Posted by Ritch on December 30, 2002, at 9:48:10
In reply to Re: Depakote for refractory panic? » Ritch, posted by Jackster on December 30, 2002, at 1:49:56
Hi, I started out with 5mg twice daily of Buspar and stayed on that for two-three weeks. I felt improvement and then we upped it to 7.5mg twice daily. I never went any higher than that. I was only taking about 5 mg of Celexa with it and I didn't want to push the Buspar up any higher because it has a tendency to make me hostile (if I get the ratio of Buspar/SSRI too high). It was like I lost all fear of everything, but it was converted to anger instead. I would wait 2 weeks and see how you are doing before you increase it any more IMO. It really took 7-10 days or so to kickin. Depakote cognitive dysfunction... well all I can say is that when I am depressed it can be particularly bad (forgetfullness esp.), however when my moods are high/normal it doesn't bother me that much. What I notice is this "delay effect" when I am trying to remember something. Someone will start talking to me about some issue at work (that I should be on the same page with already), and then they will finish and I will just sit there with wheels slowly turning for a few seconds and then "OH yeah!" and then get it. It reminds me of my grandpa grabbing a hot biscuit too quickly from the pan right out of the oven and taking several seconds for the "OUCH that's HOT!" response to make the connection and then he drops the biscuit. :) I'm doing fairly well, I think I have found a workable combination of meds that might actually last a few months!---Mitch
> Thanks for the advice. What dose of Buspar were you on? I'm on 15mg and am wondering if I should up the dose.
>
> I looked up Gabitril - and as usual - we don't have it here. We don't even have Effexor which seems to be pretty common in the US. Did you get much of the cognitive disfunction with the depakote? I was on Xanax a couple of years ago and the memory loss was awful. I would forget the names of friends I'd had for years.
>
> I hope you're doing OK - you've been giving good advice here for a while.
>
> Cheers
> Jackie
>
> > Hi, I actually remembered. I have had strings of panic attacks in the past and any posts about panic catches my eye and it gets burned into my memory easily. I found Buspar to work well with SSRI's. I hope it helps with your panic probs. Depakote and the hairloss thing.. Well, I've never noticed any taking between 125mg-500mg/day. I noticed quite a bit of weight gain however at 500mg. I like clonazepam mainly because it is cheap! My pdoc was wanting to substitite Gabitril for clonazepam but at a lower dose than what I have tried in the past, but that stuff is expensive. Hey, there's another idea for you (Gabitril). You might get a lot of cognitive dysfunction with it however (but it is dose related).
> >
> > good luck,
> >
> > Mitch
> >
>
>
poster:Ritch
thread:133620
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021230/msgs/133786.html