Posted by crabwalk on May 17, 2006, at 22:11:15
In reply to Re: My Experience with Emsam...anyone else have this?, posted by ZeitGuest on May 17, 2006, at 20:40:00
Paul,
Yes, the first thing emsam did was give me crazy anxiety, which lasted about 3 or 4 days. Then it gave me terrible, terrible depression. I'd been depressed before, at times pretty badly, but this was different than any depression I'd ever felt, and I think it went hand in hand with the intense fatigue it caused. Fortunately, after about two weeks these nasty effects subsided.
Unfortunately, it's hard for me to say if it is helping me because my situation is so confounded. The major problem I have is that ssris made me sexually numb and dysfunctional, something that has lasted since I quit them over a year ago. This has made me very depressed and my hope was that emsam would somehow restore my sexual feelings. That hasn't happened yet and it looks less likely that it will, although I'll give it some more time. Another problem is that I had terrible insomnia before emsam, and it has either not changed or gotten slightly worse, so I am very poorly rested all the time and it's hard to tell if emsam is causing any fatigue. I think it is my poor sleep that is the biggest problem with regards to feeling worn out all the time though. No sleep and no ability to feel pleasure (sexually and in most other respects) will probably make you feel sh*tty no matter what a drug is doing for you. I feel like if these two problems were corrected, emsam would actually be helping me a lot. Of course you could argue conversely as well...
One positve thing emsam has done is to restore my appetite to almost normal. I had bad lack of appetite and digestive problems before. It's strange that this happened, I was ready for emsam to make things worse. It is nice to be able to enjoy food again, though I still don't get excited about it like I used to.
Right now, it's looking like I will have to try something else to try to reverse what ssris did to my sexuality. I think others without this problem would have better luck on the patch.
poster:crabwalk
thread:645264
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060515/msgs/645337.html