Posted by Reggie BoStar on December 28, 2008, at 4:06:42
Hi Everyone,
It's been a while since I posted on any of the Psychobabble boards. I should come here more often. I could use it.I'd better recap. My pdocs and therapists say I'm Bipolar II, mostly on the severe depressive side, with migraines and other oddities that may or may not be related to neurotransmitter foul-ups.
I can vouch for the depression and migraines. I'm not sure I buy the Bipolar II part.
Anyway, for the depression I've been on Cymbalta 60mg and Wellbutrin 400mg for years. For the supposed manic part a number of things have been tried in conjunction with the other two: Seroquel, Abilify, Lamictal, and others I can't remember right now. Most of those had no effect. The rest made matters worse in a variety of ways.
Per some of my last posts I've been having more and more trouble with extreme fatigue and drowsiness, sometimes sleeping for 2-3 days at a time.
Also, in the last few years my sex drive has totally disappeared. I may be too old to have much of a drive anyway. I'm not sure any more.
I've been moaning about these and other problems for some time. Last time I saw my pdoc I said he absolutely had to do something or I'd probably wind up in ECT again. I'd rather not do that.
He decided to cut the Cymbalta daily dose in half to 30mg, and add 50mg of Pristiq(desvenlafaxine).
Finally, the question in this post. Pristiq is pretty new on the block. Is anyone else taking it? If so, how much do you take, when did it take effect (if at all), and what does it do for you?
I've been on it for 4 weeks now. The only difference I've noticed so far is that I've become more depressed. Cymbalta is pretty fast in and out of my system so I noticed the effects of the cutback of that within a week. Since then I've been waiting for the Pristiq to kick in.
The website (pristiq.com, natch) says it's an SNRI. That's what Cymbalta is, so what's the difference? It's supposed to be "time release", but for a drug that takes 4+ weeks to kick in, I can't see where that matters.
Wyeth makes it. That's the same outfit that makes Effexor XR, which is also time release and also an SNRI.
Seems like a lot of different flavors of the same thing. I told my therapist that all of this reminds me of when they kept trying to give Prozac staying power by adding "adjuncts" and other combos to it. Why do they keep trying all these different variations on the same theme this way? None of these SSRI or SNRI drugs ever lasted very long for me, if they worked at all that is. A lot of people I see in groups say the same thing. It seems like they should shelve the whole idea of these drugs and start completely over from scratch. They're prolonging the agony of a technology that's all but dead.
I got off the track. Sorry. Anyone out there taking Pristiq yet? Any results of any kind?
Thanks for your time,
Reggie BoStar
poster:Reggie BoStar
thread:871129
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081223/msgs/871129.html