Posted by undopaminergic on April 14, 2008, at 22:20:32
In reply to Re: anyone ever had greater success on a generic?, posted by Dopamine123 on April 13, 2008, at 22:00:19
> >mild sporadic headaches, total sexual numbing, restless leg syndrome and memory loss
>
> Sounds like your experiencing dopamine depletion due to the SSRI. I had similar symptoms to you when I was taking an SSRI.
>
> Sexual dysfunction, restless legs and some of the memory problems may be due to reduced dopamine (an oversimplification obviously but that is the general idea). You might want to augment the SSRI with a drug that increases dopamine, like wellbutrin, ritalin, adderall etc. Otherwise those symptoms probably won't resolve on their own.
>Especially the motor symptoms tend to get better. By the time that I quit sertraline (at 200 mg/day), they were no longer a problem.
The sexual side effects are perhaps the most reliable effects of SSRIs. They are not so much a result of dopamine deficits as hyperprolactinemia, but nevertheless, peripheral dopamine receptors in the pituitary inhibit prolactin release, so a dopamine agonist (pramipexole, ropinirole, etc.) can be an efftive remedy. One can also learn to live with these side effects: a simple way of managing them is to cut down on orgasms to one per week or one per two weeks.
It has been suggested that upregulation of the dopaminergic system is the mechanism of antidepressive action of SSRIs, and the gradual nature of such upregulation could account for the slow onset the therapeutic benefits of SSRIs. Assuming that's correct, adding dopaminergic agents could potentially interfer with the process, because such agents could potentially remove the stimulus for upregulation. This is just speculation, however.
poster:undopaminergic
thread:823002
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080412/msgs/823350.html