Posted by JohnX2 on October 27, 2001, at 15:41:06
In reply to Re: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and etc., posted by JGalt on October 27, 2001, at 13:14:50
This is long, but you are such a good listener
and have interesting retorts, so here I go
again:I'll try to get you some more info on ptsd
later. basically it can occur if one is under
substantial oncontrolled and unpredictable duress
for prolonged periods of time. But usually this
has to be *quite severe*. What happens is 1 of 2
things, A) the body maintains toxic level of
cortisol, which can goof up the hippocampus
B) the body is habitually releasing
adrenaline, and this causes neuroadaptive changes
(feeback breakdown) in the locus coerulus.The meds to treat ptsd are usually clonodine,
tenex,inderal, but the crf antagonists are most
likely to help the most (and I see utility in the
nmda antagonists). The ADs generally give
spotty results . I'll
let you do the rest of the research. Usually
after the trauma there may be nightmares and flashbacks,
which there was for me, but this was like 15 years
ago. So I don't have that now, but my brain has
adapted to the situation in a way that blunts my
emotions, makes me sensitive to stimulants (which
could most definately be related to the breakdown
in the locus coerulus). I'm leaning towards an LC
breakdown theory for me. It could explain manic
responses too.Also I have this jaw and tension
headache problem and I get a weird response on
the AD's that worked well. I'll give Wellbutrin
as an example (it is similar in structure to
ephedrine,amphetamine..). After taking WB at
a therapeutic dose for about 1 week, I usually
get a depression lift, sometimes into severe mania.
Then, it very quickly fades at the drop of a coin,
and all of a sudden my emotions go *DEAD NUMB*, I can't
even feel a deep breath and I get this excrucitating
pain in my jaw and head which is directly proportional
to the emotional numbing. It is like I am ping
ponging from positive to negative psychosis (read
up about schizophrenia), the negative psychosis
(complete lack of emotions), occurs with too little
dopamine in the frontal cortex.
I have tracked the bruxism down
to an area of the brain called the prefrontal
cortex. A hypodopaminergic state of dopamine projected
from the VTA to the medial prefrontal cortex would
cause disinhibition of the muscles of the face.
The prefrontal cortex is where dopamine stops
acetylcholine from sending muscle spasm signals to
the jaw/face.
Those dopamine neurons have no feedback receptors,
which makes them unique. They are gated directly
by 5ht-2a receptors and the dopaminergic firing
from the VTA (the center for sensitization to
medications like stimulants and opiods). The
dopaminergic firing (whether it is pacemaker or
burst) is also linked by gaba and nmda innervations
in the VTA. The nmda innervations in the VTA are
linked to 5ht-2a receptors. Scientists have found that
by directly antagonizing nmda receptors in the vta
(i.e. by taming them to be more pace-maker), the
sensitization to amphetamine is reduced. I have
an interesting article on amphetamine sensitization,
search through my old posts for summaries.I have found before my depression experience, that
when I was in college if I stayed up for very long
and drank gobs of caffeine, the caffeine would wear
off and i would get a tension headache similar to
the one I describe. But back then, a good night
of sleep would make it go away. So I have lots of
correlations, I also found a lot of data recently
regarding 5ht2a antagonists treating tension headaches
and attenuating the locomotor effects of prolonged
amphetamine stimulation.Regarding your potential cocktail, I don't know
much about anything related to ghb or precursors,
except that ghb is illegal, so I'll stop short
of there. The idea behind the dxm enzyme inhibition
if you read the patent disclosures was to
increase its 1/2 life so that a low dose can be
taken and with fewer dosing.
It could be done with xxx-dm from the local
pharmacy without a prescription.
