Posted by bleauberry on February 2, 2009, at 17:50:30
Compared to everyone who takes 20mg to 120mg Parnate daily, my story is child's play. But I thought I would mention it for grins.
Got UK Parnate a few weeks ago. Hesitant. Doc said we will do MAOI, but not until 2 weeks. I am so darn sensitive I figured I might as well test Parnate to rule it out of the choices.
A single 5mg dose. Then 2 hours of feeling much worse, similar to what Adderall did to me. But after that I felt somewhat better, got more active, more interested, and glad as heck that sinking spell was so short. Lost appetite. Sleep was lousy.
Next day was bad. People even said I looked sad and asked what was wrong. I usually do a good fake job hiding it. But the glumness was too strong. That night's sleep was real good though.
Third day, surprised as I looked back on it and realized it had been better than baseline. A bit more active, bit more energy, bit more social, bit less depressed, bit less overwhelmed, and a lot less aches and pains.
4th day, another fairly decent one. I was impressed at this point. Overall maybe a 20% improvement from baseline.
Up to this point, just that single 5mg dose.
5th day was a down day. Felt like the MAO enzymes were reviving themselves, not to my benefit.
6th day, another suprise good day.
7th day the party is definitely over. Bad anxiety like I haven't felt in months. Bad depression.
The 3rd and 4th days I got the dizzy headrush thing when I stood up. I was surprised such a small dose would do that several days later. Appetite was generally down, sleep was fine.
And now contemplating real treatment with Parnate rather than mere sampling. But I kind of had my first choice of Marplan set for the doc visit in a week and didn't want to be into Parnate at that time. So geez, got myself in a squeeze.
Anyway, a genetic lab test showed that of 4 diffefrent MAO genes, they all have double mutations. Since the suggestions were antidepressants, I assumed that meant the double mutations were overactive genes. Too much MAO. The obvious looks like an MAOI. But of course, nothing in psychiatry is as obvious as it looks. But based on the little bit of goodness I had over an entire week on a single 5mg dose, I thought that was noteworthy and of significance.
Since my preconceived expectations were purely negative and fearful, there was guaranteed no placebo effect here. I know placebo from authentic. The most astounding thing was how aches and pains that have been torturing me for weeks just vanished. That had never entered my mind.
I suspect if Parnate is my doc's choice, I would be the kind of person that needs 5mg once every two days for a couple weeks, 5mg a day for a couple weeks, and very slowly working high over a period of months, hopefully finding a sweet spot somewhere at a low dose.
Anyway, just thought I would share the story. The moral of the story is that I think Parnate is a massively powerful drug to do what it did in this circumstance.
poster:bleauberry
thread:877694
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090104/msgs/877694.html