Posted by Carlo on January 2, 1999, at 7:57:46
In reply to a question for dr.Bob and experts..., posted by Erich on December 26, 1998, at 11:51:40
> I'd try to be as brief as I can: I' m in a dramatic situation. 6 years ago I fell in a deep anxious major depression due to repetition stresses/failures concurrent the decision to change field of study (I m graduating in mathematics soon).
> This depression showed to be resistent to triciclics and triciclics/SSRI combinations. After one year suffering, I tried phenelzine 90 mg/d and it was effective. I knew about MAOI's 'tolerance' effect: for some months my depression was (partially) under control
> and phenelzine was very gradually lowered to 30 mg/d. Some months later full depressive symptoms came back. It was sufficent to double at 60 mg/d to partially control it once more. I introduced sodium valproate to augment phenelzine. Nevertheless I started curiously cyclying!!!
> Curiously I said, because i m not a bipolar and when I feel better (never more than a month continuously actually!) that only means depressive symptoms are partially under control and life is tolerable, while when I go down to a full depressive condition suffering makes my life untolerable: I used to modify doses during the depressive periods (lasting from a few days up to more than a month) so that I m not sure that remissions from those periods had ever been spontaneous or pharmacological!
> All these facts leads to a question I need help to answear to: how come this strange cycling????
> Cycling is not anymore tolerable, so that nomore than 2 weeks ago I was close to decide for suicide. I instead highed phenelzine up to 90 and sodium valproate to 1200 mg/d. I succeeded in feeling a bit better one more time: I felt confused on what to do....
> I decided ( don t ask me why....) to lower phenelzine down rapidely leaving sodium valproate unchanged... now I m at 30 mg/d phenelzine... anxious symptoms got back from some days (hard continuous headache: I started analgesics to control it, peripherical tension, etc...)
> Maybe I wanted to know how was my depression after these years with no phenelzine in my body.... in any case I stopped reducing... I was afraid to get back to full depressive symptoms....
> I m confused .... what should I do???
> Now my questions to you is:
> How would u explain these cycliings?
> If there was a patient of yours, whose case was as much similar as u can imagine to the description I made of it, how would you manage now in the therapy? (ex:switch to another antidep, take off phanelzine, augment phenelzine,....)
> Thanx very much.
> Erich
> monteleo@linuz.sns.itDear Erich,
I must say if I was you I d be in the same situation. I surely wouldn t trust any particular psychiatrist, I d just trust myself. I m a psychiatry working on bipolar deseases from 20 years, but as far as I see you are just enough smart
and potentially prepared to make a choice by yourself on what s a better medication for you: I know a lot of collegues of mine will be angry at me after this post, but believe me, that s only an ethical matter: if you are prepared enough
noone can be a better therapist then yourself, it doesn t matter you being a doctor professor or whatever. Psychiatry nowaday is an easy to learn subject, a non-rationalistic pragmatic way of alleviating suffering, it s a collection of drugs,
and no matter what my collegues say, who makes experience on hisself is the better expert in this subject: you only need to take care about possible interaction risks ...OK, now, you have 2 ways to react to your problems:
- hard manners: augmentation of Nardil (I m sure you can find out by yourself the most effective ways ... example psychostimulants... I d maybe try dextroamphetamine starting with low doses... remember to be careful on the possible risks, one way you can protect yourself is going to a psychiatric center everyday letting them know what you are doing : they are forced to take care of the risks u are takin that way!!! )
- soft manners: try an underregulation of mood stability taking off as much AD as you can from your therapy and put as much mood stabilizer as you can: I d maybe take NArdil off completely.See what happen, choose one of these 2 ways to react, and whatever you choose, just push it as deep as you can with the amount of drugs: don t listen to specialists who tell you to be slow and moderate in your approach to therapy: think about it as a war: how would you fight a war if you wanted to win it ? Brain, strategy, determination and ... no fearness!
dr Carlo
psychiatrist neuroscientistmantegaz@cibs.sns.it
poster:Carlo
thread:1743
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990101/msgs/1985.html