Posted by SLS on March 26, 2016, at 1:05:05
In reply to Re: I restarted prazosin - I am feeling much better. » SLS, posted by Chris O on March 25, 2016, at 21:42:47
Hi Chris.
I'm sorry that your life has been so arduous and painful. I identify with most of what you have been so brave to share.
The following is my current treatment regime:
Parnate 80 mg/day
Desipramine 300 mg/day
Lamictal 300 mg/day
Lithium 300 mg/day
Abilify 10 mg/day
Prazosin 10 mg/dayI have Bipolar I with drug-induced mania.
I established a base treatment of Parnate first, then built a regime around it. At some point, you may want to do something similar. Nardil is a good choice, but you must be prepared for possible weight-gain, orthostatic hypotension, and difficulty urinating, among other things. Of course, you will have to adhere to a restricted diet and be aware of the drugs that you must avoid; most of them being serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Parnate is more forgiving with respect to side effects, but is generally less effective for anxiety and anhedonia. These are generalities, though. If you don't respond to one, you may respond to the other. I'm not saying that a MAOI is the next thing for you to try, but they are very much different from the reuptake inhibitors that you have been using.
Wellbutrin is a drug to consider in combination with a SNRI. Some people are brought into remission with combined treatment. However, Wellbutrin can induce anxiety, agitation, and anger in some people. I found the combination of Effexor and nortriptyline to be helpful.
Regarding prazosin, it feels like a very clean antidepressant to me. The only major side effect I experience is a reduction in sex-drive. Understand, though, that I need to combine it with antidepressants in order to benefit from it.
Perhaps you can start a new thread asking for help choosing your next treatment. Linkadge has an uncanny ability to pick winners.
- Scott
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> Well, whatever the Pazosin is doing, it's good that you notice a positive improvement. It's been a long while since I've felt anything like that.
>
> In answer to your question, no, I am not feeling better now. I would describe myself as terminally worried and overwhelmed. It is my being. Without my wife, I would be completely dysfunctional. I know this to be true, even if others do not think it to be true, based on their flawed perception of me being basically okay (mostly due to the fact that my wife doing all the "hard work" of making the money we need to survive). I just can't do it and it humiliates me. How do people make enough money to survive, people who were not born with the privilege of security and wealth behind them? I just don't get it. I don't get it at all.
>
> I do believe I have some form of PTSD, related to my childhood, specifically, my relationship with my mother, a strange and damaged woman, but one whom I unfortunately bonded to deeply as a child. For me--and again, even if this does not appear to be the case for outsiders--my childhood was like one long, sustained trauma. It's hard to get into without a long talk, so I'll leave it at that.
>
> I have tried Paxil long-term (over a year, I think). I was talking to you about my Paxil trial at one point before on this board. I was talking 2x 37.5mg pills a day (75mg), but even at that higher dosage, it wasn't doing much to relieve my symptoms. None of the SSRI-type drugs do much for me anymore, and I think I have done fair trials of most of them. (They did seem to work initially in 1998-1999 when I first tried them--Celexa and Prozac.) My last long-term drug trial was Brintillex about, oh, 1.5 years ago. It had a mild anti-depressant and anti-anxiety effect (I went up to 40mg a day for a while), but I could not afford the prescription and I tired of desperately running back to my psychiatrist's office to get samples all the time. I tried Effexor briefly, but never any long-term trial. Serzone I gave a long-term trial to several years ago at a very high dose (1600mg/day) but it had little effect. Nardil I've had on my shelf multiple times but never tried (never tried an MAOI inhibitor). Nor I have tried nortriptolyene or any other TCA. I did a 40 session rTMS trial a bit over a year ago with no success. But at least my wife's insurance covered that. I'm kind of at a loss for which drugs to try because no one really has a clue how to guide me, even though the psychiatrist I have seen off and on for ten years has tried. I often feel angry, violent, hopeless and want to lash out at someone or something, even though I realize it's irrational. I just don't want to feel so overwhelmed anymore, and I am tired of giving away my power to people in the psychiatric treatment community who only seem to make me feel more helpless and dependent and violated--the exact things I am going to them to "heal." Anyway, hope you are doing well in your own struggles. Wishing you the best.
>
> Chris
Some see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1087423
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20160306/msgs/1087564.html