Posted by Dunderbeck on April 12, 2002, at 0:42:21
Ok, I'm really tired, so I hope this will make sense. About a year or more ago (probably last February/March, I noticed that I hadn't been really "getting into" anything much...music, movies, that sort of thing. I just felt very uninterested in most everything. I remembered that I had a bottle of Zoloft (sertraline?) that I had taken some years previously, and wondered if this might help. So, I check for the bottle, and its there; it's the 100mg white larger capsules, which I assumed at the time were the generic size you start dosing with. So, for about a month, I just followed the label from when it had been originally prescribed to me(which was apparently back in 1998). I took one 100mg pill a day, though because I wasn't in the habit of taking medication, i forgot to take it fairly often, so I probably ended up stretching 15-20 pills for an entire month. Anyway, when the bottle of pills ran out, I pretty much just forgot about it for the time being. I hadn't noticed any real effect from them.
Then, about a month after I stopped taking them, I noticed that my sense of taste seemed odd. For a few days, I kind of tried to convince myself that it was normal, and that I was just obsessing over nothing, but the longer it went on the more I realized that my sense of taste had apparently diminished. Specifically, it seemed like it was difficult for me to taste things when they were in my mouth, and that I only experienced "aftertaste", after swallowing whatever it was that I was eating.
Also around this time, I started noticing other weird effects. I am a casual user of recreational drugs; at the time, it was only cannabis and alcohol. I noticed that, when smoking cannabis, I didn't really seem to get the full effect, as it were. I would feel the physical effects, and I could feel that I was stoned, but it seemed like it wasn't really "overcoming me"; it was like it wasn't really effecting my state of consciousness, though I could still feel the physical effects and such.
I also noticed, a couple months later, that I couldn't really "get drunk"...or at least, not in the way that I used to. Again, the sensation was similar to how I experienced the pot: I was certainly under the influence (for instance, my physical movements were slightly impaired, I felt the slight physical disconnect you do when drunk, etc.), and yet, it wasn't "taking over my consciousness"...it was as if I was again seperate from it, and just dully looking at it from the outside.
(Warning: a little more drug-use talk follows. I'm not trying to scandalize anybody, but I feel this is important in describing my current problems.)
Early last July, one of my friends told me that he had acquired some magic mushrooms. I had been curious to try these for some time, so he, myself, and one of our other friends all took a decent dosage on Sunday, while at a state park.
About 45 minutes after ingesting them, I was hit by a depressing thought: that I probably wouldn't be able to feel these. My prediction more or less came through. My two friends were completely overcome, while I felt mildly stoned. And again, the same feeling of being "dulled", that I wasn't really being effected by the drugs, my environment, or anything. It was a depressing couple of hours, let me tell you.
(At the time of this incident, I had not taken the Zoloft for approximately 3-4 months.) I have heard numerous times that SSRIs tend to disrupt the hallucinogens that are believed to act upon the serotonin system (LSD and psilocybin, the active ingrediant in the above mushrooms), but this should have been certianly long enough for the drug to be flushed out of my system.There were other symptoms that I noticed during everyday things; I felt sort of a persistant feeling of "dullness". It was especially noticeable when I shut my eyes, prior to sleep or a nap; I felt like my mind should start wandering, but it almost felt like I was thinking of nothing, that my mind was blank.
The dull feeling and the altered/diminished sense of taste continued for a couple of months. During this time, I was trying to locate a psychiatrist who would have good knowledge of SSRIs and their possible side effects. When I located one, I began seeing him weekly. I probably first began seeing him sometime last fall, for the record.
I explained to him much of what I'm explaining to you now, and we set to work trying to figure out why it might have happened. Since then, I have tried the following medications:
Zoloft
Adderall
Dexedrine (Dextrostat)
Effexor
BuSparDiscounting the two stimulants (these were more for my lingering ADD [I know, I know, but that's not the issue, now]), none of the three ADs that
I took seemed to have much of any effect. I am currently taking Effexor SR at 150mg a day; I was taking 300mg a day, but it made me a little too jittery and had been raising my blood pressure, so we dropped the dose back down.It has now been a little more than a year from the time I first took the old bottle of 100mg Zolofts, and I feel that these problems are still present. I have sort of a history of odd, apparently neurological issues, so I'll mention what I can think of offhand:
For years, I have had odd vision problems, which seem to be neurological in nature, as opposed to being a physical problem with the eyes themselves. I see fairly prominent double images under certain conditions (especially at night while driving; when my headlights hit a stop sign, there appear to be two or three blurry copies of it, each transposed a foot or so above the original.). When I squint, these more or less go away, although not completely. Also, fine patterns (examples: one of the curtains here with a tiny checkerboard pattern, gratings on blacktop, etc.) tend to give me an odd effect, sort of as if there were odd, half-visible lines connecting the different areas of the finely patterned surface. From time to time, I also feel like I have a sort of tunnel vision, where its difficult for me to see or pay attention to anything other than what I'm directly looking at; I can never tell if this is a real perception, or simply an obsession. About the time I first noticed weirdness with my eyes (I was about 12 at the time), I also experienced a period when I felt what might be described as "depersonalization" or "derealization"; I just felt very disconnected from everything. Sort of like, "Whoa, I can't believe this person is actually me, and I'm experiencing this...it doesn't feel real...".
Also, approximately three years ago, I seemed to have an odd change in my hearing. It seems that it became more difficult for me to hear sounds distinctly, especially when there were many instruments/voices/whatever at once. It seems to me that around this time, I had had an odd flu-like illness, though I can't recall whether they actually happened near each other, or that I was just reaching for an explanation. I also have had for an indeterminate amount of time some mild tinnitus; I have no idea when this began happening, but I believe its been for a few years at least. It may have started when the other ear problems started. Both of these ear symptoms still seem to be present, as of now.
I've also had sort of...I wouldn't call it chronic fatigue, per se, but in certain situations I used to have real physical trouble staying awake. For instance, when I was in high-school, I often could not stay awake in many of my classes. I was rarely caught, because I was discreet about it, but at times I was really trying to force myself to stay awake, and couldn't. I've also fallen asleep driving on two occasions, although not recently (*knock on wood*). However, this may well be more related to my dopamine system, presumably related to the ADD/lack of motivation I've felt for many years. Interestingly enough, I somewhat feel that in the last year or so, I've gotten much better about this; I feel far more in control of my wakefullness. This change may be related to the presumed weirdness with my serotonin system, as I understand serotonin is thought to regulate sleep.
One final thing: sometime, maybe a month before I began taking the Zoloft, I noticed what first looked like a blackhead but turned out to be a tick attached to my chest. I removed it by twisting, kept it in an envelope, etc. I never noted any accute symptoms that I associated with Lyme's Disease, so I never had the tick tested for it. I have searched for info on LD to see if any of my symptoms might match up to it. I don't see a whole lot of similarity between what I'm experiencing and what those with LD go through, but this happened close enough to the start of my symptoms that I thought I should mention it.
Whew. That's all I can think of, for now. If anyone has experienced anything *REMOTELY* like this, please weigh-in. I feel like the doctor and myself don't have enough of an angle to go on, and that we're just haphazardly trying medication and hoping it works. I have considered asking him about something like biofeedback, or some other method of brain visualization; would this be in any way helpful?
Again, I apologize for the length of the post and any questionable content it might contain, and I look forward to your responses.
-D
poster:Dunderbeck
thread:102840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020408/msgs/102840.html