Posted by SLS on October 4, 2005, at 9:01:05
In reply to Re: Paxil Poop out, posted by theo on October 3, 2005, at 22:13:01
> > Unfortunately, doctors don't tell their patients much about startup side effects. With Lexapro, anxiety, is often a side effect that shows up at the end of the first week and disappears in the third week.
> I actually gave Lexapro 12 weeks! Anxiety never faded, avoidance issues worsened.Sorry to hear that. That's a long time to have to suffer knowing that the drug is responsible for the worsening. I doubt I would have lasted 12 weeks.
> I think my Lexapro experience actually fuels my desire to give up on other meds to soon.
Yup. I, too, have had too many experiences like yours. The protracted trials of drugs that made me feel worse make me less apt to stick to a drug now. The paradox is, of course, that the fewer and fewer are the drugs that are left to try, the less apt one is to give them full trials. These are exactly the people who need to extend their trials.
> I went through hell for 12 weeks thinking it would get better and it never did.
Yeah. And then you want to blame the doctor for inflicting such pain by forcing you to stay on it.
> I think it's wise to give a med a good 4-5 weeks at a theraputic dose and if it doesn't work, stop and move on.It is always such a difficult decision to make. There are many stories of people describing their not experiencing an improvement until after 6 weeks. But then we don't know how the drug was titrated in these circumstances. Perhaps the first 4 weeks were at subtherapeutic dosages. I think it makes sense to make some sort of change at 4 weeks if no improvement has been observed. This could be an aggressive titration of the dosage to tolerance, addition of a second drug, or a switch to a different drug.
> I think many doctors keep patients on a med that is NOT working for them to long, dragging out the patients recovery.
20/20 hindsight...
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:560518
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051003/msgs/562671.html