Posted by Tomatheus on November 29, 2010, at 14:05:01
In reply to What's Your Magic Pill?, posted by Phillipa on November 28, 2010, at 10:57:06
There was a time when my response to Nardil seemed to be pretty magical. To be specific, I was taking 75 mg of the Australian Nardil in enteric capsules, along with 25 mg of doxylamine succinate. That combination put all of my depressive symptoms (lack of energy, psychomotor retardation, hypersomnia, anhedonia, difficulty concentrating, and circadian-rhythm abnormalities) into full remission and completely wiped out the severe functional impairment that I was experiencing before I took Nardil. A lot of people refuse to believe that medications alone can bring about the kind of dramatic turnaround that I experienced when I was taking Nardil with doxylamine. For example, it is often argued that everybody with depression must have some negative-thought-pattern issues that cause their symptoms and that treating such symptoms with medications alone will only do part of the work needed to bring depressive symptoms into remission. Well, I think that such an argument is based upon a flawed assumption -- the assumption that all depressed individuals are pessimistic and that their negative thoughts are the underlying cause of all that they're suffering from. For me, the only "thought-pattern" issues that I had was a lack of thought patterns. Taking Nardil with doxylamine succinate gave me the energy I needed so I could wake up feeling refreshed each morning and think clearly and quickly enough to meet the challenges that came my way. Considering how much difficulty I had waking up each morning and engaging in everyday tasks before I took Nardil and after I stopped taking it, the fact that I was able to work, socialize, and maintain a normal circadian rhythm while I was responding to my Nardil-doxylamine combo seemed like nothing short of magic.
Unfortunately, after I was in remission for about a month on the enteric-encapsulated Australian Nardil with doxylamine succinate, I experienced a sudden and complete return of all my symptoms, which was accompanied by increased sweating and urinary retention. One possible explanation for these phenomena is that the bottles of the Australian Nardil that put me into remission had silica gel inside of them and that the bottles of Australian Nardil I received later did not have any silica gel in them, but largely, the cause of my sudden relapse remains unknown. As I've explained in previous messages that I've written on this site, I later got the psychiatrist I was seeing at the time to prescribe me Pfizer's Nardil, which I also put into enteric capsules, and I experienced a robust antidepressant response that was short of full remission at 60 mg of this version of Nardil with the doxylamine succinate that I had been taking with the Australian Nardil. This response lasted two months and ended with what I suspect was a bad batch of Pfizer's Nardil.
Now, I have what has been diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder, which includes a less severe version of the depressive symptoms that I previously experienced, as well as positive, negative, and cognitive psychotic symptoms. I suspect that my psychotic symptoms were brought on by taking a medication called aminoguanidine, but that's another story. My depressive symptoms no longer respond to enteric-encapsulated Marplan, the version of tranylcypromine manufactured by Goldshield for the U.K., or SAM-e. I currently take a combination of medications and supplements for my depressive symptoms and other symptoms, and although some of these treatments have helped me, none of them have restored my sense of functioning in the way that Nardil did. So, I really can't say that any of my treatments do anything that seems to be magical anymore, but when Nardil and doxylamine worked, they worked so well that my response could have easily been described as being magical.
Tomatheus
Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Currently taking 5 mg Abilify, 12.5 mg Lamictal, 2.25 mg Hydergine, and four supplements.
poster:Tomatheus
thread:971548
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101117/msgs/971772.html