Posted by mattye on August 30, 2006, at 11:09:48
In reply to Re: Help with anxiety » mattye, posted by Racer on August 29, 2006, at 15:04:08
That makes a lot of sense. Exactly where I fall diagnostically in the DSM is irrelevant. The diagnoses are simply clusters of symptoms that appear to be related. Whether I have ADD and/or GAD and/or Depression is not really the issue. The issue is finding the best way to treat the symptoms.
Overall, I would say that I am VERY distractable. It is a running joke between my friends . . . "there goes Matt's ADD again." THey all decided I had ADD even though I never mentioned it to them. In college, one of my professors went to disability services for advise on how to deal with me b/c she thought I had ADD or a learning disorder. I didn't find out until after college when I pulled my records.
Again, whether I have ADD or Anxiety doesn't matter. They are just labels. What I believe distracts me much of the time is the constant background noise of disorganized thoughts zipping around my head. They are not stupid thoughts, because I am very smart. They are just thoughts unrelated to my situation. A lot of the time these thoughts are worrisome.
I remember when I was on Adderall in high school, I felt like I could think more clearly. But recently, I tried one of my friend's Klonopins (2 actually, I have a naturally high tolerance) and I actually felt NORMAL. I was driving by myself at night, listening to the radio and I was just calm. For the first time in a long time I felt like I wasn't worried/ruminating about something. It was like the volume in my brain was turned down. I realized that this is how normal people go through life, not worrying all the time. Small things don't bother them so much.
> Funny you should mention this...
>
> Aside from Buspar, which did help me, I was going to suggest you look into Strattera, which is marketted for ADD, but was developed for depression. I took it for some time, and it didn't exacerbate my anxiety as much as Wellbutrin does. It's not a bad drug, pretty friendly to me, and I think it was probably helping me -- situational factors were involved in me stopping it.
>
> My thinking is that the sort of anxiety you described, "I feel like the volume in my head is just turned up too high and I want to quiet it down a notch," is very much how I would describe what my T swears is the ADHD, more than anxiety per se. She says that's cognitive hyperactivity, and it's absolutely true that Ritalin quietens that for me a lot, which in turn lowers my anxiety.
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> Other than Strattera -- which I think would be a better first choice for you than a stimulant, because of your history of abuse -- my only other suggestion is a very low dose of something like propranalol.
>
> Or maybe trying Effexor? It's a good drug, and lowers anxiety for a lot of people. It's also not an SSRI, although it does have sexual side effects for some people. (Periactin helped me with that, by the way. Doesn't help everyone, but totally countered the SSRI sexual dysfunction for me.)
>
> Good luck. I hope that helped.
poster:mattye
thread:681177
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060825/msgs/681463.html