Posted by Racer on March 27, 2005, at 12:44:19
In reply to No I don't want to recover, posted by maxime on March 27, 2005, at 0:59:34
> No Racer, I am not ready for recovery from my eating disorder. It's a coping mechanism and I need it right now. So many other things need to be addressed first.
>
> I know for myself my ANA was or is not related to anxiety but to low self esteem. Not feeling worthy or deserving.
>
> And no, I don't have OCD. I took Paxil and it triggered a manic OCD kind of behaviour with cleaning. After about a week my room mate called my doctor to let her know and I was taken off the med. Our appartment was spotless though.
>
> Maxime - who is tired and going to bed to cacoon.
Hey, Maxime, I hope that I wasn't one of the people you mentioned starting to trust less in your post to SLS, because I really am trying to understand what you're going through and what might be helpful for you. It may not be helpful, but it comes from caring, for whatever that might be worth.As for the OCD, I didn't mean "obsessive thoughts" as in OCD, just generally obsessive thoughts. I get them when I've been restricting long enough, although they tend to take the form of things like really detailed spreadsheets, or spotless bathrooms ;-) (In fact, I actually miss that part of AN a lot right now -- it's a biological function of starvation, and I'm at a stage of nutritional restoration now that has pretty well put a stopper on them. I do miss that aspect of AN, and if you could see our condo, you'd know one reason why!)
Let me try another way of asking the question: do you find yourself getting very detail oriented? Maybe that describes it better?
(By the way, I have such strong feelings about Diagnosis that I would never ask if you have a disorder, and certainly never ask about a symptom in order to say you fit a diagnostic catagory. There are a lot of non-pathological forms of obsessive thoughts, and it's valuable to focus on the adaptive, non-pathological side of things most of the time. Those psychopathologies won't be shy about making themselves known, so we usually don't have to go digging for them, you know?)
Anyway, I agree with you absolutely about Zyprexa for AN -- it is getting a lot of journal space these days, and it is effective in getting weight up, but every patient's report I've read says basically the same thing, all of which sounds a hell of a lot like how I felt on nortriptyline and paxil: helpless, out of control, miserable, frustrated, etc. Using any of those drugs without adequate psychological counseling to help resolve the underlying issues of any ED is worse than useless. I've got enough experience with it that I don't feel all that shy offering my opinion about it.
While I can understand your saying that AN is filling a need for you right now, I also think that that's the "AN voice" saying it. No matter how difficult it is to admit that restricting is damaging our ability to think clearly, and no matter how much we think that we are thinking clearly, the bottom line is that our thinking muscles need nourishment, too. It's a vicious circle, Maxime, and one that we really can't recognize until we get out of it.
Going back to where you are right now, though, one thought is that most times people with active AN will need very, very different doses of any psychoactive drug than a non eating disordered person. For some, that means about a tenth the therapeutic dose, for others it's two or three times the recommended dose. It varies a lot. Is your doctor just going by the standard doses? Or is he trying lower doses for adequate periods?
Another thought for you might be my own "Miracle Drug" -- propranalol for anxiety. A very low dose, with frequent follow ups to check your BP until you get stabilized on it, might be especially useful for you. When I was still taking it, it was great -- stopped the physical anxiety reactions, didn't stimulate my appetite, no side effects that I could tell, etc. It made everything in my life easier, and helped a lot in finding an A/D that would work for me and was tolerable.
Also, again, a med that targets NE might be a heck of a lot more useful for you than any of the SSRIs, especially if Dr Kaye's work has any real validity, and I'm betting it does.
Hope there's something useful in there for you.
poster:Racer
thread:475688
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050326/msgs/476235.html