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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 16 of 16. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Somatization on November 18, 2004, at 16:05:39
I am taking a survey too find out if anyone benefitted or had ill effects as the result of Buspar augmentation. Please let me know if you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Thanks to all, I appreciate and await your responses.
Sincerely,
Somatization
Posted by Glydin on November 18, 2004, at 16:17:25
In reply to Buspar Survey, posted by Somatization on November 18, 2004, at 16:05:39
Didn't do a thing for me.
Posted by JohnM4402 on November 18, 2004, at 17:15:01
In reply to Buspar Survey, posted by Somatization on November 18, 2004, at 16:05:39
> I am taking a survey too find out if anyone benefitted or had ill effects as the result of Buspar augmentation. Please let me know if you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Thanks to all, I appreciate and await your responses.
> Sincerely,
> SomatizationI took it and it did not seem to help me.
Posted by pseudonym on November 18, 2004, at 17:20:47
In reply to Buspar Survey, posted by Somatization on November 18, 2004, at 16:05:39
Did nothing for me. Useless for my social anxiety. I don't think the idea behind buspar is necessarily wrong (5HT-1a), but the implementation was.
Posted by Emily Elizabeth on November 18, 2004, at 22:33:48
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey, posted by pseudonym on November 18, 2004, at 17:20:47
I myself have never taken it, but I thought it might be helpful to mention that my therapist, former pdoc and current pdoc have all told me that they have NEVER known anyone who found it useful. I figure that's a pretty large # of people voting "no" on Buspar!
Posted by gromit on November 19, 2004, at 1:44:12
In reply to Buspar Survey, posted by Somatization on November 18, 2004, at 16:05:39
> I am taking a survey too find out if anyone benefitted or had ill effects as the result of Buspar augmentation. Please let me know if you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Thanks to all, I appreciate and await your responses.
I first tried Buspar when I had really bad anger starting Wellbutrin. It's hard to say if it helped or if I was just getting used to the Wellbutrin, but I did calm down. I had no ill effects and stopped with no problem.
Rick
Posted by darkhorse on November 19, 2004, at 5:03:25
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey, posted by Glydin on November 18, 2004, at 16:17:25
> Didn't do a thing for me.
Same here.
Posted by crazychickuk on November 19, 2004, at 5:59:49
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey, posted by darkhorse on November 19, 2004, at 5:03:25
Must be just a sugar cube cus it did nothing for me either..
Posted by jasmineneroli on November 19, 2004, at 16:59:21
In reply to Buspar Survey, posted by Somatization on November 18, 2004, at 16:05:39
Thumbs down, sorry.
No therapeutic effect at all and some headache/gastric upset type s/e's (not intolerable ones though).I'm sensitive to most medications this way, though.
On the good side, no problem to just drop cold. No withdrawal effects at all.
I had been on Klonopin prior to that for 2 months. Benzo use can apparently negate any positive effect from Buspar for some reason.
If you haven't been on a benzo, it might be worth trying, since it's easy to get off, and relatively side effect free.
Best wishes
Jas
Posted by zeugma on November 19, 2004, at 19:25:46
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey, posted by jasmineneroli on November 19, 2004, at 16:59:21
> Thumbs down, sorry.
> No therapeutic effect at all and some headache/gastric upset type s/e's (not intolerable ones though).I'm sensitive to most medications this way, though.
> On the good side, no problem to just drop cold. No withdrawal effects at all.
> I had been on Klonopin prior to that for 2 months. Benzo use can apparently negate any positive effect from Buspar for some reason.
> If you haven't been on a benzo, it might be worth trying, since it's easy to get off, and relatively side effect free.
> Best wishes
> JasThe theory that prior benzo use negates buspirone's efficacy as an anxiolytic is a testament to the imaginations of clinicians who try to explain away the fact that buspirone is not effective in cases of severe anxiety. I took buspirone for nearly a year in the hopes that it would mitigate my crippling social anxiety. I was completely benzo-naive at that point (and quite miserable to meet a neighbor in an elevator, I might add). I added klonopin when cognitive behavioral therapy nearly landed me in the hospital. Klonopin works, and buspirone doesn't, for severe anxiety.
On the other hand, I found it to be a useful augmentor of my AD, and it seems to have a definite antidepressant effect of its own that is probably compromised in clinical trials by its unstable pharmacokinetics.
-z
Posted by jasmineneroli on November 20, 2004, at 0:24:56
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey » jasmineneroli, posted by zeugma on November 19, 2004, at 19:25:46
Hmmmmmmm, I wondered what the reasoning for the "pre-Benzo use/no Buspar success" mantra was.
Seemingly none, then. My Pdoc told me that, after a 2 month trial, that left me rather frustrated! I didn't ask for explanations (I was anxious <and annoyed> at the time!), just accepted the notion.
However, I have read the same thing here before, too, and elsewhere.
Just a case of trying to market an ineffectual drug, after all the research money poured into it???
Thanks,
Jas
Posted by whitecat on November 20, 2004, at 0:34:25
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey » jasmineneroli, posted by zeugma on November 19, 2004, at 19:25:46
may i ask, why you said this:"cognitive behavioral therapy nearly landed me in the hospital"? did it just do nothing, or worsened your condition? was it group therapy?
i'm asking because i have SP, i participated in some group behavioral therapy and just felt all the time it worthless for me, and also that i'd already discovered all its methods myself and use them almost all my life, and i still where i am.
