Posted by yxibow on November 22, 2007, at 2:22:54
In reply to Re: Need Help ASAP finding New Antidepressant!!!!! » yxibow, posted by Squiggles on November 18, 2007, at 9:47:07
> >
> > > OK so MAOIs aren't for everyone but keeping them as a last resort is ridiculous IMO. Apart from lofepramine they are the only ADs that have really helped me. Years of wasted time of trial & error with SSRIs & such like makes me angry. As you can probably tell.
> > >
> > > Sorry if I seem so argumentative :)
> >
> > Diet restrictions, hypertensive crisis, etc. I should have emphasized the word -yet-. I would try a few more things before jumping directly to them. There are even older antidepressants to try that have been little used but can work for someone and have the benefit of patient years.
> >
> > If it works for you, then fine, I think what works for someone is not at all what works for someone else. It wasn't a personal statement.
>
> Excuse me for interrupting here, but the MAOIs
> caught my eye as a very good antidepressant, which has been demonized for dietary restrictions. Some people are lucky not to like
> eating that stuff anyway, e.g. cheese, but if you can be a vegetarian you can organize your diet for this drug -- which is supposed to very good.
> I just want to say that sometimes an urban pharamcology myth develops or is blown out of proportion and stays there, steady and unwavering. There are other meds which have deadly interactions. I will bring up an example of what happened to me when i drank some wine which was home-brewed and contained a certain kind of yeast -- with lithium, and clonazepam -- my meds-- the result was frightening. I got something like a concussion with severe vertigo and migraine. I went to ER. Just an example of food-drug interactions which are not always put on the brochure.
>
> Squiggles
You were more likely allergic to the yeast, the campden tablets (sodium metabisulfite preservative) that were used in the wine than a food-drug interaction (except a paradoxical alcohol-clonazepam reaction) but I was not the attending doctor nor do I have a license to practice medicine. The result in any case I am sure and not denying was frightening.
Let's just agree to disagree, I place the psychological burden of maintaining a MAOI compatible diet, including the discontinuation of half of the over the counter common health aids out there and some that are prescribed, on the sufferer who may genuinely benefit, just as I have a burden to think about the consequences and possible benefits in the future of switching from Seroquel to using Clozaril for an offlabel purpose and disorder I have had for 6 years with no multi-drug free respite.
And no, I could not take an MAOI even if it was appropriate for my disorder as 1) I'm a vegan and have been for 15 years and soy products, nutritional yeast, and other ingredients packaged into food would kill me or give me multiple hospital bills, 2) I'm on polypharmacy and there would be multiple drug-drug risks that would also kill me or give me multiple hospital bills and 3) just as ECT there is no clear benefit and even if there was I would have to win the lottery to do so.
But that is just my biochemical situation. Yours is obviously quite different. In fact it is my personal observation [please don't flag me for trying to make a gross generalization] that a number of people on here have quite different disorders yet I feel rush to try to get the same new medications, not discounting myself included [no gross generalization], because they're fresh and the latest thing out there. And then we discover that 1) its wonderful or 2) they have side effects and they're not so wonderful.
Its ultimately a choice to treat an illness and live with side or permanent effects or as the saying goes, the treatment is worse than the cure, the surgery was successful and the patient died.
Most medications, including psychotropics are palleatives. That is, once you stop taking them, unless you don't have an organic (genetic, biological) component or reason for taking them (say you took Prozac because you're perfectly "well-adjusted" or whatever euphamism we want to say for the fact that nobody is perfect but you had a traumatic event in your life but have no trace of lifelong mental illness), you lose all or most of the benefits and hopefully all the side effects.
Vaccines, some successful chemotherapy processes, early developments in genetic therapy, and some antibiotic and antimalarial agents, blood transfusions, liniments and other dermatological agents, antidotes and other ER heroic agents, are among some things I can think of that defy this confounding reality of even the most modern medicine.
poster:yxibow
thread:794986
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20071115/msgs/796504.html