Posted by conundrum on February 22, 2010, at 7:37:31
In reply to Re: Addiction/Anhedonia-- is it meds working or no 03 conundrum, posted by g_g_g_unit on February 22, 2010, at 1:15:03
I have no idea how it causes anhedonia. All I know is it only started when I stopped the drug. So if it starts to help and you take it for awhile, by all means don't stop it. There is some theorizing that taking an SSRI decreases serotonin transporters and that they remain downregulated even after the drug is stopped. This means you could have permanently elevated serotonin. However when you are taking fluoxetine some receptors, the 5 HT2 receptors are blocked by the drug. But if you stop the drug and still have elevated serotonin, from the transporter downregulation, those receptors will become activated and decrease the release of dopamine and norepinephrine in parts of the brain.
So in theory a lower dose could help since it would only really block 5 HT2A receptors and not increase serotonin that much. THis is all speculatioin though and I think that it is much more complicated than that.
I tried prozac at just 2.5 mg last October for about a month with buspar and noticed an increase in motivation and a little bit of increase hedonia. I noticed that when playing my guitar it sounded better. Anyway I only stayed on that dose for a short time before increase to 5 mg where I felt totally blunted. Then I attributed the improvement to buspar and stopped the prozac. But it wasn't the buspar at least not alone. Buspar alone doesn't really do anything. It was the low dose prozac. So now I'm back on it. I just hit the 3 week mark. I can't remember if it took 4 or 5 weeks to work but it does take awhile. Hopefully this works.
poster:conundrum
thread:937108
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100216/msgs/937666.html