Posted by matt66 on November 3, 2004, at 10:16:27
In reply to STOPED and RESTARTED Nardil,great only for a time, posted by Tepiaca on October 20, 2004, at 20:56:53
tepiaca,
I've had a very similar experience with nardil. Five years ago, when I first started ad's, the nardil was the eighth or ninth med I tried after breezing through the ssri's, and it worked gloriously initially. It was the best two weeks of my life. Absolutely increadible. It was like I just woke up from a decade-long slumber and finally came alive. My ability to interact with people was astonishing. I had a sense of humor finally and lost my debilitating inhibitions.It faded out after two or three weeks and during the next four years I tried everything, including shock therapy to no avail. In February '04 I tried marplan for the fourth or fifth time and it worked just like the nardil for a week or two. After that, I was stable, but not great. After increasing the dose, I would feel better for a while. It actually kept me ok (great considering some of the awful places my mind had been in the last few years) for almost six months.
Sometime in August I reached some kind of threshold. I was on 130mg a day, which is probably twice the recommended dosage. When I got that high, (without any real side effects to speak of-I'm increadibly tolerant to most meds) cost became a factor, and it wasn't doing much anyway, so I added the nardil. Within 24 hours I was at 100%. The marplan/nardil combo was great for about 5 days.
After that, each time I would sink, I would increase the nardil, and feel relief for a day maybe. When I would fade, we'd push the dose. When I dropped the marplan, the nardil alone still worked, and made me realize that the marplan wasn't really helping, but that the nardil was the one resonsible for my feeling great again.
I got up to 180mg a day of nardil without major side effects besides insomnia and constipation. At that point, we decided it wasn't practical to stay on that high a dose, since it wasn't helping much even as I raised the dose 15mg a day.
In summary, taking 30 or 45mg a day worked wonderfully when I first introduced the nardil into my system. After a perfect week or two, taking five times that amount brought only slight relief. It's such a tease for me. I'm on cymbalta now which is doing nothing.While Nardil and Marplan are the only meds I have responded to, it's not really accurate to say that they worked, since my response was so short-lived. I'm curious to know what would happen, however, if I stayed on the nardil at an average dose (say 90mg) for a longer period of time. Perhaps the initial effect wears off and the med then needs time in your system to build itself up, and that a true, sustained response may only be achieved after staying on it for a few months.
I'm also curious about augmentation strategies with the nardil, or to hear from other people who have had similar experiences with nardil who have gone on to find other meds that have worked and kept working. As a side note, I've tried parnate, moclobomide, and eldpryl without success. The Parnate I was on for three months (employing the strategy that a med needs time to start working), but it didn't do anything for me. I'll keep you updated with what I've been trying, and would be interested to find out what you have been trying as well. Since we both had such similar experiences with the nardil, that may be a tip that we'll respond similarly to other medications. Good luck....
poster:matt66
thread:405309
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041103/msgs/411034.html