Posted by bleauberry on May 20, 2012, at 5:25:03
In reply to Dump everything?, posted by sheilac on May 18, 2012, at 14:36:46
If tramadol works then I would think take it. It comes with dependence issues and if you ever have to stop it the withdrawals are nasty. But what are the choices? Years of trying other stuff you have no idea will work or not? Years of wasted life? Go with what works for now, and then try to make more sense out of things and make any other changes later on after being stable for a while.
Abilify is best for depression when it is combined with SSRIs. As with the other mood stabilizers you have experience with, it will tend to dull emotions. That is less of a problem at very low doses.
The sensitivity thing I understand. That seems very common in the Lyme, Lyme-like, MS, post-SSRI, etc groups. To me it means there is something else going on besides just the psychiatric stuff. Whatever that something else going on is, is probably also causing the psychiatric symptoms.
Most of my Lyme doc's patients had similar sensitivities. Not hard to deal with however, you just have to grasp the fact that the commonly accepted dosing guidelines do not apply to you. Your doses will be far lower, even lower than the lowest dose. My doc's starting point, for example, for a patient with lexapro is one drop....that is 1/10th of a mg. It was not unusual to have patients on 1mg of lexapro and it was working. Higher doses, bad news.
So it's just a different ballgame. If any doctor tries to apply normal doses to you, in my opinion that is a mistake and sets you up for failure.
There is a good side to the sensitivities. That is, while you are super sensitive to the negative effects of meds, you are also super sensitive to the positive effects....which means the dose that will do good for you is likely a very very low one.
You might have to get good at making custom doses. Lots of us have to do that because they don't manufacture doses small enough. There are easy ways to do this with either capsules or tabs, extended release or not, doesn't matter. Not hard.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1018192
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120508/msgs/1018278.html