Posted by Sigolene on September 1, 2000, at 8:01:36
In reply to Polypharmacy, posted by ash on August 31, 2000, at 0:06:24
Sometimes I feel my meds as if they were poison, especially when there is a long term silent side effect that i discover after mounths. For example a decrease of potassium or i don't remember what.
Then i decide to stop all of them. And it's like you, i feel the same with or without med at the beginning. But after a while i've noticed that at the first stress, contradiction, ... i fall again in deep depression for about 2 days. (i've got atypical depression). It's not the case when i take meds. So i think we can consider our medications more like a prevention, because we have a kind of "fragility".
Sigolene
> Hi all,
>
> Like many folks here, I am one of those treatment resistant depressives who is looking for the magic medication(s) that will be the answer to my moderate/severe unipolar depression that has persisted for 15 plus years.
>
> During the course of the last year, my Pdoc has experimented with a heavy-duty kind of polypharmacy. Basically, she kept on adding a new A/D to whatever else I was taking so that most recently I was on a combination of:
>
> 200 mg Zoloft, 350 mg Wellbutrin SR, 45 mg Remeron, 30 mg Ritalin, 5 mg Olanzapine plus T3 and T4 for hypothyroidism.
>
> I suppose what she was hoping was to hit all neurotransmitters and receptors in as many ways as possible. As far as my depression was concerned though I might as well as have been taking sugar pills for all the good this cocktail did for me.
>
> She was about to add Lamictal to the mix but on second thoughts decided that the dangers of a severe interaction were too high. She asked me to stop all my current meds first, to clean out my system so to speak.
>
> I stopped everything cold turkey, that is went from full dose one day to zero the next. For about 3 days I was quite a bit more tired and sleepy than usual; but soon thereafter I was about 80% or so back to what was “normal” for me when I was taking all the antidepressants– anhedonia, lack of energy, a kind of blah existence but nevertheless able to sort of muddle through the day.
>
> I guess what I am looking for is comments on this kind of polypharmacy or augmentation or whatever else it could be called. I am also curious if anything can be deduced from the fact that I had nowhere near the severe discontinuance effects that so many complain about even when they try to taper off the A/D’s
poster:Sigolene
thread:44126
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000822/msgs/44226.html