KatjaGrace's year-long vortioxetine experiment: no net mood improvement despite initial spike
After a year of logging, average mood unchanged to one decimal point, but first week showed sharp gains.
KatjaGrace, a rationalist blogger on LessWrong, recently shared her year-long experiment with vortioxetine, an obscure antidepressant synthesized to improve upon standard SSRIs. She meticulously logged her mood daily—a dataset that now shows a sobering result: her average mood over the entire period was identical to her pre-drug baseline, to one decimal point. This suggests no net benefit across the year. Yet the data holds a twist: in the first week after starting the drug, and to a lesser extent after a dosage increase, her mood spiked dramatically—from mostly 3s and 5s to 6s and 7s. That's exactly the opposite of the drug's intended mechanism, which typically takes weeks to build up. This immediate placebo-like or pharmacological effect is anomalous and worth noting for anyone considering the drug.
Other metrics—anxiety, crying episodes—showed no improvement and possibly slight worsening, though KatjaGrace attributes that to life's random walk. She calls the overall result 'bleh,' concluding vortioxetine probably isn't for her. This self-experiment is a vivid example of the challenges in personal mental health trials: N=1, confounding variables, and surprising time-course effects. The initial spike suggests some people might get a short-term lift, but the long-term null result is a caution for those hoping for sustained benefit. For a tech-savvy audience, it's a reminder that even with data, interpreting personal experiments requires rigor—and that 'mildly smarter' claims for vortioxetine remain unproven in her case.
- Average mood over the year was identical to pre-drug baseline (to one decimal point).
- Sharp improvement in mood was observed only in the first week after starting and after dosage increases.
- Other mental health metrics (anxiety, crying) were unchanged or slightly worse, attributed to random life factors.
Why It Matters
Personal N-of-1 trials like this highlight the gap between drug marketing and real-world experience—critical for professionals self-experimenting with nootropics or antidepressants.