Posted by tom2228 on December 19, 2014, at 0:41:52
In reply to Re: If you've always been melancholic, can ADs help?, posted by burial on December 8, 2014, at 11:21:06
> i've always thought that melancholy responds best to drugs, that really push norepinephrine. Effexor + Nortriptyline would be your choice or something similar
orochi, I first: have to say your first post on this thread succinctly sums up the mental anguish I have about psych meds -- Will they ever work/ were they actually f***ing work for me when it seemed like they were before, or were those tiny tiny improvements that I perceived to be larger improvements effected by the shrouded reality of the drug?
second: I too have struggled with this type of melancholy/ anxiety since little, and it too has only responded marginally when the drugs worked. The drugs worked well enough for me to feel better about the situation even though they produced minor improvements in the big picture. I have been so aggressively treating my depression this year that I realize just how small of a percentage of acceptable change these drugs have effected for me throughout the years, despite feeling immensely helpful to shave a tidbit of the struggle off.
But... despite clouding the clinical picture that I have been only 1 week off of crystal meth and being on else med-wise, I can possibly say that I may have truly found what proper relief of melancholy from an antidepressant feels like!! And I have to agree with SLS and burial that I too strongly believe this comes from pushing norepinephrine really hard, and with a tricyclic -- Wellbutin didn't do it for me but desipramine really is.
About a month and a half ago my Abilify was lowered from 9 to 8mg and my desipramine ~doubled to 125mg, and take into account I am also on the MAOI Marplan. I've been on all of my meds long enough to tell what's doing what lately, and I can comfortably say that deispramine not fully comprehensive but STRONG and effective for my melancholia.
My mood seems to be firmly lofted on a cloud that ground troopers keep trying shoot down but man I can barely hear them and at best can steer this ship to smoother skies. There is a pleasant "high" to my mood that feels like it always should have been there -- it is ego SYNtonic in that it just gels with me. Maybe it's a bit unnatural but 1) I am an addict and taken close to 50 psych meds so who gives a f*ck at this point? and 2) This drug just feels a stable good mood on top of what it feels like to be myself. Several drugs have "changed" that feeling of sense of self and this one does it in a way that agrees with me. I have been on a long journey of weeding through the crappy ones and almost piling on layers of the drugs that feel ok until they begin to become limited by dose-related side effects. See my list at the end.
But this cloud feels like the periods and facets of normality I have experienced throughout life and what the rest of society who lives without a mood disorders seems to me to existing on when we interact and explains why the hell they've all been here for years doing their day jobs without ending their lives. They're simply not melancholic.
My anxiety is also at an all time low despite the sh*t I'm dealing with and the hell called crystal meth withdrawal that I'm coming up from. I have to say though, the desipramine seems to really help the cravings and desire to use meth (heard the same about Strattera). The sequence of doubling the antidepressant before quitting the meth has seemed to have layed some thorough groundwork for my brain to work with now that the neurotransmitters have started to come back. The anxiety tho -- it's as if things are rolling off my shoulders... minutely and restrospectively when I see how easily I am navigating some pretty serious problems.
The only other thing I can think about is that I'm on the "honeymoon" phase of meth recovery -- more generically called a "pink cloud" -- but isn't that what tricyclics supposed to do for us? The significance? We shall see :)
In sum I am pleasantly taken aback by tricyclic antidepressants. I took nortriptyline half a year ago at 75mg and enjoyed that as well, but whatever the dose eqivalency, or other circumstances, desipramine is being so nice to me..
desipramine 125mg
Marplan 40mg
Desoxyn 30mg
Deplin 30mg
Mirapex ER 0.375mg
levothyroxine 50mcg
lithium 900mg
Lamictal ER 100mg
Abilify 10mgall vitals OK no worries!
poster:tom2228
thread:1074003
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20141120/msgs/1074361.html