Posted by SLS on March 22, 2001, at 20:04:51
In reply to treatment resistant depression (part 2), posted by sweetmarie on March 22, 2001, at 7:24:44
Hi Anna.
I think I have a place along this thread.
> If anyone has a `success` story they can share with me (and others), I would be very pleased to hear. I guess, just to get further reassurance.
Often, success stories and not-quite-success stories can be told by the same person. I am one of them.
Doctors began treating me for major depression (later to be determined to be bipolar disorder) in 1982. By 1986, I had been through over 20 drugs and a few combinations. Some of these were investigational drugs never to be marketed anywhere and some procured from foreign markets.
In April of 1987, I began to see a new doctor. His first choice was to combine Parnate (an MAO-inhibitor) with desipramine (a tricyclic). The son of a bitch worked. Success.
Unfortunately, after six months of remission and a world regaling me with a kaleidoscope of wonderful experiences, I began to become manic. Within three months, I was nearly psychotic and in a mixed-state. I was in obvious need for some intervention. The doctor discontinued both antidepressants and added lithium and Klonopin to treat the mania. I am not convinced that it is always in the patient's best interests to discontinue antidepressants when mania emerges, especially when a patient has such a history of treatment resistance. Mood-stabilizers and antimanic agents are to be administered anyway. Perhaps this is enough to treat mania while the antidepressant are continued. I would like to see some investigations into such an important teatment issue. Anyway, after two months without antidepressants, I relapsed into depression. Instead of immediately returning to what had worked so well, this doctor chose to play with a brand new toy that had just become available. Prozac. It didn't work. Then he decided to put me on just one drug of the original combination. Dumb. His lack of common sense and my unquestioning faith in expertise cost me the entire decade of the 1990's to be spent lying on a couch and staring into space. To make a long and too common a story short, the same drugs that got me well in the first place never worked again. Not-quite-success. Not yet.
My initial recipe for success:
Parnate (tranylcypromine) - 60mg
Norpramin (desipramine) - 150mg
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:57143
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010319/msgs/57216.html