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ADVICE BADLY NEEDED!

Posted by MJK on September 20, 2000, at 0:27:52

Hello, everyone!

This is my first time posting and I am a little nervous. I tend to be very reserved with my feelings but was so impressed with the intellegent and sympothetic information passed between the members of this board, that I am more or less forcing myself to take a chance and open up a bit.

To give you a brief history, I've suffered from chronic depression since the age of 10 (for about 26 years) and, up until about two years ago, felt I had tried every combination of AD's possible, most with limited success. I also suffered from migraine headaches since childhood, which became unbareable 10 years ago after the birth of my first child. At that time, I was referred to a specialist, whose idea of pain management was a steady stream of prescription painkillers. After being hospitalized four separate times over the next three year period with multiple ulcers and severe colitis (caused by the vast amount of pain meds), I realized I was addicted and entered a drug rehab program. This coming January, I've been "painkiller free" for six years and, not surprisingly, have not had one migraine headache.

Now onto my current problem - after two more years of trying various treatmens for depression (including several additional docs and meds), I was finally referred to a doctor, who, after trying alot of "newer" meds (Celexa, Effexor, even Synthroid), started me on a regiment of Prozac (it was slowly increased up to 80 mgs. a day) plus 50 mgs. of Dexadrine (30 mgs. of sustained-release in the morning and 20 mgs. of fast-acting around 12:00 PM). This combo was prescribed, I think, out of desperation on my doc's part since the 80 mgs. of Prozac, which had been helping for several months, was no longer effective and I was starting to suffer from suicidal ideology.

Sorry to be going on for so long but I want to give you the full picture of my situation. This combination of Prozac and Dexadrine has been very successful, and for the past two years, I've lived the kind of peaceful, contented, NORMAL life I used to dream about (but never thought I'd have). About a year ago, I decided that I felt so good that "I must not need these meds any longer" and made the foolish mistake of trying to wean myself off. One month later (after a severe spiral downward), I went back to my doc (in shame) and she slowly started me back on the same combo. For the past 10 months or so, I have felt great!

Now comes the problem - although I have always had erratic sleep patterns, about six months ago, I stopped sleeping (if I was able to get more than two hours a night, I was happy) and I also started bruising very easily. Unfortunately, sleep deprevation comes with its own set of side-effects (as does walking around all bruised) and, at the urging of my spouse, I mentioned these problems to another doctor who has been treating my son for the past year for ODD/ADD/LD disorders (this doc is very well reputed and helped, immensely, with my son). He felt that my problems stemmed from the prolonged use of Prozac and that the Dexadrine was extremely dangerous and highly addictive. He and my husband made me so nervous about the Dexadrine (especially considering my history), that I stopped taking it about six weeks ago. Three weeks ago, I started feeling really bad again and last week, this new doctor started me on 20 mgs. of Adderal (which he says is less addictive than Dexadrine) with the intention of slowly weaning me off of the Prozac (I'm now down to 60 mgs. a day). Unfortunately, I've been on the new meds for five days now and today was my worst day yet - I didn't leave the house and stayed closed off in my bedroom crying most of the day. This evening, I've started thinking that I made a terrible mistake by altering my meds and
came upon this website while trying to research the prolonged use of Prozac and/or Dexadrine. Even though I found plenty of info on sleep disturbances relative to Prozac, I didn't find anything with mentioned bruising. I also realized that, for all of my fear about the addictive component of the Dexadrine, I had absolutely no withdrawal symptoms when I stopped cold-turkey six weeks ago (if you've ever been through drug withdrawal, you know that it is not the kind of thing you would overlook or not be aware of).

So I;m hoping that you all can help me with this question - should I contine with the new med combo and hope that this doctor is right and that it kicks in at some point or should I go back to my other doctor (who, by the way knows about my decision to change and thought that it was a mistake) and restart the other combo which was so effective? I know most of you will say "talk about it with the new doc" but I feel that he is so steadfast in his beliefs about the Prozac/Dexadrine combo, that he won't be able to give an unbiased consideration of all choices.

Again, I'm so sorry to go on for so long but any feedback you can give me would be so appreciated! In some ways, I wish that none of the med's ever gave me the relief the Prozac/Dexadrine did - it was so much easier to deal with the reality of depression when I didn't know how it feels to be a functioning, normal-feeling human-being.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time and sticking through my story!


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Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:MJK thread:44939
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000905/msgs/44939.html