Posted by MissThang on January 31, 2011, at 3:50:55
In reply to Re: ptsd meds » MissThang, posted by phillipa on January 30, 2011, at 18:35:30
FB,
My parnate trial? Well, to start with, it gave me the rare side effect of increased blood pressure (as opposed to experiencing a reduction in blood pressure as most people get while on MAOI's). I was put on beta blockers to lower my bp, but it still routinely ran in the 150's/90's, up from 130's/70's prior to taking the drug, with peaks after each dose that often reached even higher. I also had hypertensive events which intaking virtually anything considered even moderately questionable on an MAOI diet. Most frozen foods (small amounts of soy derivatives), pizza with only mozerella cheese on top canned soups all caused a significant spike in bp, with the worst reaction coming from a sandwich made with 2-day old turkey from Thanksgiving dinner (tyramine levels build up in cooked meat when refrigerated, but not usually to a problematic level for most people). A few bites of that turkey sandwich sent my bp jumping up to 160/120 in virtually no time, and it appeared to be headed much higher but I gobbled down some thorazine (letting some dissolve under my tongue) and arrested the event before I had a stroke. It seems whereas so many people on MAOI's say, "Oh, I eat most anything I want and never have a problem", even minute levels of tyramine were triggers for me. Most problematic, however, has been the fact that my bp has remained elevated, even after nearly 6 weeks off the drug.
Because of my easily-triggered hypertensive crisis, I ended up limiting my diet to mostly cereal and ice cream, and in the nearly 2 months I was on parnate, I put on 15 lbs, which I'm now struggling to take off.
The other thing that has been very troubling is that a few days after I stopped taking parnate, my anxiety level skyrocketed to previously unseen levels and has pretty much remained there ever since. I would understand if it had only been a few days, but again, it's now been more than 5 weeks since I stopped taking the med and my baseline anxiety level has been awful ever since. It's like parnate did something to totally reset my neurotransmitter levels to a different set point than I was at prior to taking parnate and I can't get my body to change back. Prior to parnate, I was on 450mg wellbutrin, plus a stim plus caffeine all day and had only minor problems with anxiety. Now, I've given up caffeine entirely and still feel anxious most of the time, culminating in periodic panick attacks (something I haven't experienced in over 20 years).
The nefazodone seems to be helping, though I still have to take more xanax than either I or my dr would like...hoping that as I titrate up with the nefaz that my anxiety will continue to decrease, enabling me to resume taking the wellbutrin soon. I briefly restarted 2 weeks after stopping parnate and found that while I was feeling a definite improvement in mood after only 3 days on 150mg/day, my anxiety level was unacceptably high and by the time I tried increasing to 300mg/day, my anxiety just got out of control, so I vowed to stop taking it until I was on something that was addressing my anxiety first.
Nefazodone has also had the somewhat rare side effect of lowering my bp to normal levels again (as long as I don't go too long between doses), so I've been able to go off beta blockers and am working hard to further reduce my bp by exercising/losing weight.
I feel like I gave parnate a fair trial, since I forced my way up to 50mg/day and was on the med for over 6 weeks with absolutely no improvement in mood -- it's absolutly been the worst AD experience I've ever had. Between the increase in bp, horrible rebound anxiety and weight gain, it's obvious that parnate is not the drug for me...even at this point, I'm too scared to eat cheese or other high tyramine foods, despite the fact that I know logically that it would be impossible to have a tyrmaine reaction at this stage of the game-- it's like PTSD experience...I can't turn off the awful memories of panick I felt of a hot, tingling effect rushing through my head as my bp was shooting up sky-high and I was struggling to keep my diastolic level less than 120 so I didn't die...it was just awful.
Anyway, I feel like I've hijacked the thread. I'm having some minor side effects with nefazodone right now that I'm hoping will pass (loss of appetite and some odd itching that isn't accompanied by a rash or anything like that...just hoping these SE's pass soon enough and I can increase my dose so I can try for the combo of nefaz/wellbutrin...in my head, that combo seems like it would be a great one for me, but I'll just have to wait things out on the nefaz for a while first to see if it continues to decrease my anxiety, making it possible to add back the wellbutrin, which seems to help my mood a lot. Perhaps if wellbutrin is balanced in my body with a selective increase in serotonin, the wellbutrin won't poop-out on me again and I'll live happily ever after -- wish me luck!
poster:MissThang
thread:977914
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110130/msgs/978365.html