by Hollace Schmidt

“I’m totally disinterested in sex,” says Daniela Vellotti, 33, of Alpharetta, Georgia, who used to enjoy occasional twice-a-day romps with her long-term boyfriend before going on Zoloft in May. “I’ve only been able to orgasm twice since going on the drugs, and it wasn’t even that good.”

The bigger problem, says Fisher, is that unfulfilling sex is more than just a relationship inconvenience—science shows couples need to orgasm to stay in love. Sexual stimulation drives up dopamine, helping fan the fires of romantic love, and orgasm brings a flood of oxytocin, the brain chemical associated with attachment. The bottom line: “Sex drive, romantic love, and attachment are connected,” says Fisher, who passionately believes that antidepressants are capable of tampering with that delicate love triangle.

THE NAYSAYERS
Not everyone is convinced. “Our capacity to love is very strong,” says Clayton, author of Satisfaction: Women, Sex and the Quest for Intimacy. “I just haven’t seen people on SSRIs not be able to fall in love, and there’s no good systematic data to suggest that.” The very nature of depression places stress on relationships, she says. The last thing a depressed woman is thinking about is falling in love or having sex: “They’re focused on their own suffering.” By and large, the drug companies also dispute the claims.

“Antidepressants allow most people to experience more normal emotions again,” says Dr. John M. Plewes, medical adviser for Eli Lilly, maker of Prozac, though, he concedes, “Certainly some people may have more difficulty than others.” Even Vellotti says that while she wants a solution to her sex problems, overall, she credits her much happier relationship to her antidepressant. Before Zoloft, she felt short-fused, resentful—and nearly broke things off with her boyfriend. “Now, I’m hopeful about a future with him,” Vellotti says. “It’s not an option to go back to how I was. It would be horrible.”

Fisher, too, makes a distinction between “people who literally couldn’t get out of bed in the morning and need the drugs in order to find love” and those who hit a trouble spot but may stay on the drug indefinitely. They’re the ones she believes may be at risk for what she points to as the true danger: “emotional blunting.”