this I just drink."
Anne-Marie F. ✔ Verified
"58 and I'd written this off as menopause. It wasn't only that. My mood is exactly as steady as it's been for years, and something warmed back up."
Deborah H. ✔ Verified
"Non-hormonal was the dealbreaker for me — I couldn't do hormones. This gave me an option I actually felt safe taking."
Karen M. ✔ Verified
"My husband is very pleased and, frankly, so am I. I'd stopped believing this was still available to me."
Lorraine T. ✔ Verified
Discussion (8 comments)
I have quietly wondered about this for three years and never once connected it to my Zoloft. Reading the part about "emotional blunting" I actually put my hand over my mouth. Nobody told me. Nobody.
Carol, I hear this in my office almost every week, and the reaction is nearly always the same — relief, and a little grief that no one said it sooner. Please know it was never a failing on your part. Bring it up with your prescriber; there are options that don't ask you to touch the medication that's helping you.
Honest question — how is this different from just buying maca off Amazon?
Fair question. Two things matter: potency and variety. A lot of shelf maca is a single variety, weakly dosed, with nothing to help you absorb it. The trial that impressed me used a meaningful dose. Maca+ is triple-variety at 1,500mg+ with black pepper for absorption — that's the version worth taking, not a token amount.
Five weeks in. The energy came back first and honestly that alone lifted everything. Tastes of nothing, easy to take with coffee, and my mood hasn't budged which is exactly what I needed.
Every supplement claims a "study." How do we know this isn't just marketing to women who feel desperate?
Healthy scepticism — I share it. The honest framing: maca won't treat depression and no one should claim it does. What the research supports is specific — a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in women with antidepressant-related sexual dysfunction, where maca beat placebo, most clearly after menopause. And the 60-day guarantee exists so you can test it on yourself at no risk.
References
- Dording, C.M., et al. (2015). A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of maca root as treatment for antidepressant-induced sexual dysfunction in women. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2015, 949036.
- Dording, C.M., et al. (2008). A double-blind, randomized, pilot dose-finding study of maca root (L. meyenii) for the management of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction. CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, 14(3), 182–191.
- Montejo, A.L., et al. (2001). Incidence of sexual dysfunction associated with antidepressant agents. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 62(Suppl 3), 10–21.
- Clayton, A.H., et al. (2002). Prevalence of sexual dysfunction among newer antidepressants. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 63(4), 357–366.
- Goodwin, G.M., Price, J., et al. (2017). Emotional blunting with antidepressant treatments. Journal of Affective Disorders, 221, 31–35.
- Gonzales, G.F. (2012). Lepidium meyenii (Maca): a plant from the Peruvian highlands. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2012, 193496.