Posted by em_kath on April 8, 2010, at 14:43:11
In reply to Re: Delayed response with antidepressants? » em_kath, posted by Economist on April 7, 2010, at 20:49:17
> Did you discontinue EMSAM because it worked initially and then pooped out, or was the mood lift consistent but just not as high as you were hoping for?
I ended up discontinuing because while EMSAM was better than nothing, I didn't feel like it was better than my previous medications. When I felt that mood lift I guess it made me hopeful that it would happen again and that I would continue to improve, but I never did. But I don't think that it pooped out at all, I stayed pretty much at that level until I switched off. I wasn't as miserable as before, but I still had a lot of symptoms. My pdoc and I considered adding Lamictal or something but since so few meds can be used with MAOIs we eventually opted to just try something else altogether. I should mention I was also augmenting with 25mcg cytomel during my EMSAM trial (but this didn't seem to result in any improvement).
Strangely, even though I am on my washout I don't feel all that much worse than I did on EMSAM. I tapered down from 12mg to 6mg over the course of a week, and I have gone 10 days without applying a patch. I'm not doing great, but I'm not feeling as badly as I had expected. I'm not sure if that means the medication is lingering in my system, or if the benefit was less than I thought.
Sorry, I wish I had more encouragement for you to stay on EMSAM, I mostly just wanted to vouch for the fact that EMSAM can take a long time before a sudden response happens. I hope my situation is unique and that if/when you begin to feel an improvement that it will be more substantial. I've talked to others on this board who have had much better responses to EMSAM.
poster:em_kath
thread:942557
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100406/msgs/942765.html