Posted by DSCH on October 3, 2003, at 8:49:14
In reply to Re: Yohimbe/yohimbine, posted by Francesco on October 3, 2003, at 7:27:05
> Is there the "Pstims vs Supplements" asnwer somewhere ? I'm messing up my brain with all these re-directs ! : ) And it doesn't need to be messed up further ;-)
>
> (anyway: Pstims=psycobabble Supplements=alternative
> so ... this is a puzzle even for Dr. Bob ;-)OK, here's the text from your post in the thread that TheOutsider started...
"Hi again, what do you mean with "some success" with supplements ? Could you rate this success compared with the effect of stims ? (for ex. stims: 7/10 supplements: 5/10 ;-)
May I ask you what was the main cause that brought you to quit stims ?
about Strattera ... of course it's not yet available in Italy (don't know about UK) but a p-doc told me that within two months there will be a new ADHD med out in our medioeval country ;-) could be Strattera ? I hope it. (considering where I live maybe the new med is Imipramine ;-)"I can't really put it into such simplistic terms as X/10. The process I went through was non-linear and at any time what I take I believe makes some essential contribution. When I no longer believe that to be the case, I will drop it from the combo and see if its absence does anything.
I started out with 37.5 mg pemoline bid and was on it for a few weeks before I started taking B-50 vitamin B complex and DLPA without the exlicit advice of my doctor (he doesn't believe in dietary deficencies). I had this pressured feeling in my head more than a boost from the pemoline; my hypothesis was that my neural vessicles couldn't respond fully to what was being asked of them (you can't pump water from a dry well). So I loaded up on the precursors to dopamine and norepinepherine and got megadoses of B3 and B6 as they assist the enzymatic activity that accomplishes neurotransmitter synthesis.
Late on the second full day of pemoline + DLPA + B complex, the rising irritation I had been feeling culminated in the wonderful experience of my head clearing from static that I had grown accustomed to as normal. Listen to your favortie radio station for months with your radio tuned somewhat badly and then one day tune it spot on. That's the best analogy I can make for that whole experience.
However, after that things were quite unstable. I would go almost catatonic after meals. My body didn't feel so great to actually use, but I had more energy and motivation to do things.
Just a few days later I crashed hard after eating cereal I had dumped too much sugar on, and I immediately considered reactive hypoglycemia to be the problem and decided to try the Atkins diet. After that meals were less of a problem, but occasionally I still felt quite drowsy after them.
I had a hypomanic episode followed by a whole-body change in proprioception for the better a few days after that. Then following that for several days I noticed I was quite bouncy, optimistic, rapid in thought, but lacking the focus and short term memory to keep up with all the energy and speed (analogy: overclocked CPU exceeding the capacity of the motherboard!). I looked back over my treatment journal and decided to keep vitamins (I believe it was B6 rather than B complex at that point) and DLPA but drop the pemoline. That was on 8/16 and I haven't taken any more of it since then.
I started drinking roughly three cups of licorice root tea a day starting soon after that and I noticed it helped me with how I felt when I wake up and when I wake up (sometimes as early as 4-4:30, usually 6-7, sometimes a bit latter). I have also become less senstive to post meal drowsiness. Having done a bout of blood glucose monitoring I can say I am not a reactive hypoglycemic, and my positive response to the tea is perhaps evidence my neuroendocrine system needed rebalancing. I stopped with the tea when my supply ran out after about a month, I've bought more but have only had a single cup since then. You shouldn't use it heavily every day for long stretches of time or you could develop high blood pressure.
When I ran out of DLPA and didn't have the money to get more I had a major backslide in focus. Getting soy protein powder brought me back, but I've also had some bouts of pesimissim and anger regarding events that ocurred quite some time ago that come and go and the focus, motivation, and energy isn't quite up to where it was when I was on pemoline, B6, and DLPA. That's why I've decided to try yohimbe bark tincture for the technical reasons discussed in earlier posts.
So as you can see I am doing quite a bit of adjusting on the fly so to speak with temporary money shortages occasionally throwing a wrench into the works. It's quite a complicated affair and I am still learning as I go.
Let me cap this off with quote I shared with people over on Psycho-Social-Babble...
"Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
Fortunately I can notice positive things happening when I get close to and negative things when I go further off the right combination. :-)
poster:DSCH
thread:264741
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20031003/msgs/265171.html