Posted by bob on May 12, 2000, at 0:57:26
In reply to HELP, should i start a new medicine?any advice?, posted by Bonnie on May 11, 2000, at 22:18:32
Hi Bonnie!
Is this pdoc new, or is this the person who's been prescribing your meds so far?
If your pdoc's new, she might still want to try an SSRI or one of the somewhat-new wondermeds. How *did* the prozac and celexa work for you? If they helped at all, maybe giving zoloft or paxil a shot would be a good idea. Even though they're all in the same class, they are different enough so that where one may not work, another will.
If you're like me, on the other hand, SSRIs were a complete bust. It took my pdoc and I two years to finally give up on them. I switched to a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) after that. I've had much better results with TCAs than SSRIs ... which apparently is not all that uncommon -- SSRI non-responders responding well to TCAs and vice versa. I took nortriptyline for a long time, over a year, and it worked much better for me than zoloft, the SSRI that worked the least worst for me. I've just switched to desipramine for a couple of esoteric reasons -- just trying a tweak to see if I can get more out of this than the nortrip -- but both have the most favorable side effect profiles of the TCAs and are two of this class that people tend to respond to well.
If you can, keep a diary of how you are feeling when you start your new med(s). As you try more and more different meds and they all have different effects, it can get really difficult to come up with any sense of HOW you are doing. My therapist also suggests (and I really should do it) keeping tape-recorded diary entries, since the tone of your voice can reflect as much or more of your emotional state and frame of mind than writing things out can do.
good luck with your doc!
bob
poster:bob
thread:33242
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000508/msgs/33255.html