Posted by ash on August 31, 2000, at 0:06:24
Hi all,
Like many folks here, I am one of those treatment resistant depressives who is looking for the magic medication(s) that will be the answer to my moderate/severe unipolar depression that has persisted for 15 plus years.
During the course of the last year, my Pdoc has experimented with a heavy-duty kind of polypharmacy. Basically, she kept on adding a new A/D to whatever else I was taking so that most recently I was on a combination of:
200 mg Zoloft, 350 mg Wellbutrin SR, 45 mg Remeron, 30 mg Ritalin, 5 mg Olanzapine plus T3 and T4 for hypothyroidism.
I suppose what she was hoping was to hit all neurotransmitters and receptors in as many ways as possible. As far as my depression was concerned though I might as well as have been taking sugar pills for all the good this cocktail did for me.
She was about to add Lamictal to the mix but on second thoughts decided that the dangers of a severe interaction were too high. She asked me to stop all my current meds first, to clean out my system so to speak.
I stopped everything cold turkey, that is went from full dose one day to zero the next. For about 3 days I was quite a bit more tired and sleepy than usual; but soon thereafter I was about 80% or so back to what was “normal” for me when I was taking all the antidepressants– anhedonia, lack of energy, a kind of blah existence but nevertheless able to sort of muddle through the day.
I guess what I am looking for is comments on this kind of polypharmacy or augmentation or whatever else it could be called. I am also curious if anything can be deduced from the fact that I had nowhere near the severe discontinuance effects that so many complain about even when they try to taper off the A/D’s
poster:ash
thread:44126
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000822/msgs/44126.html