Posted by Racer on September 30, 2007, at 11:44:58
In reply to Can someone give me some direction...So Lost !!!, posted by Gary Engel on September 29, 2007, at 13:45:56
I started a nice, long, truly brilliant post to you last night -- and lost it. Sorry, this one will only be -- at best -- one quarter as brilliant...
I'm not understanding the timeline here, I think. You say that you've been getting treatment since March? Have you tried all the SSRIs since then? If so, you haven't given any of them an adequate trial.
Any serotinergic drug will have some GI side effects during the adjustment phase, because of how serotonin affects the digestive process. After a few weeks -- or sometimes months -- the serotonin receptors in the gut recalibrate, and the side effects go away. It's not comfortable in the meantime, but it does get better.
I know how easy it is to get spooked by medications, because I've done it myself. I've done exactly what your doctor thinks you have: made myself sick as soon as I take that pill. Even before you wrote that, I wondered if you weren't doing the same thing I was. Don't get me wrong -- there was truth to what I was experiencing. But I had to get past that phase in order to feel better. And I did.
At the time I went through this, a friend of mine called me every morning to tease me into making it through another day of taking my pills. Without him, I have no doubt I'd still be unmedicated and taking a drug for three days at a time. Instead, I've been mostly functional for a couple of years now, even if I'm not in an optimal state. (Like you, I have some situational factors to grieve.)
I hope you'll try one of those SSRIs again, and stick it out for a couple of weeks, to see if it works or not. If the GI effects don't go away, they can be mitigated. The thought that helped me most was this: "Wouldn't it be a shame if you missed out on a drug that might help you, just because your anxiety got in the way of taking it?" Maybe a variation on that thought might help you.
Good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:785903
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070929/msgs/786039.html