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Re: FIGURE ME OUT AND YOU ARE SMARTER THAN ANY DOC

Posted by henryo on February 28, 2008, at 4:45:17

In reply to FIGURE ME OUT AND YOU ARE SMARTER THAN ANY DOCS, posted by AMY II on February 28, 2008, at 0:43:21

Your previous posts are hard to put together. Give us the short story. Intrusive unpleasant thoughts, depression, anxiety? Is that close?

I have to say any intrusive thoughts I've had to deal with were caused by meds, but that is me. Both Effexor and Wellbutrin gave me spooky feelings, shadow men and night terrors. They work for some people. Serzone, Neurontin killed my sex drive and were no help. Prozac pooped out. Others, names I can't remember gave me tremors, insomnia or wasted my painful time.

For depression I've been taking Lamictal for 6 years or more. I like it very much. No weight gain no sexual B.S. no depressing crappy side-effects at all. Its way way way better than nothing. Still though the depression has at times been bad.

I occasionally take Pindolol also called Visken. I don't use it very often. It is used as heart/blood pressure medication (it is a beta blocker) It takes the PHYSICAL response to anxiety (which plays some kinda role in my depression, maybe) out of the picture. It doesn't make everything rosy but for me it put the nasty fire out if things were unusually ugly. But if you are taking it, your heart rate will not budge for love or money- so I avoid exercise when its in me. When I'm hurting it takes the edge off.

Now, I just added Deplin (not a drug) 4 months ago. I cannot say enough about Deplin -for me. It has changed my life. Its an augmentation, it has to be prescribed. L-methylfolate, is not Folic acid. It is what your body is supposed to be able to metabolize Folic acid into. It is classified as medical food, go figure. But in my case it is miraculous. I feel as good as I can remember. Huge breakthrough.

So I take Lamictal 300mg (lowered my dose slowly from 400mg after Deplin amped me up some) Obviously I take Deplin 7.5mg Also usually a klonopin at bed time. I guess I'd take some Pindolol if need arose.

Oh yeah, I ought to mention, I take a lot of fish oil. Enough of to give me 1000mgs of DHA daily. I do that based on personal research. It has no discernable effect but I consider it part of my mental health regimen. You might look into it, see what you think. There is a Carlson's with 500 DHA per a gel cap EPA is irrelevant. Wikipedia DHA. Docosahexaenoic acid.

So that is what has worked for me. Tried any of those?

Advice- Try some new things, if it is a mistake you've learned something. Or it might work. But if you don't try some new tactics/meds nothing will change. So keep slogging. Something is gonna work great. Steer clear of the giant multi med cocktails (just my opinion), too many interactions and variables. "Oh, you get dizzy and have a dry mouth? We have a fifth and a sixth med for that." These doctors ought to take their own prescriptions for awhile. When they wanted to go up to four meds I junked my cards and started over from scratch. Thank God for Lamictal. But it was quite painful to get off everything and work up to a therapeutic dose. Even then as good as it was, at times things still sucked.

Here is the whole game- the effect you want without intolerable side-effects you don't want. Perseverance and a scrip happy doc are a huge help. Try whatever you can- screw logic. They have NO idea how these meds work. The fine print that comes with every psychoactive scrip is very clear on that, "mechanism of interaction unknown". They just go down the list by percentage of efficacy in the population. Everything else is noise and guess work based some past cases.

Just before I hit gold with Deplin, I was on the verge of starting EMSAM. It still sounds good to me. The old MAOI's were very effective, they just had dietary interaction problems. I think EMSAM sounds like an option I'd try. That and klonopin or Pindolol. Thats my very uninformed unprofessional advice for you. Check all med suggestions with Google and Wikipedia. Good luck.


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poster:henryo thread:815112
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080221/msgs/815124.html