Posted by bleauberry on April 15, 2009, at 17:48:49
In reply to Anyone been described an MAOI in the UK?, posted by sowhysosad on April 14, 2009, at 16:10:11
This might help.
Go to pscychotropical.com. Scroll around and click on information about MAOIs. These are writings of a Dr Gillman, in which he describes the great usefulness of the MAOIS, why they are incorrectly seen as risky, why they are ignored, why doctors are unknowledgeable of them, why the diet restrictions are much less than previously thought, why other antidepressants don't work well, and why he has treated over 950 patients with Parnate and 50 with Nardil. Anyone who has an argument against MAOIs would lose the argument big time, knock out in the first round, going up against the awesome information given by Dr Gillman. No contest.
Print out this article and bring it with you. Maybe even have Dr Gillman's phone number and challenge your care provider to call him. The article will arm you with all the knowledge you need to blow out of the water any false information or hesitation your care provider may have.
Someone must be using MAOIs in UK, because I ordered mine overseas mailorder and it came from UK.
You could also go to askapatient.com. Check the overall rating by patients for Effexor, Prozac, Lexapro, whatever. They are all in the low to mid 3's, on a 1-5 scale. Now check the overall rating for Parnate and Nardil. Both are in the mid 4's. Now print out the actual comments and stories of those patients on Nardil and Parnate. Bring those stories with you for your care provider to see. And the ratings.
Do the same at revolutionhealth.com.
If the care provider will take a few minutes to read the stuff, they will see that they are the exact duplicate copies of all the other nonsense doctors that allowed patients to stay sick for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, when all they had to do was say, "Ok, let's try the MAOIs for a couple months and see what happens. Got nothing to lose at this point." But no, let the patient stay sick. Let them read the stories of real people like you who were denied full care.
If you go Prozac, and if you are interested in Symbyax, get the Prozac and Zyprexa separately. That way you can juggle the doses of each individually, instead of being tied to fixed proportions. The only benefit of Symbyax over the two drugs individually is that it would have the real Lilly brand prozac, not a generic fluoxetine. Which brings me to the next point...
Insist on brand Prozac. Do not accept generic unless you want to increase the odds of failure, which we all know are already high enough.
I was on 20mgProzac+5mgZyprexa for, oh I forget, something like 6 to 8 years. They were decent very productive years. I had some anhedonia and social shyness the whole time, but zero depression, excellent performance at work, healthy, active. A third add-on that really helped was Adrafinil, similar to Modafinil, except better in my opinion.
Hopefully if you go in fully armed, knowledgeable, and quick to the punch with expertise on MAOIs, and everything you printed out, you might just win. You should win. Just your efforts alone would show you would have made a great attorney preparing for an important trial. You should win.
poster:bleauberry
thread:890688
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090408/msgs/890931.html