Posted by shelliR on August 25, 2001, at 19:58:09
In reply to Re: Update Lorainne, Elizabeth, et. al. » shelliR, posted by Lorraine on August 25, 2001, at 11:47:30
> Shelli: how do stimulants work with you? Are they effective at all? It doesn't sound like they are gauging your reaction to Wellbutrin.
I don't know what you mean by "....they are gauging your reaction to Wellbutrin"
Re stimulents: I have hated the feeling that all stimulents have given me. Hated ritalin, dexadrine, adderall. Adrafinil was okay (but caused a hypertensive reaction with nardil). Since being off the nardil I tried concerta (I think I told you about that), and it was hard to get a reading with both concerta and the oxy. They were way too stimulating together. If I go back on nardil, that is a possiblity (without the oxy), but I'm not really sure since the other stimulents made me feel so awful.
> I've asked this question before. This is not in capsules you can split? Get some empty capsules at the health food store and eyeball the splitting of the capsules by holding the capsules up to the light. It will allow you to increment up more slowly on your oxy and buy you time on your habituation. I have had to do this a lot because I am so dose sensitive. It's a pain in the butt, but doesn't take that long. I'd split enough caps for a week at a time. Hey, 1/2 hour out of your life. It's worth it.No, its a time release tablet and you can't split it. When I first found that out, I realized that it was not the best of all worlds because my 10mg start made me a little spacy and high. But it is better than vicodin in that it has no APAP pain med with it that can cause problems (I can't remember what problems--maybe liver problems)
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> > > > I asked him again about buph and he feels that it is a "dirty" drug, that it has too many side effects and causes too many complications in combinations with other drugs. He's also not convinced there is no tolerance with buprenorphine.
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> He likes to make his job easier, doesn't he?
Well, the side effects would be mine, so I don't understand what you mean.
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> I met with my wholistic practitioner last week and talked about hormones. She is premenopausal (barely) and takes progesterone to help control her moods. She said too little progesterone and too much progesterone causes depression. She also said that when you first become perimenopausal, it is your progesterone level that dips first. Anyway, she will be putting me back on estrogen but adding progesterone to that. She says she can tell day to day whether she needs more progesterone and tweeks her dose accordingly. She also confirmed that for PMS, the issue is progesterone rather than estrogen. Thought I'd pass this along given that you are considering all of this stuff.Well, for pms, I use a natural progesterone suppository and it helps a lot with the physical symptoms. For me it doesn't touch my premenstrual depression, which I have had even when my depression was mostly under control. A deficit of estrogen is what causes hot flashes (and my flushes, I guess) (at least that's why I have been reading). Because of the study that came out in the Archives of General Psychiatry in June of this year (which indicated that estradiol is an effective antidepressant treatment for perimenopausal women), I started estradiol But I was really confused because my sister and cousin had the same type of invasive breast cancer so I stopped taking it. (Also I became more depressed and didn't know what it had to do with.) But now I think I want to try it for several months, and I want to stick with the same type and dose that was used in the study. I'm sorry now that I went off of it, because I might have known by now if it is helpful. If it proves to be helpful, I might try natural estrogen or black cohosh and see if the good result can be duplicated. In any case, now I have to ask my gyn to put me on natural progesterone. I remember you said before that it was better to take it during the whole cycle than just 1 week of the cycle.
>> You might try adding Serzone at night. I was on this combo for a while. The Serzone helped me sleep and the Wellbutrin woke me up.
So far I am not having any problems sleeping at night, but I'm still only taking 200mg a day. I did take serzone for a while (no positive affect on depression), but I don't remember it making me sleepy. I'll have to see if I have trouble with sleep--that comes after being able to talk. :-) I know I didn't have size effects with serzone, so it is something I can add.
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> You are right on track here, I think. You need to find out what you can do when you are feeling bad. Doing the mindless errands (frame shop; post office) works. For me, at least, the trick is to get my foot out the door, then the rest follows. What about doing the artistic stuff (not the shoots) when you are down?Well, actually I wasn't doing mindless stuff. I both had to do some creative stuff and some detail work (writing receipts, designing frame sizes, etc.) Then I had to take my finished products to the post office and to the framer I work with. I was not feeling very depressed, I just had to push to make myself focus (more DD stuff). Since the oxy was raised, the depression has been very tolerable. It really depends on how severe my depression is what I am able to do. But transitions are really difficult for me, even when I am not depressed. Doing artistic work requires a transition , which takes effort, even when I am not depressed. Once the bridge is crossed, it is fine. That is unless my depression is the extremely horrible, painful depression that I have had this year when I am not taking a narcotic. I had that last week because I had become habituated to the dose of oxy that I was on and my pdoc was away. I really didn't think he would let me raise it when he got back, so that had much to do with why I felt so hopeless and suicidal. Without the oxy working, my depression is too painful for me to through these trials. Both the waiting periods and the failures.
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> My daughter tells me that she doesn't want to grow up and leave her childhood because it has been so great. Can you imagine? That is so foreign from my childhood and yours.... Plus she has no traumas--no burns; no sexual abuse, no physical abuse; no deaths; no constant moving with the stress and loss of community that goes with that.I can only imagine because of my niece.
She said the same thing about not wanting to get older than I think, fifteen, when she was about your daughters age (I'm not sure how she feels about it now --age 14). Part of it was that she loved her life, but also part of it was that she didn't perceive of adults having fun and enjoying life like kids do (at least the kids she knows). And then I was amazed to read a piece in the Wash Post talking about how that lack of eagerness to grow up was becoming a common feeling that differed a lot from the previous generations. I don't remember what I thought about becoming an adult in the future, but I didn't perceive it as a bad thing, like my niece and the kids in the article did. My guess about it is that parents share more about their stresses with their children, so children don't have illusions about happily ever after. What do you think? I mean why do you think this is a more common feeling in kids today?
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Speaking of which: how to your kids relate to your depression. Do you talk about it, and especially, do they ask about it?> I worry much more about my son, who is emotionally intense and more predisposed I think to mood problems.
How is he doing now? He's been in therapy, right? But not on medications?
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> > > >I'm of course, wondering, about you and parnate.
So I'm giving it a few more days. I didn't get the headache this morning either. My pessimism has to do with the tears behind my eyes I think. Break-through depression.But you have been on parnate such a short time. I would expect that the AD effect will definitely increase with time and dose.
I think that first good reaction is often not continuous, and it might take a full four or five weeks for you to get the whole effect.BTW, I am just curious if you ever tried lamictal. (Because a MAOI and lamictal was my best combination ever).
Talk to you soon, Shelli
poster:shelliR
thread:67742
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010822/msgs/76403.html