Again, the drug level of dxm would probably need
to be monitored, not a good idea to mess with getting
a leasion. Anyways, the meds that would prevent
nmda hypoactive toxicitiy (and you probably would
have to be having dissaciative effects to reach
the level to be honest), are alpha-2 agonists,
potential 5ht-2a agonists, and primarily GABAa
agonists. Do a patent search on the subject of
nmda antagonists and you will get a lot of interesting
information. memantine is probably the safest
nmda antagonist, but dxm is well studied and
older. There are some patent write ups by Olney
describing the biological underpinnings of
nmda hypoactivity lesions (he suggests anti-cholinergics
as a post condition treatment). I also found
some patents by someone showing how alpha-2 agonists
could prevent the hypoactivity.I have most of these patents with all the diagrams
in a nice compressed format called cpc. If you
download the cpc viewer I'd be happy to mail them
to you.good luck,
john> Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, your brief discussion on it will probably lead me to research it some later. I have heard it before in reference to police brutality, but never anywhere else. So basically it can apply to any situation that your body stays in the fight-flight response much longer than it should and no amount of "thinking yourself down" from the event will help. I've had that a lot at times, in fact, I believe part of my problem is that when I need to get something done, I not only have some lack of motivation do it, there's also a certain fear response that my body produces. Like fear of getting started and then fear of continuing. I don't know why, I succeed at most things I try at, but I never even thought about it until reading your post, that that, in combination with low energy, is why I have trouble setting out on projects that would probably provide me with pleasure, and perhaps increased energy. At times this feeling of fear can also lead me to decide to not do something I know I should do that would help to ensure the success of something I'm trying at.
>
> Adderal, the 6 total times I've tried it, helps wonderfully, but even though I never have taken it on consecutive days, the next day I will always be low on energy and motivation, which is why I know it is addictive and has a high tolerance building potential. But Adderal, in addition to providing me with motivation, seems to completely eliminate this, whatever the heck it is.
>
> GHB (or things that convert to GHB) is the only other drug that does so, but of course it also has some negative things about it too. While it does NOT produce tolerance, if you have ever used it several weeks in a row without break, and to help get to sleep at times too (resulting in no REM sleep), you know its effects on memory and causing ADD like behavior...it does need to be stopped every once in a while or else you will have trouble focusing on tasks, and short+long term memory will be reduced, and connections between things in your mind are reduced too. This is of course if you abuse it, which I now know where the line between abuse and use is. It produces a feeling of love+trust towards everything, which can sometimes be a negative aspect. Enough about that, the fact is, it, and Adderal, both are able to eliminate this fear of doing, though adderal obviously has many more positive things about it until you develop complete tolerance. Still, GHB is a very theraputic chemical (it is present in your body and food too) when used properly, and its lack of tolerance is very nice.
>
> Still, Selegiline does not eliminate this problem really, it simply provides some more motivation to do things, and also is stimulating. This allows one to use GHB effectively, as it helps to keep one more alert while on it, and reduces the effective dosage quite nicely.
>
> Well after all that ranting, can you give me any insight or advice into my problem? Since you mentioned the NMDA antagonists being helpful in this regard, I think I may eventually try a combination of lamictal+adderal. I would think that if lamictal reduces NMDA receptor sensitivity, that it would work roughly the same, do you think I am correct?
>
> I personally would love to try my idea mentioned before of adderal+low dose dxm+prozac+1,4 butanediol (GHB precursor), but I know that no psych doctor is going to go for a such a combination. Of course, then again, if I were to do such a combination, I would obviously not mention the rationale behind it or either of the two non-mainstream chemicals.
>
> Your approach seems like a logical one to the problem. I cannot understand why someone would not research a drug or drug combination that some person had given them or the disease for which they are taking it. Even GHB can't make me that trusting!
>
> I can understand why wild euphoria is not what you're looking for. One should desire their emotional state to have connection with real life events. Having wild euphoria while washing off an apple would not be particularly pleasurable because one knows that one's pleasure is not stemming from what one is doing. That is why I would question a drug that kept a person very happy all the time, or a person who would want to be. While I would certainly have no qualms about a majority of the people being on a drug that increased the capacity of their pleasure, or perhaps simply multiplied all positive emotions by 2 and divided all negative emotions by 2, I would have a problem with a drug that made all emotions more positive by a factor of 2 being used for anyone that wasn't truly depressed.
>
> I see what you mean about true mania being induced by caffeine having the potential to damage dopamine receptors.
>
> Also interesting that my thoughts about gaba agonists working to protect from NMDA hypoactivity have already been proven. I'll have to do some research to find out just what the gaba agonists are, and whether ghb or precursors are amongst them. If that is unknown, perhaps I'll also have to find out if drugs which are specific gaba antagonists exist outside of a chemical lab, evaluate their safety, and see if they prevent GHB's effects. This could take a while, but it might pay off. Sometimes I wonder why the same people that prescribe the drugs aren't the ones that go through pharmacy school to learn how drugs work and how to make interesting combinations of them.
>
> JGalt
poster:JohnX2
thread:81980
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011025/msgs/82443.html