Posted by sharonlmiracle on May 31, 2004, at 14:24:42
I've suffered from atypical depression since I was a teenager. My father also had it, and attempted suicide after a major traumatic event (i.e., my mother's sudden and unexpected death) and several times thereafter.
I'm currently taking 400 mg/day of Wellbutrin, and it seems to have helped with the fatigue, but I still don't feel normal. Sometimes I'm very irritable, and sometimes I'm in tears. The past week or so, I've been tired and don't feel motivated to do much of anything, even though I've been getting enough sleep. I might also mention that I've been unemployed for close to a year now (so much for the two degrees!), so it's not surprising that I'm depressed.
I'm very confused as to what Wellbutrin works on. I've read that it's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, but I've also read that it works on noradrenaline as well. The weird part is that I had a sleep study a few years ago, and it said that my sleep patterns (missing the last two sleep cycles) was indicative of depression. When I read up on this recently, I found out that a disrupted sleep cycle indicates melancholic depression, so I guess that I have both. With this in mind, perhaps I need to add something like Effexor?
Has anyone tried a combination of Wellbutrin and Effexor? I read on the internet that they theorize that this combo mimics the effects of MAOI's, which are often useful for atypical depression, but which have a lot of bad side effects.
poster:sharonlmiracle
thread:352412
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040527/msgs/352412.html