Posted by bleauberry on December 1, 2011, at 15:02:10
In reply to Schizophrenia Negative Symptoms---Help!, posted by ethen on November 29, 2011, at 3:00:15
Most of my negative symptoms were nicely improved when on amisulpride. I had experimented with 12.5mg doses, 25mg doses, and every-other-day doses. In any case, it was helpful for those specific symptoms except if the dose got too high they would get worse instead, just as with any antipsychotic.
I guess we all have unique biochemistries but for me anything in the realm of anhedonia/negative symptoms/social withdrawal...is tied to all of the neurotransmitters but primary to norepinephrine, secondarily to dopamine, and partially to serotonin. I'm sure other mechanisms and neuros are involved such as the endorphin system, cellular energy system, immune system and inflammation system, and maybe that's why rhodiola works good for these kinds of symptoms. Safe with meds too.
For several years my anhedonia and negative symptoms were kept at bay by a combination of prozac and adrafanil and zyprexa. The prozac/zyprexa took care of the depression pretty good, and then adrafinil knocked out most of the negative/anhedonia/lack of emotion stuff. These days rhodiola is my mainstay to help fend those symptoms off. Back then though I learned that whatever chemistry the stimulants worked on, it was somewhere within those same chemistries that anhedonia was directly related to.
For me ritalin was immediately helpful, while adderal was almost suicidal. Ritalin worked a lot better when on prozac. Probably one of the best for me is vicadin, which throws into question the whole ne/dopamine focus because vicadin is mostly endorphins/anti-inflammation. So there's no way to know. Ritalin and vicadin however have some wild ups an downs though so I only use that in emergencies once in a while.
Modafanil and/or adrafanil should be on the trial list also. No matter what, my opinion would be to include some experimentation with various doses of rhodiola with or without any meds. I just happen to think that of all the botanical medicines out there, rhodiola is probably the most significant for your specific symptoms.
I hope you might find something in this post useful. You do have some good options ahead of you, it's just a patient journey of trying various things and learning from the clues and the mistakes along the way.
> hi guys,i really need some help reguarding negative symptom of schizophrenia,its been three f*ck*ng years already,i m very sick and tired of those social withdrawal,anhedonia apathy and alogia...well,i dun wanna waste time i straight to the point,i want to listen to your experience on treatment of negative symptom and also which drug/med work??how long does it take??clozapine??latuda??amisulpride??stimulants(adderall,vyvnase or ritalin)??
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> and also what is the future treatment in this field??any new meds that is to be look up for??
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> a little about me:althought its been three years but i only started trying different meds 6 months ago as i m sick of living like this,meds i have tried include:risperdal,invega,geogon,mirtazapine,fluoxitient...
poster:bleauberry
thread:1003857
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20111120/msgs/1004076.html