Posted by MissThang on January 31, 2011, at 4:58:34
In reply to Re: Lithium, posted by roscopeeco on January 31, 2011, at 4:29:59
Rosco,
I had to go off the lithium -- it had the side effect for me of burning a hole in my stomach that felt like the fires of hell coming home to roost. I think it was helping to level off my mood some, but I've started taking nefazodone instead for anxiety/depression (mostly hoping it helps with the anxiety), which I plan to add back to the wellbutrin I was previously on.
I tried going back on wellbutrin 2 weeks after parnate and while I did find it helped to lift my mood after just a few days, the increased anxiety parnate left me with made it impossible to titrate up my dose of wellbutrin to a truly therapeutic level of 300mg because the anxiety got out of control.
The nefazodone so far seems to be helping with the anxiety and doesn't seem to have the side effects that traditional ssri's do (weight gain, sexual dysfunction), so that's encouraging. Taking a stab in the dark, I'm thinking that the primary reason the wellbutrin pooped out on me in the first place is due to an imbalance in serotonin vs the increase in noripenephrine/dopamine the wellbutrin gives me. I'm hoping that if I also have an increase in my serotonin, the increase in noripenephrine/dopamine will remain in balance and help wellbutrin stay effective over the long haul as opposed to pooping out after a couple of years like it did before. I really liked wellbutrin a lot, but I have to admit, even when I was feeling pretty great on it, there was a "softness" about me that was missing that I think was due to lack of serotonin. Problem is, every time I tried to add an ssri, I felt awful. The nefazodone, not being an ssri, seems to be free of the worst of the ssri side effects so I'm hoping it'll be that rare drug that will enable me to have increased serotonin without gaining weight or having inorgasmia.
Are you thinking of trying lithium?
poster:MissThang
thread:977785
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110130/msgs/978372.html