Posted by europerep on May 5, 2015, at 15:10:57
In reply to Re: Qs about MAOIs for anybody who has taken them » europerep, posted by Smoo on May 4, 2015, at 22:43:14
Hey there,
good to hear you find my response useful! ;)
My memory of back then is a bit hazy, but I think I was on tranylcypromine for something like three to four months. I started at very low doses, without feeling any kind of effect, then I went a bit higher and started to feel mildly worse, and then when further raising the dose I definitely started to feel much worse relatively quickly. The dose where I ended up was 50mg/d I think. But I made a post about it back then, so if you want to take a look at that: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101231/msgs/975831.html Although I do have to say that I was in a very bad spot back then, so that thread is not exactly the high point of my life :/...
I share some features with atypical (especially hypersomnia) and some with melancholic (for example I never had issues with weight gain). And I first got ill at 16. Although that was when it definitely kicked in, there was already something there before, but I think it was subsyndromal.
I tried phenelzine after tranylcypromine, but when a worsening of my mood started to appear again I quickly went off of it, so I don't think I have had a full trial of it.
By the way, as far as phenelzine is concerned, two members might be able to help you: jedi, whom I haven't seen in quite a while, and Tomatheus, who has been posting as recently as yesterday, so he may actually discover this thread on his own. Jedi has had a lot of experience taking phenelzine successfully over years, after having been on many many meds unsuccessfully.
Anyway, back to me, I'm a guy and identify as such. And as far as my experience with MAOIs is concerned, a doctor in the US who has decades of experience with prescribing MAOIs told me (via email) that he had never seen a patient actually deteriorate on any of the MAOIs, so I think my reaction is really quite rare. There have been many people here who reported significant improvement on MAOIs. The thing is that most people who improve and maybe even reach remission eventually stop posting (or only show up very rarely), whereas most of those who are here are still struggling a bit. So I think that, in a way, all meds have a worse "rep" among members here when compared to all patients... but MAOIs still have a pretty good rep here, so that means they must be really pretty neat :)...
Ok, I hope I have addressed all important points? If not, don't hesitate to ask again!
poster:europerep
thread:1078650
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150407/msgs/1078684.html