Posted by Keeta Orenda on July 11, 2005, at 0:40:07
Hi folks! :-)
I've been reading posts for a couple of weeks & have finally signed up to post myself. My name is Keeta & I'm a 40ish woman from the USA.
I've suffered from depression all my life. I have Depression & ADD-Inattentive. I've been on Disability due to the depression for 3 years. I've been on several medications & am currently searching for the right one. Prozac, Paxil & all those are terrible for me! They make me worse. Pamelor (or Nortryptiline) worked very well several years ago but for a very short time. At the end, it zonked me out pretty bad! Wellbutrin didn't do much for me at all.... numbed me out & then ended up causing a rash before getting off it. The one that worked the best & the longest was Effexor, but, I think it also is responsible for me losing my job & getting me on disability. Sleeping problems were pretty bad on it....I felt totally controlled by the sleep! I repeatedly was late to work cause I just couldn't wake up! The problem just kept getting worse & worse. But, I didn't realize it was the Effexor for the longest time! I blamed my bad diet, lack of exercise, & fat body for my worsening sleeping problems. I got on Disability & then my mental condition just got worse as I lost all hope of being a contributing productive human being again. While still on the Effexor, I woke up daily, or sometimes every other day, with a severe "hangover". In other words, there were many days I slept for 20 hours or so.
Anyhow, I finally quit Effexor cold turkey a week before Thanksgiving 2004. I also haven't had a full-time psych doctor for a few years now. I had someone who was semi retired & would just mail me prescriptions as I needed them & I would see him in person about once a year.
I've been on Adderall for several years, probably since about 1998. As I have doctors & then don't have doctors throughout the years, I've not always had Adderall available to me as that requires a paper prescription & can't be called-in or refilled, here in the US anyhow. I love Adderall! I works very well for me & also helps tremendously with energy levels. My old doctor would prescription 20mg of Adderall XR 4x a day....I wouldn't actually take that much but it helped to stretch out a single prescription beyond a month as he was the doc I rarely saw & it often took several calls/messages to get his assistant to mail out the prescriptions.
Anyhow, I've begun seeing a new doctor that is more available. He's only willing to prescribe 30mg Adderall XR once a day. I don't think it works as well, I mean, not even as well as 10mg less of the XR! Not sure what's up about that. Anyhow, this doctor has tried me on Lexapro....immediately felt irritable with that & didn't continue it. I've just tried Cymbalta. I had such high hopes for it! But, I quit it a week ago. I see my doc in the morning & will tell him then. I started out at 30mg for a week then went up to 60mg for the next 2 weeks. I never felt like it was working but had read in these forums that it might take awhile for me to feel the good effects from it. I progressively wanted to stay home & miss appointments. I could tell things were getting worse instead of better. And then last weekend, I stayed in bed all weekend practically but not really asleep....just kinda stared & didn't want to think or do anything. I think I was Lethargy personified last weekend!
Anyhow, so I decided then to quit it. I've not felt bad withdrawal like with Effexor at all. I only took a partial pill once & that's been it. Was actually quite surprised....I expected the withdrawal heck I went through with Effexor!
Anyhow, anybody got any ideas of what else I should try? I suspect that Serotonin is NOT one of my problems!! Maybe, I need a drug that works mostly on Noreprinephrine & Dopamine? *sigh* I don't really know much about these things. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks! :-)
Keeta
poster:Keeta Orenda
thread:526020
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050708/msgs/526020.html