Posted by Catling on March 15, 2013, at 13:41:35
In reply to Re: New to Posting: Meds Social Anxiety / Atypical Dep, posted by aster on March 15, 2013, at 9:11:17
Hi again, Aster. :)
I would have to say that brand name Wellbutrin has worked the best on depression out of anything I've ever tried. I have more anxiety when I'm on it because the depression isn't masking any of my anxiety and that can feel sometimes even worse than the depression - which at least I'm used to. As Phillipa mentioned, don't be afraid to try benzos if you need them for anxiety. There is so much social stigma around them and I had a really hard time taking them at first because my friends were all saying, "Oh my god, you're gonna get hooked on those!" Which, in retrospect, has made me very careful with them and makes me really evaluate whether I need them at any given moment or not so I suppose that's not a bad thing.
Aside from Wellbutrin, I would say that I am responding "best" to Parnate. I say best because even though I have some response it is not enough. I am not motivated to do even things I want to do, let alone the things I need to do. I cannot maintain a daily routine. I find even simple tasks like personal care sometimes are beyond me. But I do make it out of bed every day, I can hold conversations with people close to me and while I don't feel "strong" enough to leave the house (other than my weekly scheduled visits with my BFF) more than a couple times a month at best, I am more functional than if I wasn't on it. Most troublesome to me though is that I cannot write, and as someone who is a poet, even though unpublished, not being able to think "in poetry" is still disheartening. Those are the things I am hoping to get back by adding an antipsychotic to the mix.
I've always had to treat my anxiety separately from my depression. It is very strong just on a general everyday basis and that much worse when in crowds. Luckily I've had doctors who have taken that seriously, because in some ways it can be more debilitating than the depression for me in terms of quality of life. Back before treating my anxiety, a trip to the grocery store would lay me up in bed for a couple days.
Gabapentin and then lyrica have worked the best for me on anxiety. I haven't found that any of the antidepressants have helped significantly with my anxiety. I can't tolerate anything that makes me groggy and a lot of what they want to prescribe for anxiety can do that to me. I've tried trazadone, serzone (which a lot of doctors are afraid of prescribing because of the liver thing, but the doctor who prescribed it for me felt the risk was truly minimal and that it gets a lot of bad hype), vistaril, etc and found them to be sedating without touching my actual anxiety, if that makes sense. I don't want to be less aware, I just want to not feel anxiety and there's a really distinct difference for me between the two. I used to use xanax for panic attacks and ativan for social anxiety/breakthrough anxiety (when my meds aren't keeping my general anxiety sufficiently in check). Thank goodness that as my depression has gotten worse the panic attacks have mostly stopped because they were awful. I still use ativan as needed but my anxiety is pretty well controlled with the lyrica and I don't use it often, maybe 3 times a month. But also it's fair to mention that since I don't go out I'm not in as many triggering situations.
I hope you get a really good doctor and that you can find one medication that will work for both issues for you. That is really the ideal, I think. I really try to stick with as few medications and at as low a dose is effective because I hate taking medicine and even after a decade of using psych meds, I'm still a bit unresigned to needing them. ;)
Sorry for the rambly.
Best of luck.
Cat
poster:Catling
thread:1040349
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20130308/msgs/1040396.html