Posted by tiopenster on June 12, 2015, at 18:43:44
In reply to Re: Medications that don't touch the 5HT1 receptor? » tiopenster, posted by phidippus on June 12, 2015, at 17:49:31
In the span of this thread, I've been diagnosed with bi-polar (because of the way I respond to SSRIs) GAD and OCD.
My whole story started with a panic attack out of the blue. A whole bunch of stress and a change in medication seemed to trigger a panic attack in the middle of the night 9 years ago. I had about 10 panic attacks. I was so obsessed with how my body felt because that's that a panic attack will do to you. I resolved those by figuring out I needed to stop fearing a panic attack. Those went away without medication, but by that time I figure that out, it had gone into my body as a constant vibration (somatic) I started to have GAD (free floating anxiety). In an attempt to solve that problem I became a "hypochondriac" to try and figure out how to solve the anxiety. After 5 years, I finally find the right cocktail, then start tapering off all my meds. Feeling better with each med going by the wayside. I switched from a liquid formulation of Klonopin to the pill form when after I had dropped from 2mg to .5mg to stay there for a month and stabilize. Well, it would appear that the compound pharmacist had added a little extra klonopin to the liquid formulation because 3 days after I made the switch to pill form, I had an anxiety attack out of the blue. I've since figured out that the liquid formulation has about 10% more klonopin in it than the pill form, so I think the change triggered withdrawal anxiety.
My anxiety attack was because I thought I was unintentionally being dishonest to a business contract, where I had no thought of that for months prior. I did lots of legal research to see if I was in the wrong, but I wasn't. I would have no anxiety for days and then another anxiety attack would happen when the same thought would crop up. This happened several times until i was just ruminating on it all day long. Trying to solve a problem that I had already solved.
I started lyrica and within 2 days, the anxiety was demolished. No guilt. nothing. Then as I explained previously, the lyrica would poop out after a week. So I added Insidon which helped tremendously. I was on the lowest dose - 50mg (Insidon doesn't touch the 5ht1). I had a normal response to it. No cycling with a gradual improvement. For the last 2 weeks, I've been feeling about 85-90% normal. I increased my dose of Insidon to 100mg a couple days ago and I've been feeling normal. I'm notorious for poop out so we'll see. I also returned to my dose of 2mg of klonopin because this latest episode was caused because of withdrawal.
A fantastic article to explain how I respond to SSRIs is entitled Treatment-Resistant Anxiety Disorders: Neurotrophic Perspectives by Jeremy Coplan. It's a free article in Psychiatric Times. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/treatment-resistant-anxiety-disorders-neurotrophic-perspectives
I actually spent $600 for an initial visit with him in NY (I lived in VA). He really saw Lamictal as the key to treating treatment resistant anxiety. He uses the term tachyphylaxis, which described me to a tee. The article is fascinating and may help many out there.
I know OCD is on the anxiety spectrum, but I wouldn't say I have the disorder. I'm going to see a pdoc in one week.
poster:tiopenster
thread:1079343
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150520/msgs/1079707.html