Posted by Normal Again on August 9, 2004, at 22:43:25
In reply to Re: Borderline Personality Disorder/Effexor/Suicidal » terrics, posted by corafree on August 9, 2004, at 16:23:55
hi cora,
it's good to see your doing a little better. I shared the feelings of ADD, chaotic thoughts and memory loss before i found "my ideal dose" of Effexor, it's definitely due to the disease, once you find the right dose for your body it should go away. Have your doctor increase your dose by 37.5 mg each month until you can go the whole month without any suicidal thoughts whatsoever, even the slightest inkling. That should be the point where you have found your "ideal dose". It blew me away when i found out that regular people never have suicidal thoughts of any kind. For me that seemed as normal as brushing your teeth. who knew?
You asked earlier what causes the "waves of depression", i'm not an expert by any means but i like to compare it to diabetes. With a diabetic, you're body isn't capable of producing the correct levels of insulin to maintain a normal level of body sugar, too much and you get exhausted, too little and you get hyperactive. Our disease is very similar only instead of not beng able to produce insulin, our brains don't produce the right levels of serotonin to maintain a consistent level. Serotonin is the chemical that controls mood and emotion, too much causes exagerated elation, too little causes a wave of depression. For most people the levels stay relatively even all the time, but for people with our condition the brain is delayed in it's response to the need for serotonin, sometimes drastically delayed, and in no time a mountain becomes a molehill.
What effexor does for you is maintain a consistent dose of serotonin in your body in order to train your brain to understand what the right level is. In theory that takes about six months once you've found your "ideal dose" and then you can step down to where you no longer need the medication anymore and your brain will remember. I haven't reached that point yet but i'm very close and will let you know how it goes.
Personally i'm very much of the opinion that this disease is 95% physical and 5% mental, but that's just my opinion, others will probably disagree.
Hope that helps a little,
NA
poster:Normal Again
thread:374484
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040805/msgs/375817.html