# Lets Talk Antidepressants



## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

I never thought I'd see the day but here it is. I have mild dr at this point but have depression to the point of having strong suicidal thoughts. I tried 12 different medications when my dp was crippling, looking for relief and all of them made my symptoms worse. This coupled with the fact that Prozac actually trigger dp for me, not once but twice, makes me VERY nervous about pharmasudecials. Still, I am taking very near the max dose of b complex and d3 (Nature's antidepressant) and it's doing nothing for my depression. I'm not expecting meds to cure my dr but I need something for the depression.

So my question is this, has anyone had success with antidepressants that did not make your dp/dr symptoms worse?


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## Visual (Oct 13, 2010)

ValleyGirl83 said:


> I never thought I'd see the day but here it is. I have mild dr at this point but have depression to the point of having strong suicidal thoughts. I tried 12 different medications when my dp was crippling, looking for relief and all of them made my symptoms worse. This coupled with the fact that Prozac actually trigger dp for me, not once but twice, makes me VERY nervous about pharmasudecials. Still, I am taking very near the max dose of b complex and d3 (Nature's antidepressant) and it's doing nothing for my depression. I'm not expecting meds to cure my dr but I need something for the depression.
> 
> So my question is this, has anyone had success with antidepressants that did not make your dp/dr symptoms worse?


As far as antidepressants go, I've had benefit from low doses of Wellbutrin CR (75mg in morning) - both mood and visuals. Higher doses cause other problems.

Imipramine is helpful and without the side effects of amitriptyline which largely replaced it.

Overall the best med has been Sinemet 25/100 which is not an antidepressant per se.

Would you please list the 12 meds you have tried and the effects that they caused? This might help.


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

none of my meds have made it worse. i'm currently on mirtazapine. try to figure out if the ones that made it worse worked on specifici chemicals or were in the same class of anti dep's that might help find one


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## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

Visual said:


> As far as antidepressants go, I've had benefit from low doses of Wellbutrin CR (75mg in morning) - both mood and visuals. Higher doses cause other problems.
> 
> Imipramine is helpful and without the side effects of amitriptyline which largely replaced it.
> 
> ...


I honestly don't remember all of them because it was when my dp was horrendous and the combination of being extremely doped up on benzos and dp in general killed my memory. Here is what I do remember taking Prozac- did nothing for me at low doses and once I tried to titrate up, it made my dp 100 times worse. Ativan, Xanax, Klonopin. The klonopin was the only thing that helped and I took that for 8 months. Buspar and neurontin- both made my dp go off the charts, lamictal- This seemed to work extremely well for the first 5 days. I honestly thought it was going to take my dp away but then I started having hyper awareness that rapidly descending in severe hyper awareness of every thought and breath and sound and I ended up having to lay completely still in a dark room because every thought felt like it was being screamed at me. Seroquil- Did nothing but cause me to have really episodes where it felt like my skin was crawling and I would sweat profusely. Effexor aka the liquor of satan- this is the most evil drug I have ever taken. It completely screwed me up. I went absolutely bat crap crazy on it. It caused side effects that took months to go away, even after I stopped the drug.

So there's 9 of them. Between the psychiartist I saw and being admitted to the hospital twice, so many freaking drugs were thrown my way that I lost track of them.

I also wanted to add that before dp I tried Celexa, Wellbutrin, cymbalta, and paxil and all caused me problems too. The paxil was the worse, causing severe nightmares, excessive sweating, constant gagging. I can't remember which but looking back one of the other 3 gave me symptoms very similar to dr.


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## Visual (Oct 13, 2010)

*Effexor aka the liquor of satan- this is the most evil drug I have ever taken. It completely screwed me up. I went absolutely bat crap crazy on it. It caused side effects that took months to go away, even after I stopped the drug*

Love your imagery of this med ... though some report benefits, my experience is similar to yours.










The nightmare of all this does tend to make one forget what did what ... or even to know when taking multiple meds or having quick changes.

I've looked a lot into the characteristics of dopamine boosting meds (which is at the core of my neurological crap). And low dopamine is involved in depression. But it is hard to know if you (or anyone specifically) would benefit. And even harder to get a doc to prescribe the stuff. Wellbutrin and Adderall are the easiest to get - but these have problem of their own, especially in taken in standard or high amounts. Since SSRIs and SNRIs seem to make life worse for you (as they do me), then the opposite types of meds would seem to be the direction to go.

If you have good health insurance, it might be helpful to do some genetic testing such as COMT polymorphisms. At this point much of these tests are more research than treatment. But in the end, there has to be some reason stress brought on all these things you suffer.


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## Thidwick (May 30, 2012)

Anti-depressents never did anything for me except make my condition worse. I understand completely about the depression, though -- I often feel depressed, like even if I came out of DP/DR I would still suffer from immense depression and be unable to enjoy life.

I generally advise against taking medication. There are psychotropics and such out there that can seriously fuck your mind up and cause all sorts of psychical problems, as well. I know you're just talking mainly about antidepressents, but sometimes stronger drugs get prescribed and those drugs have some vicious side effects. But you know that already.

I've come out of it before without any medication, and if it's all possible I think you should do the same. If you can't handle it and have to have something to help you out, I understand. That said, recovery from DP/DR works wonders for recovery from depression, as the depression is usually brought on or intensified by the DP/DR. They're closely linked, I think.


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