Posted by JohnL on February 16, 2000, at 5:19:53
In reply to ANXIETY AND CELEXA AND DEPRESSION AND MORE!!, posted by Monika on February 15, 2000, at 23:54:40
Monika,
Sorry to hear of your continuing despair. You can indeed by normalized with pills, but they have to be the RIGHT pills. There are multiple chemical imbalances that can cause anxiety. Such as: serotonin deficient, GABA deficient, excessive norepinephrine receptor density, dopamine excessive, dopamine deficient, and electrical instability.
So far you have been treated for serotonin deficient (Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil), and dopamine excess (Clonazepam). There isn't much hope to expect Celexa will do much after failures on the other three. The underlying cause of your anxiety symptoms is probably not serotonin related, as evidenced by your medication responses so far. I think it has become urgent to move on to other classes of medications.
For GABA deficient, a benzo type drug will correct the imbalance quickly. For NE excess, an antihypertensive medication (usually prescribed for high blood pressure) will completely neutralize the anxiety symptoms. For dopamine deficient, a stimulant would work (similar to ADD or ADHD, even in the absence of any symptoms of those conditions). For electrical instability, one of the mood stabilizers like Depakote or one of several others.
I think your doc is concentrating too much on too few causes of the anxiety. Trials of these other drugs would seem urgent to me at this point. When the right one is found to correct the underlying imbalance, you will know it very quickly, often within days. Thus only short trials should be needed to fine-tune the search. The farther away a drug is from targeting the problem, the longer the wait for it to work, if it ever works at all.
If you insist on going without pills, you might try the herbal supplement Kava Kava. It has a powerful reputation for its anti-anxiety properties. It's cheap and natural. There are counseling psychotherapies designed to counter anxiety too. From what I've heard, they are effective. They don't cure the anxiety, but they teach you how to control the anxiety, rather than the anxiety controlling you.
There are lots of options. I think it has become urgent to move on to other treatments that target chemical imbalances that have so far been overlooked.
poster:JohnL
thread:21742
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000209/msgs/21773.html