Posted by psychobot5000 on July 5, 2009, at 16:18:26
Hi all,
What is current thinking on the use of Geodon for hypodopaminergic depression, specifically as regards dosage?
I have severe, hypodopaminergic depression, and currently take 10mg Geodon b.i.d., which has offered some substantial relief for a number of symptoms--anxiety, difficulty concentrating; it's also activating and raises my mood modestly (I would strongly recommend it to other depressives out there). My question is this: since 20mg per day in divided doses has been helpful, it's hard not to think about pushing the dose to 30mg or 40mg, though presumably there will be a ceiling somewhere, where the drug becomes more antipsychotic and less helpful...and it has not escaped my notice that every increase in dose presumably inreases the likelihood of getting various nasty antipsychotic side-effects, even aside from the possibility it might blunt the antidepressant through counterproductive mechanisms like D2-blocking.
So how high is too high? When is the dose likely to become counter-productive? Is there reason to believe 10mg t.i.d or 20 mg b.i.d will be more (or less) helpful than 10mg b.i.d? It's very hard for me to do a comparison, as any increase in dosage will (for me) temporarily elevate my mood for a few weeks, before it settles into its new baseline, whether that new long-term baseline is higher or lower--and in that timeframe, other factors of life come into play which add a lot of noise to the experiment.
I'd very much appreciate any thoughts people have on the subject (and hey, all you anhedonic depressives with difficulty concentrating and low-motivation out there: you might want to give very low-dose Geodon a shot)
Be well,
Psychbot
poster:psychobot5000
thread:905107
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090630/msgs/905107.html