Hi there- So sorry to hear about your troubles. I’m not familiar with antidepressants (or “neuro-modulators” as my GI doctor prefers to refer to them because I’d the stigma) for GERD specifically, but I have functional dyspepsia (FD) and it’s prescribed off-label fairly often for that.

How I wish something would help me, but I’m extremely nervous about medications because I’m very sensitive to side effects due to underlying conditions (mast cell activation, central sensitivity). It’s my understanding for GI conditions, they’re usually used at a much lower dose than what’s used for antidepressants, so it’s possible that could minimize the side effects.

I learned from a pharmacist that amitryptaline is one of the more common antidepressants for GI. It’s an old school antidepressant, as opposed to the “newer” SSRIs and SNRIs like Cymbalta and I think Paxel is an SSRI. Other than what we’ve mentioned, Prozac is the other I hear mentioned for GI.

Unfortunately, I haven’t tried it myself so I can’t share personal experience… But as @danny5 said, it’s not uncommon to use antidepressants this way, for dual purpose or for one or the other (pain or a mood issue). There’s a decent amount of research on it for GI, but I’m not sure about GERD specifically.

A quick Google search yielded this: “For the patients in functional heartburn group, the paroxetine had relieved the symptoms in 14 patients among all the 21 patients. In total, with the guidance of MII-pH monitoring, 64.1% (25/39) of refractory GERD patients accomplished symptom relief.”

It’s a small sample size, but maybe there are other studies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26202002/#:~:text=For%20the%20patients%20in%20functional,GERD%20patients%20accomplished%20symptom%20relief.

If you’re nervous, you can talk to your doctor about starting with an even lower dose than usual. My dad is 74 and takes Prozac. The usual dose is at minimum 20 mg; we started him on 10, and it made him wired! 5 mg and the same effect; we had to go all the way down to 2.5 mg.

I was too scared, so it was off to a referral to the GI dietician and GI psychologist to learn mind-body interventions (evidence based) for my conditions.

I’m wishing you all the best though.

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