Posted by jpa on February 1, 2014, at 9:29:58
The only medication or supplement that works for my type of GAD is phenibute. I've literally tried every other type of medication...nearly 50 different drug trials over the last 20 years. I didn't know what it was for so long because the anxiety is not situational, but rather generalized. It's there all the time. My brain chemistry was altered in a traumatic incident and the change happened within 24 hours. It is very bad and all consuming and very debilitating.
Anyhow, phenibute is like magic when I take it, but I can't take it for more that 3 days straight without tolerance building and it losses its effectiveness. I contacted a family friend who is a university professor in neuro sciences and explained the situation to her. She had never heard of phenibute and neither had her colleagues.
She looked into it and told that downregulation of GABA(b) receptors was the reason for tolerance and provided me with some scientific articles on GABA down regulation. I deduced from the articles that the glutamate system interacts with GABA and that more glutamate resulted in downregulation of GABA(b) receptors. So I theorized that something that lowered glutamate levels, would perhaps prevent GABA receptor downregulation.
I researched and came up with two potential candidates: memantine and lyrica. I had tried lyrica in the past, but found it ineffective. So I had some lyrica which I had not finished lying around and started using it with a low dose of phenibute. I take 1 gram of phenibute before bed and 50mg of lyrica. At lunch I take another 50mg of lyrica and 500mg of picamilon. On this mix I experience near complete remission form my symptoms. I've been on this regimen for two weeks now and the phenibute has not lost its effectiveness.
Finally science is working for me. My doctor is great, but he really works as a consultant. I do the research and come up with potential avenues for treatment and he prescribes if he believes there is a potential for success. He's not up on the latest science or supplements like phenibute and picamilon. Fortunately, I have a good patient doctor relationship with him. I guess if you are trying to get better as a patient and do the research, the good doctors will work with you.
I'll post again in a week to let you know how its going. It's really too early to declare victory on this evil decease.
John
poster:jpa
thread:1060066
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20140123/msgs/1060066.html