Posted by Ame Sans Vie on October 15, 2003, at 18:19:23
Disclaimer: Regarding the subject title, Your Mileage May Vary. :-)
Well, I took the plunge today -- saw my psychiatrist and decided this would be my last month on Ultram. I came to the appointment determined to go back on Prozac (in tandem with Wellbutrin XL) in hopes of staving off the withdrawal symptoms of Ultram that I described in a post several days ago. Boy, am I glad I did. My Ultram dose was 100mg four times daily, and before today even reducing the dose by 25mg/day was unbearable. I took 10mg fluoxetine (generic Prozac) along with my third daily dose of Ultram today -- only I cut the Ultram dose down to 50mg instead of 100mg. No withdrawal to be told of. What an enormous relief. Since I'm going to be on only 10mg Prozac this first two weeks before moving up to 20mg, as well as tapering down on the Ultram, I'm not concerned about the serotonin syndrome thing.
Normally I'd be out of my mind by this point... I was expecting the cold sweats, shakiness, brain zaps, nausea, etc. Added in a little extra DL-phenylalanine and I feel wonderful -- even having second thoughts about returning to the pain specialist on Monday. :-) I'll probably end up going though... no sense wasting an appointment that was so hard to get, and for which I recently went through the horror of MRIs... never realized I was so claustrophobic. An agoraphobic claustrophobe, lmao. Anyway, who knows if the pain or depression might rear their respective ugly mugs again sometime soon. Given my luck, probably best not to take any chances. <g>
One final thing that has me a bit more hopeful than usual is that Prozac is *the* one medication I don't feel my past doctors ever gave a fair trial. I tried it once at 20mg, experienced no side effects (though no benefit either... or perhaps there *was* benefit but I was expecting that such a miracle couldn't occur without SSRI-type side effects and just didn't realize it)... yet my doctor at the time decided after a month to switch me to Paxil instead of attempt a dose titration. Maybe Prozac will turn out to be the thing I need? Well, in addition to the other meds, of course. After all, Ultram was such a wonder for me and the actions of the two drugs are not at all dissimilar in several regards. Maybe I'll just keep a couple hundred milligrams of tramadol on hand at all times in the future as an emergency antidepressant... or more likely, methadone -- well, not a few hundred milligrams if it ends up going that route, lol.
So, I'll be sure to keep you all posted in case anyone's interested... Brad, I can't remember if you're still on the Ultram or not, but if so I highly suggest you keep this in mind should you decide to discontinue and/or choose an alternate opioid somewhere down the line. Could potentially save a *lot* of pain and suffering. I'm convinced that the 5-HT/NE properties of tramadol are more potent than currently marketed SSRIs, regardless of what any admittedly objective studies show... what does science know anyway? ;-)
God, it's good to be back.
~~Michael
10mg Prozac
150mg Wellbutrin XL
12mg Klonopin
300-350mg Ultram
60-120mg dextromethorphan HBr
60mg Dexedrine
poster:Ame Sans Vie
thread:269766
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031015/msgs/269766.html