Posted by Silly Brain on September 23, 2002, at 23:21:16
In reply to A couple of other quick points, posted by viridis on September 22, 2002, at 11:30:17
Viridis -
I want to thank you for both your posts. I think the dexedrine was making me short-tempered on top of everything. I'm already rather impatient. Adding depression to that makes me really obnoxious.
Well, I decided to stay on the Serzone, but to take it as it was designed to be taken - twice a day rather than one big dose at night. I've been doing this since Saturday and I already feel better. I think I might ask the doc to slightly increase the dose as well. I have *another* doc who prescribes the dexedrine, who suggested replacing it with Wellbutrin. I think I'll just lower the dex.
About psychotherapy... I've had many many experiences with therapy and liked very few of them. I seem to get one of two types: Either they think I am a very gifted, intelligent, fascinating person who is too hard on herself, which is nice, but not very useful, or they think I am a complete eccentric, arrogant, and unstable, and am basically a lost cause. Weird, huh? Truth is, I have an obvious philosophical/politcal slant, and if the shrink is in my same camp, likes me, but otherwise thinks I'm nutty. I wish the therapists who liked me would actually help me improve where I need to. Also, my brother commit suicide, and I believe extremely incompetent psychiatric treatment pushed him to it (long, sad, story), so I don't immediately trust anybody in psych.
Thanks for listening,
Silly> Just a couple of other things:
>
> 1) In the above post, I didn't mean to imply that Wellbutrin is an SSRI -- my point was that neither Wellbutrin nor the SSRIs I've tried were effective, and all had serious side effects, whereas treatment with the combo I'm on now has been very helpful.
>
> 2) One thing that hasn't been mentioned is psychotherapy. I don't know if you've tried this, but if you do decide to abandon the medication route, therapy can be helpful and might enable you to better formulate a life-change strategy. Therapy (traditional and cognitive behavioral) has helped me somewhat at times, but in the last two cases, the therapists wound up recommending that I seek drug treatment. Each felt that there was a major biological component to my depression and anxiety that required medication. One strongly recommended stimulants because he picked up a substantial ADD component to my problems. I was reluctant to pursue this for quite a while, but when my current pdoc suggested Adderall, I tried it and found it a big help (along with Klonopin and Neurontin).
>
> Some credible research indicates that a combination of therapy and medication can be the best approach for some people, and a good therapist might be able to help you make some long-term treatment decisions even if they can't prescribe medications themselves.
>
> Good luck!
poster:Silly Brain
thread:120163
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020922/msgs/120888.html