Medications

Post Reply New Topic

I've been on, off the top of my head; citalopram, sertraline, escitalopram, buspirone, carbemazapine, reboxetine, and I'm currently on high doses of venlefaxine and mirtazipine.
I can't honestly say any of them have worked because I'm still chronically depressed.

I don't care for antidepessants or antipsychotics at all. None of those drugs did anything to help with executive function or lower my sensory iissues. I take Concerta and Adderall for ADHD, but they only last for eight and three hours, respectively. And you don't need them constantly in your bloodstream to get a therapeutic effect. They start working within the hour, and after they wear off I'm back to my hyperactive, inattentive self. No harm done. Except for a headache the first week or so, but that wasn't too bad.

I've been on a Depressive cycle for my whole adult life, first really began to symptoms together when I was about 18. I start in August, go "down" through a lot of different symptoms until Epiphany, then start coming "up" again. (Yes, I tried a light box. And St John's Wort. And quite a lot of other "non-drugs". They all seem to help. SOME) By the time I see the first daffodil, I know that if I'm not okay now, I'm _going to be_ okay soon. All summer, I'm non-depressive "normal", as normal as I ever get, anyway. (There's still the Asperger's: the depression is "on top" of it, and, I do believe, rooted in it.)

I didn't take any of the pills prescribed for depression before 1978: my husband was a Psychologist, and I knew too much about them!

In 78 I got divorced and both my parents died, and my depression that winter was as black as it possibly could be (I get "fog" only from Depression itself: have not gotten that from antidepressants. Another psychologist told me about the new pills, and how well they sometimes worked, and gave me a list of things my MD might prescribe for me. My MD picked Tofranil, and it probably saved me from suicide: I didn't what to do that! Had a little girl to raise and be responsible for! Tofranil gave me cardiac irregularity, and scared me off it. Even if you think you want to die, lying in bed at night and listening to your heart beat out jungle rhythms is not fun. However, I was on it long enough to cut off the worst of the lows, for that winter. The next winter was better, not such a heavy dose of grief pushing it down.

In the nineties I got another MD, and he and I tried together a number of things, all combined with a dosage of Pamelor. Paxil put me to sleep. Something else I can't for the life of me remember right now. Wound up with a combination of Zoloft and Pamelor, which ran pretty successfully for a couple of years, with Xanax just for panic attacks when I get one. Then my doc retired, and knowing that another doc with his records would just insist I stay on them, and I wanted to taper off and see what happened in the next autumn. Which I did, and things went pretty much as they had earlier in my life. Most years it doesn't get bad enough to kill me.

After September 11, 2001, things got pretty bad, and I didn't even _have_ a summer in 2001. A bit later I went to the low-income clinic, and the doc there wrote me a prescription for citalopram (Celexa) which didn't do much of anything.

Then I went to the Mental Health Center, and the Psychiatrist there was very obliging, wrote me the scripts for Pamelor, Zoloft, and Xanax, and didn't even mind if I tapered off them the next summer, which works about the best anything ever has. He tried me on Klonopam instead of the Xanax, but it wiped out my sense of balance-- I'd do things like fall over sideways, and somebody the age I'm getting to be can't afford too many falls: broken-hip time of life.

Tony Attwood said that when an Aspie is also a depressive, it's a general rule of thumb that we need only half the dosage of someone else -- but the way I run my dosage up and down, I can't figure that very well. Mainly, you have to find which one works for you, and your low-dosage attempt was a good idea.

This website helped me immensely with weaning off certain medications. You might want to give it a try.
http://www.benzoexodus.com/forum/index.php

I have bipolar disorder, and the first med they tried me on was Seroquel. It did nothing, even exceeding the maximum tested dosage. It works for me in combination with something else, but I'll get to that.

The second thing they put me on was Lamotrigine (Lamictal). It was a life saver as a mood stabilizer. Unfortunately, eventually when they switched my antidepressant, it caused the Lamotrigine to react with a very dangerous rash that the medication is black box warned for. I had to go off Lamotrigine or else it could have killed me.

The third thing they put me on, which for a long time was in combination with the Lamotrigine, was Risperdal. I've been on low doses and high doses, and low doses work best for me. At first, I was like a zombie on it, but I adjusted quickly, and now, I don't get any side effects from it except for a high prolactin level, which my doctor is lowering the dose of the med to try and correct.

My current combo is Seroquel and Risperdal, using the Seroquel as a mood stabilizer and the Risperdal as an antipsychotic. I can't sleep without the Seroquel. My doc thought I should have an antidepressant in the mix too, so she tried me on Zoloft (Sertraline), but it reacted badly with me. While I was taking Zoloft, I couldn't pee without great effort. It was horrible. And when I went off the Zoloft, I got those electric sensations you described, and felt horrible and out of it. I will never go on an SSRI again if I can help it.

I also briefly tried Trazadone to help me sleep, but it made me extremely aroused. It was weird. Every time I took it, I was super aroused, sexually. So I stopped taking it, because I didn't enjoy feeling like I was going to explode all the time, especially when I was trying to sleep.

"When I went gluten free I started out just removing gluten from wheat but then found I was getting problems with corn as well so then I removed that. I also found that my stomach disliked too much dairy (altough I was ok with small amounts and bio yoghurt) so that was mostly taken out also. I basically ended up on a modified version of the paleo diet which was all meat, vegetables, fruit, starchy veg like potatoes or parsnips or butternut squash, rice (as that has never upset me) and with limited chocolate as a treat if I could find a gluten free bar. I lost weight on that too, but put it back on when I went back on wheat though (it doesn't half put weight on me..how I don't know because my food goes straight through me some days). "

Bumble, I read an interesting book recently that might shed some light on high carb versus low carb diets. People of northern European extraction have been farmers for about ten thousand years now--at least the Germanic peoples. People from this lineage do better on high carbohydrate diets, as for ten thousand years their diets were largely carb-based, with relatively little meat, though most of them did consume dairy products. This group is prone to cholesterol problems.

There is one exception: Those of us of Celtic extraction. Celts were actually herding people until relatively recently. Like hunter-gatherers, their diets tend to be very high in protein and relatively low in carbs, especially the simpler carbs. This group is prone to diabetes.

Of course, this isn't hard and fast. I'm of Scottish, English, and German extraction; I think a lot of us have mixed lineage now. But I think most of us lean one way or the other. If I had the patience for such things, I'd try a vegetarian diet versus a low-carb meat-based diet and see which one did me the most good.