Posted by BlueCollarChick on February 8, 2006, at 4:30:27
I'm a 31 year old female that is being treated for depression. I have been to many different professionals since I was 14, but I find that everyone I go to wants to overmedicate me. It's been like that for as long as I can remember. It's usually goes something like this: Here's Drug A. It will help you with depression. Here's drug B to stabilize your moods. Drug C helps augment Drug A. Drug D helps with your short attention span. Drug E is for the insomnia that Drug D will cause. And Drug F will counteract the anxiety that A, C, and D might cause.
In the past, I have been diagnosed with everything under the sun. As a result, I think a lot of these "professionals" are full of crap. I will admit to being powerless over controlling depression on my own, but I can deal with the other issues. I get anxiety attacks on occasion, but I know that I almost always get them as a reaction to caffeine. So that problem is easily solved by not drinking coffee and staying away from soda. Easy enough. I am also moody, maybe a little more so than most people, but I am NOT bi-polar as some of my doctors have suggested. My happy moods may come off as "mania", but I don't see anything wrong with occasional bouts of joy and laughter. Yes, technically, I could fit the criteria of a person with BPD, OCD, cyclothymia (sp?) and/or ADD, but I really don't feel the need to be medicated for every personality quirk.
So here I am taking 20mg of Lexapro. I've been on it for about two years. Besides the sexual side effects, (which I'm not too concerned about because I don't have a significant other to have sex with) this stuff really works for me. Last summer, I fought my doctor tooth and nail against taking lithium, but she won. I agreed to go on Eskalith. I felt no better or worse mentally, but had constant diarrhea, so I quit taking it. She also wanted to medicate me for ADD. First I tried some crap that I forgot the name of. It made me feel disasociated from my body, so I stopped after a week. Then I went on Strattera. It actually made me feel depressed, so I had to stop. Luckily, I was still taking Lexapro, so the depression, though noticably present, wasn't debilitating.
Needless to say, I decided to find a new psychiatrist. And guess what? Now it's the same exact thing! She can't accept that I'm content taking ONE medication. She wants me on Concerta as well. I don't deny that I have some variation of ADD, but since it's not a potentially life threatening condition like major depression can be, I feel that I don't NEED medication. But now I have this nagging thought ... what if having ADD all these years has held me back from reaching my full potential? Should I just try it out and see what happens? I have read the Concerta/Ritalin posts and I see that it can be a double edged sword. I'd like to hear some personal experiences. How has it helped/harmed you? Do the side effects outweigh the benefits? Has your life changed for the better or for the worse since taking it?
poster:BlueCollarChick
thread:607429
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060205/msgs/607429.html