Posted by JohnX2 on March 10, 2002, at 17:06:57
In reply to Re: Nardil » JohnX2, posted by JonW on March 10, 2002, at 10:44:47
Hi Jon,Are you typing on a mac or pc? I type in this teeny box in a pc on Netscape, it is really
annoying me! I have to scroll a bar at the bottom to read a post as I type it!
(I design computer chips btw, you'd think i could figure out how to set up my browser, duh).Anyways, it seems you are a bit like Mitch and quite sensitive to the lower dose of the
medicines, especially the anti-depressants. He would be a really good person to talk to
about anti-depressant add on strategies to avoid cycling/irritation. I usually do OK in the
therapeutic dosing range, i.e. I feel no perceptable benefit/change until I bump the dose of
the anti-depressant up to the normal range, and then all hell breaks loose (except Serzone!);).> Thanks for your reply. Well, I've had a somewhat positive experience with Klonopin as well. I would get into this agitated skin crawling somewhat mixed states, and one Klono (.5) is all it would take to calm the seas. It really is an amazing drug. For awhile, I was taking it as part of my cocktail. Unfortunately, it was making me even more depressed and Dr. Ivan Goldberg pointed out that it often makes difficult to treat people even more difficult to treat. So I dropped it for Neurontin, which I think was a good decision.
>Klonopin is a bit of a depressant, even for me. When I took it by itself, it did have a tendency to make
me depressed. I was OK when I used it in conjunction with other medicines. But you are not alone, a lot of
people complain about the medicine being a little bit depressing and do well switching to Neurontin. I really
likes Neurontin, except for the 3x a day dosing. But at this point, if I feel good, I don't give a rat's ass if
I have to do hand-stands every 1/2 hour to achieve it!> Does Lamictal at 150mg give you any memory problems? I would be in a conversation with someone thinking about what I was going to say in response to what they were saying and then when it was my turn to speak I would have no idea what I wanted to say. I felt like such an idiot! :) And topomax, AKA stupimax, doesn't give you any bad side-effects?
Well when I started Lamictal I bumped the dose really slowly. As I bumped the dose the medication made
my speech slurred and my thoughts were really foggy. But this usually wore of after 2 or 3 days if I stayed
at the same dose and I didn't change any other medicines either. Were you having memory problems after staying
at a solid dose for a while? I've seen fewer brain fog posts on Lamictal than the other anti-convulsants, but
as you know every one is different. Neurontin caused less brain fog, but it was more persistent and never let up for me.
Topamax has a bad reputation for brain fog. Me, NONE. Some people do just fine. A lot of time I think medicines
pick up really bad reputations on the internet. I pushed that medicine to the max in 2 weeks with no
cognitive impairment. Its very similar to Klonopin, but less sedating.>
> I only take 2.5mg of Zyprexa but it gives me twitches, and if I go to 5mg they are a lot worse. I was thinking of replacing it with Seroquel. Since you said that you still have swings throughout the day, I assume you have ultra rapid or ultradian cycling. I've heard nimodipine mentioned as having a special place for this type of cycling. Have you ever tried nimodipine? I was thinking of asking my psydoc about it.I took Zyprexa between 5-15 mg. It helped my anxiety from klonopin tolerance and sleep. If you think the Zyprexa is causing twitching
(which wasn't there before), please discuss this with your doctor. I'm really not sure how much nimodipine is being used if any
for psychiatric illness. I looked a bit at some research on that for treatment refractory depression, but the widespread
use has not been adopted (your doctor probably will not have heard about its use, its really a research concept).>
> I'm not sure what AD I've had the best response to because I don't think I've ever really stuck it out long enough with many I've been on. Previously, I felt moclobemide was the best but I'm not sure. Zoloft definitely made me the most hypomanic but this time with time with the mood stabilizers on board I didn't seem to have a hypomanic reaction. However, I get very agitated and irritable at 25mg and have had to drop down to 12.5mg. Lately, it seems to be brightning my mood a bit after I dropped Aricept. Maybe I'm just cycling or I shook things up by dropping Aricept, I don't know. I'm looking for as much chemical help as possible and I'm concerned that Zoloft is going to fool into thinking I'm OK and allow me to get by. That's why I'm interested in Nardil because it might be a more complete solution -- especially, considering my symptoms. Say Nardil is the thing for me, do you think it's possible to accomplish similar results without Nardil? Is there any reason to believe moclobemide would be as good as Nardil? Sorry for the long post, I'm rambling.Don't worry about rambling! This newsgroup is called "Psycho-BABBLE",
not "Pscho-Cliffs-Notes".Let me ramble, if you will:
I guess I would be concerned about really getting you up and running, you
mentioned you have been hospitalized twice. Do you feel that your mood stabilizers
can hold you up enough to swap in and out anti-depressants?Frankly, moclobemide doesn't have the best good track record, but you are really
sensitive to meds, so I wouldn't want to predict a response. Nardil, as Elizabith noted,
is reallt good for social phobia and atypical depression symptoms.
You also indicated success on Parnate. Nardil is like Parnate, just less likely
to be irritating (general trend). You seem to be really sensitive to ADs so
I'm not a good person to comment on predicting how you would do, Mitch is someone
who takes really low doses of ADs. The dose of Zoloft you are taking is very low.
One thing you may try, this is just a thought given how sensitive you are to
anti-depressants, is just a *dash* of deprnyl (Selegiline), say 5-10 mg.
