Posted by bleauberry on April 24, 2012, at 4:26:12
In reply to Coming off meds after 13 years..., posted by newo38 on April 23, 2012, at 20:48:31
> Coming off ssri/snris's after thirteen years of being on them. I dunno, I am tired of sexual side effects and switching meds trying to find a good one and never finding it. I feel like these meds do not do nearly as much as we think they do. Any input/opinions on that?
I think you are generally correct. In some cases, my rough estimate would be these meds work very well in about 10%-15% of patients. The rest of the patients, well, you know personally how that goes....a mixed bag but mostly not very impressive.
The entire problem I believe is two-fold. First, MDs do nearly nothing to try to rule out or challenge a variety of common causes of nervous system disruption/contamination. This really isn't very hard and costs practically nothing, but they aren't trained to think in that way. So for example while the MD is telling the patient they have a chemical imbalance (how would they know that....they don't and can't) and that the chemical out of balance is serotonin (really? how do you know that?), wow, that's some good xray vision. That gets to the second point, which is, the meds usually chosen are almost purely serotonin based. Sorry, but depression and psych symptoms are a lot more complicated than merely involving something to do with serotonin.
I think these meds are more like numbing agents to the emotions than they are anti-depressant, in many cases.
In a fictionary world where we could choose the best of the best and that is all we have to choose from, all the others go in the trash, I think the psych world could do a lot better in terms of depression treatment success if the meds were limited to combinations such as:
Nortriptyline or desipramine with prozac or zoloft.
Parnate
Nardil
Abilify
Zyprexa
Savella
Ritalin
ClomipramineThe best outcomes, I believe, come from a two-pronged attack involving fairly balanced ratios of serotonin and norepinephrine. In other words....SNRI. The problem is, we don't have any montherapy SNRIs. I think it is deceptive and bordering on unethical to call effexor and cymbalta SNRIs because their impact on NE is miniscule compared to their impact on serotonin. They are just SSRIs with a tiny smidgen of NE. Not enough NE to do any kind of balancing.
Anyway, I came off meds after many years and can offer some tips. First, go slow. Don't be in a hurry. Get good at making custom doses because you will have the easiest time if you lower the doses in very tiny steps. For example if the med in question was cymbalta, you can make custom doses of the enteric coated beads inside the capsule. Doses do not have to be exact. Close is good enough. For example if you had a 20mg capsule of cymbalta and you were wanting 18mg, you dumped out 20 of the inner beads (approximately 1mg per 10 beads) you might not be exactly at 18mg but close enough....less than 20mg and down in a small step;...that's what matters. Take your time, and if you ever need to go back up to a higher dose for a day or a few days, not problem, do it, it is part of the process.
My venture into the plant medicine world began while weaning off meds, because physical anxiety became an issue. Along the journey I became aware of a handful of herbs that were very helpful on an as-needed basis to knock down symptoms when the going got really rough.
You will want to educate yourself and experiment on yourself with these things:
Anti-inflammation
Anti-infection
Anti-toxin
Super healthy foods
Herbal medicinesAnd if you get to a point where you decide you just have to have meds, then stick to the list above.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1016267
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120411/msgs/1016286.html