Posted by Bob on October 10, 1999, at 8:19:08
In reply to Meds for ADD and depression: prozac? what else?, posted by rg on October 10, 1999, at 7:24:28
> I have ADD and depression. I have previously responded very well to Prozac after a couple of days, happy calm, focussed, but anxiety forced me to stop ... Prozac just amazed me as it worked after two days.
How long were you on prozac before the anxiety made you stop?
You have to give it two months if you can. Sure, they might have some immediate effect, but it needs to get into you and get saturated before you settle into whatever "therapeutic", stable effect it's going to have.
When I started with meds, my GP put me on zoloft. I can still remember that first day -- what a complete riot! I took a 50 mg tab, did my morning routines, then took off for this elementary school where I had been doing some computer consulting and training on a twice-a-week schedule. Half hour walk (past the Today show -- Katie waived and smiled at me ... [sigh!]) to the station, half hour train to the school. The two teachers I worked with the most were science specialists (and now are good friends, one is one of my best friends here in NYC) -- kind of like elementary art or music teachers, except they went to classrooms and helped teach science. They had their own science center room, and other teachers would often meet in there and sometimes kids were pulled in for special activities.
Well, thank my lucky stars there were no kids in the room when I walked in, because I opened the door, stepped inside, and asked in a loud voice of my two friends and a few teachers in the room:
"Guess who I took a shower with today!"
My hand slapped my move shut, but I could hardly contain the sheepish giggles. I hadn't noticed until then just how giddy I was feeling. I explained that my eight-month-old German Shepard had jumped into the shower that morning. the rest of the day, I had to consciously monitor every word about to come out of my mouth, because my giddyness had erased any sense of social inhibition that I had.
Of course, one week later, the floor had fallen out from under me and I was as panicked and desperate as I had been giddy. The roller coaster lasted 5-6 weeks for me. When it did settle, I had never felt better in my life.
And I kept feeling better and better and better. The my GP suggested going off zoloft since I seem to be recovered. One month later, and this normally unipolar guy found out just how devastating a crash from a manic to a severely depressed state can be ... something else I had never before experienced in my life (and while the mania was a great ride, I can live without the sudden stop at the end of the fall, thank you!).
I went back on zoloft, and it nor any other SSRI has come close to elevating my mood more than the minimum of what I need to function.
To make a long story short ... well, I guess I should just cut all the text above and spit this out:
You seeing a pdoc or a gp for your meds? You can listen to our stories and get yourself educated as to the possibilities, but you'll still need a trained eye to watch how YOU respond to the meds. My GP is a very competent and caring doctor, but he didn't know enough about depression or how meds interact with it to see that I was manic, or to keep me on meds for more than six months. I've paid a heavy price for it ... mostly because I didn't want the added expense of a pdoc when my GP was willing to write the scripts.
I don't know if that's quite the info you were looking for, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it. ;^)
Bob
poster:Bob
thread:12951
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991001/msgs/12956.html