You're not alone but it's definitely not a common side effect from what I've been told. Allergy medication gives me terrible anxiety that sometimes escalates into panic attacks. For me I can take it during the day and feel jittery/weird but manageable, then it feels like it wears off but later while I'm sleeping it escalates and I wake up in the middle of a full blown panic attack. Not fun at all.

I have talked to my doctor about it and their opinion was that it's not a documented side effect but everybody is different and so I should just avoid taking them. That answer sucks for me because I'm allergic to basically everything outside.

I have never personally had that same experience, but I'll note that drugs.com does note that a common loratadine side effect is "feeling nervous or hyperactive", and with such a generic and common side effect as that it would make total sense that some people could be much more susceptible to it than others.

Thankfully there are alternatives, but each one has its own separate caveat.

This is gonna sound silly, but I have some serious outdoor allergies, and all these leftover cloth masks from covid, and it turns out wearing the masks outside help tremendously to reduce allergies because the pollen doesn't make it all up my nose. Of course, the tradeoff is me being the person wearing a mask outdoors in the middle of summer 😅

I've seen people mention it. In general, drugs that are meant to have a certain effect, especially in the mental health realm, often have the exact opposite effect. At least temporarily in the first few doses.

Anyway, I don't know anything more, but I'll pitch the !health@lemmy.world community. There's a stickied list of other communities you may find helpful.

Thanks for all your replies everyone! I'm going to stay away from loratadine and go back to my old one.