Posted by utopizen on May 14, 2004, at 16:46:52
Since this board sort of led me to disagree with my doc and had me swap around to docs who would just prescribe me Klonopin + Desoxyn (my current stim of choice), allow me to share my experiences with this approach.
I have social anxiety + ADD combined, now with depression to boot.
That last diagnosis is related to another recently diagnosed one, "obsessional thinking" (not OCD, but just plain O- Obsessive).
Klonopin is great, helps me go to parties and talk to any girl, and either avoid alcohol entirely or nurse it for the sake of pretending I actually like the stuff.
(I have a low tolerance, so if I take more than few beers I will go manic, talk your head off, and say anything without thinking. I luckily did this a few times in high school so I am grateful for not allowing anyone who knows me now what this is like).
Stims are great. I'm an English major. I have incredibly bad ADD, no attentiveness whatsoever. Ritalin let me get a B in Macroeconomics freshman year, which isn't bad for a kid with a diagnosed 5th grade math level and such.
But they're only so great. 99% of all my papers I've ever submitted, graded A-B range as they all have been, were always started at midnight and finished at around 9 or 10AM for 7-10 pages of stimulant-induced creative insights that intruige my professors.
Look, I'm not saying if it works out for you not to stop doing it, but if I was smart enough earlier to realize cramming to the most pathetic extent imaginable and using my charm (or doc note, if I happened to have been lucky enough to schedule one for that day!) just to get papers accepted late, I would not have stopped trying the antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anything that came my way.
My last drug I tried was Abilify. for social anxiety, but what I really noticed a difference was in ADD. My motivation led me to actually wake up on Saturday mornings and do readings for history class that I would never do otherwise-- I mean it-- I mean, I have a history final saturday at 9, and I've not touched the texts or lecture notes to date.
I've tried CBT. It helps. But it's not enough. Going to the library makes me too sleepy (even with all of my Desoxyn), and staying at my desk leaves me bored and distracted.
I'm depressed, and wish I wasn't. It takes weeks just to see if a med will carry you out. And my new pdoc won't be seeing me until next week. Two weeks ago, I couldn't take myself anymore, and checked into a mental hosp. for the night just to seek some relief/solitude. Some part of me realized I felt I needed to get committed, and I'm glad I did, becuase it reminded me I need to take care of my mental health above anything else.
I'm going on Strattera+Provigil soon, it should help. Maybe going on Abilify and sticking to it this time, since the restlessness should go away now that I take Klonopin Wafers.
Straterra probably won't let me write papers like stims did, but then again, I rarely have written papers all semester, and whenever I have it was the last minute and I felt like mush from an all-nighter. It's no way to live your life like that.
If all your problem is is going to a party or meeting people or talking in class/work, and Klonopin does the trick, good for you. But if you're not immediately building new and close friends, you're still relatively isolated from everyone even on weekends, or in the case of ADD, the only benefit the stims give you is that you're able to either cram with your papers and readings and do all-nighters or something, you need to ask yourself something I wish I did earlier: Is this sustainable? Do I really want to continue repeating this way of life forever, instead of acting like this is an occassional thing I do now and then?"
If you have social anxiety, and you don't find relief rather soon, eventually not having more than a handful of friends is not sustainable. If you've been living this way, as I have, for 20 years, taking a Klonopin Wafer probably isn't going to change very much.
I'll admit, I'm young, and a lot of my problem is that I haven't had the chance to go to bars yet, and I'll likely be fine after I finally have a girlfriend, I never saw depression coming a year or two ago for me.
That, and my ambition in life is to one day actually to wake up one day, even if it's not until I'm 82, and be able to talk to someone new without concern for where I last stored my Klonopin Wafer. Or write a book one day and not look at my watch to time how long the stim will likely take to "kick in."I've done all these things, and after two years and 8 psychopharmacologists later, I'm really sick of it.
poster:utopizen
thread:346896
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040510/msgs/346896.html