Posted by Ritch on November 20, 2004, at 10:09:43
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey » jasmineneroli, posted by zeugma on November 19, 2004, at 19:25:46
...> On the other hand, I found it to be a useful augmentor of my AD, and it seems to have a definite antidepressant effect of its own that is probably compromised in clinical trials by its unstable pharmacokinetics.
>
> -zHi, I've found only two things helpful about Buspar: 1) It did seem to have a good augmenting effect with SSRI's(only) for depression., 2) It seemed to help only with *anticipitory* anxiety, but didn't do much for any of the other "flavors". I suspect this happened because of its antiserotonergic effects. SSRI's have helped with social anxiety, but I still get very bad anticipitory anxiety when taking them, and the Buspar seemed to help with that. Serzone and nortiptyline also helped with anticipatory anxiety in a somewhat exclusive way as well (for me).
Posted by zeugma on November 20, 2004, at 17:24:42
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey » zeugma, posted by jasmineneroli on November 20, 2004, at 0:24:56
> Hmmmmmmm, I wondered what the reasoning for the "pre-Benzo use/no Buspar success" mantra was.
>
> Seemingly none, then. My Pdoc told me that, after a 2 month trial, that left me rather frustrated! I didn't ask for explanations (I was anxious <and annoyed> at the time!), just accepted the notion.
> However, I have read the same thing here before, too, and elsewhere.
> Just a case of trying to market an ineffectual drug, after all the research money poured into it???
> Thanks,
> JasHi, Jas. A lot of time was spent trying to figure what to do with buspirone. It was initially developed as an antipsychotic, but proved useless for this purpose. Then I suppose that during the 1980's the benzodiazepines came under a cloud of suspicion for their 'addictive' properties and supposed recreational usage. The concept of the 'anxioselective' drug, that did not sedate but which reduced anxiety without being addictive, was born, and buspirone was the drug that served as the prototype. Apparently it demonstrated equal efficacy to diazepam in treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder (a condition which itself I suspect of being something of a clinician's fiction), and so was marketed as a safe, nonaddicting alternative to benzos.
Psychopharmacologists are in love with the word 'selective': the idea that buspirone was 'anxioselective' appealed to them as much as the term 'selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor,' introduced a few years later. In both cases imagination is required, because SSRI's activate many 5HT receptors, some of which in a therapeutic way and some in the detrimental ways we know all too well (numbing, anorgasmia, etc.) not to mention the fact that SSRI's interact with many other meds both pharmacokinetically and pharmacodynamically. In both the cases of buspirone and SSRI's, marketing claims and optimistic theoreticians have tended to obscure the true usefulness of these drugs. Buspirone stimulates the 5HT-1A receptors, which according to many current theories, are the ones implicated in SSRI's therapeutic effects. Therefore in theory buspirone should offer the advantages of SSRI's without causing the sleep disruption, sexual side effects, etc., of the SSRI's. Unfortunately, as I hinted in my previous post, buspirone is too unstable pharmacokinetically to be an ideal compound to demonstrate this theory. Gepirone, which was to come in an extended-release formulation to overcome this problem, would have served better. The question is moot now that gepirone has been rejected by the FDA.
For some on this board, including myself, buspirone has been abject failure as an anxiolytic, but has an antidepressant effect. As Mitch wrote in his post, buspirone can decrease 'anticipatory' anxiety in some, and this is probably why it passed FDA trials for GAD, unless indeed its AD effect mediated this success (I believe GAD to be imdistinguishable from some forms of depression).
In short, buspirone can be a useful drug, but marketing and theory have been way off target with this one.It's best to be skeptical with marketing and theory anyway.
-z
Posted by zeugma on November 20, 2004, at 17:35:33
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey » zeugma, posted by whitecat on November 20, 2004, at 0:34:25
> may i ask, why you said this:"cognitive behavioral therapy nearly landed me in the hospital"? did it just do nothing, or worsened your condition? was it group therapy?
> i'm asking because i have SP, i participated in some group behavioral therapy and just felt all the time it worthless for me, and also that i'd already discovered all its methods myself and use them almost all my life, and i still where i am.CBT worsened my condition immeasurably. It was individual therapy. The idea was to isolate the 'causes' of each anxious episode, and by analyzing them to uncover the supposedly 'irrational' thoughts that produced the anxiety. This excessively rationalistic theory may be a comfort to some, but is entirely baseless. I had already tried many of the ideas used in CBT long before I ever learned of it: the idea of 'exposing' myself to anxiety-provoking situations, for example, which is unavoidable anyway, since I did have to go to the supermarket on a regular basis. What CBT did for me was totrigger panic attacks that had been dormant since starting on nortriptyline a couple of years ago. The idea that by analyzing situations one can avoid the anxiety attendant on them assumes that cognition precedes both emotion and perception, and this is an utterly false assumption. One cannot disentwine cognition from its physiological underpinning and the emotions and perceptions that go with it.
-z
Posted by whitecat on November 21, 2004, at 12:58:28
In reply to Re: Buspar Survey » whitecat, posted by zeugma on November 20, 2004, at 17:35:33
"'irrational' thoughts"... i never noticed any "thought" about how frightening my boss is coming to my mind before conversation with him (and me freezing and stuttering)...and i really don't understand how exposing myself to anxiety-provoking situations can possibly help, since i'm doing this thing (exposing myself) all my life, and i'm still have SP.
sorry it was so tough for you...
This is the end of the thread.
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