Posted by Elizabeth on May 7, 2002, at 0:49:09
In reply to These scary drug cocktails, posted by Automated Lady on May 5, 2002, at 9:02:10
My impression (from the reports of people in treatment in the UK and from articles by UK researchers) is that the attitudes there are very conservative. I don't think that UK psychiatrists are very aggressive about treating mood or anxiety disorders. I wouldn't want to have to be treated in the UK; it seems like the attitudes of doctors there are very rigid and uncompromising,
and I've encountered a lot of people from the UK who have reported difficulty getting adequate treatment as a result. I think that doctors and patients on the east side of the pond would do well to overcome their fears.Effexor/Wellbutrin (for example) is hardly a strange or exotic "cocktail," although I'm sure your doctor believes it is. The first thing that comes to mind if I see that someone is taking a combination like this one is that they might have experienced sexual dysfunction or other side effects ("sfx") on the Effexor, and the Wellbutrin was added to treat the sfx and to augment the Effexor. Some people also have specific symptoms, such as fatigue, lethargy, and overeating, that may not improve with the Effexor alone but for which Wellbutrin can be helpful.
Personally, I've tried various drug combinations, and I only rarely found side effects difficult to manage. When sfx were a problem, it was due to one drug which had a lot of sfx (or really problematic sfx), and dropping all the other drugs wouldn't have helped. In any case, I've found that most sfx can be managed or treated in some way. (Weight gain and sexual dysfunction are the sfx that people seem to have the most trouble managing.)
> I'm also a bit worried by what I've heard about SSRIs.. that because they increase the amount of neurotransmitters in the brain the brain responds by reducing the number of receptors... taking you back to square one (in fact worse when you come off them). is this true? then what's the point?
Any time you take a centrally-acting drug on a daily basis, your brain is going to try to make adaptive changes. (The cardiovascular system also works very hard to compensate for drug effects. This is why lots of people with essential hypertension take as many drugs as some people here take for complicated psychiatric disorders.) Adaptive changes are not the same as tolerance: they don't send you "back to square one." In fact, adaptive changes are believed to be responsible for the therapeutic effects of most existing antidepressant drugs (which is why they take so long to start working, BTW).
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:105138
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020503/msgs/105387.html