It depends on what you mean by "start working." The first time I took a sertraline, I felt absolutely baked, but I feel like it took weeks for the desirable effects to take hold.

Then again, my doctor also told me that something like 60% of the effects are a placebo.

Regardless, yes, he would give me like a month of these individal samples at a time. I'm not sure how he swung that. It was like 2003 or 2004.