This is low enough not to require the dietary restriction, and may be all
you need. (God help me, If some people read that last sentence there may
be some real back lash). This may do well with the atypical depression
in a manner similar to Parnate (not sure how your mood stabilizers
would react anxiety wise). Ask your pdoc. (Others reading this
can comment. Please don't flame me, thanks)Hey, can you let us know which AD's you've taken with and without
the mood stabilizers and at what doses? What happened exactly?
What kind of hypo(manic) symptoms occured? Have you had good conversations
with your doctor about hypomania, etc?
I can fill you in if you are interested
in my experiences.I noticed you talked about having social phobia,
but also being maybe passive aggressive towards
authority at times.Also you mentioned that Parnate made you really "well" in 2 days and you "Aced"
an interview but verbally assaulted someone.I'm curious, how would you consider doing well on
an interview as being symptomatic as bipolar?Also, in what sense was there a "verbal assault"?
Were you hyper and being out of line. Or was this
just a situation where someone said something
wrong to you, and maybe you were sticking up for
yourself? Did this happen during an interview?Also, are you a caffeine addict? And do you find
that driving your car really fast and blasting
music gets you going? (When I'm really manic I
like to drive my car 100 mph down
the interstate and maybe pop in a Peter Gabriel
CD into my Bose system and play the song
"Big Time". Good song about megalogmania!).What really has been incapacitating you over
the past six months?Have you ever been in a situation where you
were quite, but maybe you felt a bit anxious and
your adrenaline started to run, and all of a sudden
you had a burst of energy, your thoughts really
started to run and you had no problems socializing
with people for a short stint (you were unusually
confident for a bit)?What are your favorite educational disciplines?
(math/science/english/history). I hate anything
that is not absolute. I really hated taking
classes that required me to write essays. I was
petrified to even sit down and write a sentence.
My brain would freeze up because every sentence
had to be perfect. I couldn't stand the fact
that my work would be subjectively questioned
by someone else and maybe rejected. So I shuned
history/english/etc and stuck with math/science,etc
where the answer is usually true or false.Sorry to ask so many questions. I'm trying to
see if i can relate your experience to my own.best wishes,
John>
> Thanks,
> Jon
>
>
>
> > Hi Jon,
> >
> > Well, can't say you haven't "been there done
> > that" with the mood stabilizers! Sorry.
> >
> > Depakote was a placebo for me.
> > Neurontin had an anti-anxiety but no
> > mood stabilizer effect.
> > Lamictal works at 150 mg, but does nothing
> > at any other dose (gives me a headache
> > at higher dose).
> >
> > Unfortunately I took Effexor,Paxil,Wellbutrin,
> > and Zoloft, and Serzone before getting a good bipolar diagnosis.
> > Of those, Sezone gave me an AD response without
> > a mood stabilizer and didn't make me severly
> > manic, whereas Zoloft and Wellbutrin made me
> > manic.
> >
> > Lately I was taking this for a few months:
> >
> > Lamictal 150 mg
> > Zyprexa 5-15 mg
> > Klonopin 6 mg
> > Topamax 400 mg
> >
> > I was tolerant to Klonopin and I don't know if
> > you saw my posts, when I started to dump it I became
> > really manic and my pdoc pushed my Zyprexa to 15 mg.
> > But the mania was really bad...I spent 300 dollars on
> > plumbing tubing trying to build a golf driving range
> > in my dining room and I thought there was a conspiracy
> > at work to get me fired, etc..ugh.
> >
> > Anyways I got the Klon. down to 1 mg and the bad
> > mania went away and I subsequently stopped Zyprexa (which
> > I generally liked) due to some twitching.
> > I added Serzone to help with some headaches,
> > and frankly it has really helped my mood. But now I
> > am a bit cylothymic again. I go through intraday swings.
> > Its better than without the Serzone. I don't know if I
> > can really tweak it any more. So for me Serzone is
> > about the only AD i can tolerate. It helps without
> > causing too much hypomania and it isn't making
> > me swing back into depression. So I just found
> > this by trial and error (I've only been on it
> > a few weeks, but I did ok on it before. Cross my fingers).
> > Btw, if you dose Serzone up very slowly it is
> > excellent for anxiety and sleep.
> >
> > Some people think you ultimately gotta deal
> > with the little swings. Do you feel the atypical anti-psychotics
> > have helped you out more?
> >
> > If you went back to an old anti-depressant that you liked, do
> > you think your current regimine of stabilizers would do a better
> > job of smoothing things over?
> >
> > Sorry you have been through the wringer. I know you must be
> > like me and want to just kinda get it over with and
> > "stick" with something, and move on, right?
> >
> > Usually if I am down, my symptoms are atypical too, I
> > have no drive, etc. I really loved wellbutrin if it didn't
> > make me so manic and give me headaches. I'm into these
> > fringe ideas for mood stabilizers that are in clinical trials
> > that I think might help me, but I can't talk my pdoc into
> > them.
> >
> > What do you think about Mitch's augmentation idea?
> > Maybe good for a quick test before switching AD's
> > altogether.
> >
> > Also, I'd contemplate an MAOI myself, but I live in Texas
> > and all I eat is tex-mex cheese and i would cheat on the
> > beer, is the diet all that bad? Eh, probably make
> > me manic. I loved Adderall, but it drove me kookoo according
> > to my friends (whom I kept calling all day and night).
> > What did the stims do to you (keep you calm)?
> >
> > PS, I'd love to swap my hypomanic stories if I didn't
> > have so many silly and embarrassing episodes.
> >
> > best wishes,
> > John
poster:JohnX2
thread:97093
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020307/msgs/97368.html