Posted by Sherry on July 20, 2001, at 20:25:25
In reply to MAOI tolerance (or whatever) » Sherry , posted by Elizabeth on July 20, 2001, at 14:06:20
Thanks Elizabeth for responding. Besides being depressed in the first place, having a medication work and then poop out is a big time bummer. Especially when it makes things worse. I hope you continue doing well with Parnate.
> Have you had any sort of neuropsych testing that would give you a more specific idea of what sort of deficits you have (or show that there is no specific deficit)? That might be worthwhile. I don't know.
>
> -elizabethWhat kind of testing is this? It has been suggested to me that it might be worthwhile to see a neurologist. Is this type of testing helpful to a pdoc?
Sherry> > I had the exact same experience with Parnate,(poop out within 6 months and a worsened imbalance).
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> I think that might be very common. It's mentioned in _Listening to Prozac_, I think.
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> > I'm getting ready to try Nardil after 2 years of not taking anything becuase of the fear of making things worse as with Parnate. I would love to hear of your experience with Nardil, and in what ways it made things worse for you.
>
> When it stopped working, I started getting agitated and moody and thinking about suicide constantly. It was different from when I'd been simply depressed. My pdoc thought it might be a dysphoric hypomania, so we tried adding Depakote to the Nardil, but that didn't help. Raising the dose of Nardil didn't help either. In fact, nothing helped except going off the Nardil. I started taking it again a couple months later, but the exact same thing happened. I decided Nardil wasn't right for me and crossed it off of my list, but that time when I'd been doing so badly on it really took a toll. It was more than a year of intense ups and downs, from fall '96 (when I first started taking Nardil) through winter '97 (when I stopped taking it the second time around). I think that the second time I took it, the AD effect went away sooner than it had the first time. It took a while after I stopped taking it for the agitation to go away, and I really didn't recover until sometime in mid-1998.
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> Parnate didn't poop out, and it's probably the AD that I've had the most success with to date. So it's possible that the poop-out thing will happen with one MAOI but not another. I'm not sure whether the likelihood is greater with Nardil or with Parnate; I think it would be worthwhile for you to try Nardil, but very cautiously, watching for any signs of the type of problems you had with Parnate.
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> > When Parnate pooped out for me,(BTW, it's the only thing that's ever even worked partially for me.) it took a toll on my cognitive abilities worse than anything. Since I have so little of my intelligence left( I used to consider myself slightly above average in certain aspects of my intelligence) and a short term memory that is horrible, I'm reluctant to try anything else.
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> You're probably more intelligent than you think, FWIW. Most depressed people I've known have been very down on themselves.
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> > I feel like Parnate messed up my carbohydrate metabolism because I feel differently after every meal.
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> Huh. Nardil has some sort of weird effect on carb metabolism, but I don't think Parnate does.
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> > Within 2.5 hours of eating, I can actually feel insulin levels go down because I lose the ability to thing clearly.
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> I sometimes "crash" after a high-carb meal, but not often. I think Nardil made it worse. You might want to talk to your GP about this.
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> > For example, it's difficult to think about how to solve a math problem. I have difficulty finding words, etc., etc. On the other hand, after eating meals, I have difficulty concentrating.
>
poster:Sherry
thread:10400
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010720/msgs/71131.html