Posted by undopaminergic on April 10, 2023, at 11:01:35
In reply to Re: Does anyone still take aripiprazole (Abilify)?, posted by SLS on April 9, 2023, at 21:32:27
> Sorry. I lost my train of thought.
>
> Like I said, someone can have opposite reactions to the same drug depending on the one that preceded it.
>
> Effexor always produced a mild improvement for me, but nothing close to satisfactory. Still, I felt better on it than off of it.
>
> Three years ago, I tried vortioxetine for at least four weeks. It produced intolerable brain-fog and a sense of detachment from my surroundings. I stopped taking it. Having no better ideas at the time, I asked to go back on Effexor until something new came along.
>
> When I reintroduced Effexor, I experienced a torturous and painful brain-fog. Not only did my depression not improve, it became significantly worse. This was not the Effexor that I knew.
>
> Wash-out periods are not just to allow a drug to clear the bloodstream. It also allows the brain time to reregulate itself back to a baseline similar to what had existed before drug exposure.
>
> Think about how neuroscientists gather information by exposing a rat to one compound to see how it affects its reaction to a second compound. This is called "pre-treatment". One experiment might be to see how pre-treating a rat with a 5-HT7 antagonist (vortioxetine) changes the way the rat reacts to Effexor. If vortioxetine upregulates 5-HT7 receptors after prolonged exposure, will introducing Effexor afterwards produce more anxiety or less anxiety compared to Effexor alone?
>
> Perhaps we should pay more attention to this when evaluating the therapeutic worth of a drug.
>
>
> - ScottYes.
Pramipexole was the only drug I tried that was anti-anhedonic -- I got my sense of reward back. However, it apparently desensitised my dopamine D3/D2 receptors, so that the same drug would no longer work, despite a period of wash-out.
Sulpiride yielded a powerful (more so than methylphenidate) "motivational" stimulant effect at first, but apparently desensitised my dopamine autoreceptors, so that the same drug would no longer make a difference. Then I used selegiline for a while and some of the initial effects of sulpiride came back -- maybe selegiline re-sensitised the autoreceptors.
Reboxetine changed my brain permanently, so that I became more depersonalised-derealised -- my emotions were numbed, so that experiences that used to bring me to tears would no longer touch me. It was a welcome effect at the time, but now I wonder what my life would have been without it.
-undopaminergic
poster:undopaminergic
thread:1121982
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20230117/msgs/1122007.html