Your concern is greatly appreciated. One of my worries was that I’d end up like some of my friends who became totally unhinged because of the stuff they’d been taking. (The scary part being that they didn’t realize they were acting totally irrational, even when I pointed it out to them. It was only once they stopped taking the medication that they realized how far they’d gone.)
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*Originally posted by dinahmoe *
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*Originally posted by beckwall *
Celexa mellowed me out, but I became non-orgasmic on it.
Zircon-encrusted tweezers?
Oh yeah…I’ve always wondered about those movies where someone shouts “you’re being hysterical!” at another character. If they’re hysterical, they’re not going to listen any way.
Wellbutrin has the following side-effects on me:
Dry mouth- I can live with this.
Loss of appetite- I like this side-effect.
Increase in sex drive- Damn, can this stuff get any better?
Oh yeah, and I’m not depressed as much.
Yeah me too to all three. I’m only taking one pill in the morning though. I do notice a little “speed” effect, but prior to seeing a psychiatrist and getting this prescription I had been using diet pills (for the amphetamine) to help keep me here. So compared to them, Wellbutrin is nothing.
Most pyschiatrist have two types of sessions 1/2 hour & full hour. The 1/2 hr is a medication management session during which they ask you some questions and then adjust the medication. The advantage is that you don’t have to pay the fee for a full hour. You could also ask your doc to prescribe a double dose with the understanding that you’d only take one pill a day - my psychiatrist did that, plus gave me about a months supply of free samples.
Also, once you lose your company health insurance look for a clinic that has a sliding scale for payments or check your local state human services dept. My state (MD) has a local health insurance plans based on household income. The county I live in has another health insurance option to, SOME local pharmacies and physicians participate and agree to charge only half price for their services/products.
I was on Wellbutrin initially but switched to Paxil because I was so jumpy. Paxil @ 20 mg did have some sexual side effects, but on me they weren’t disastrous. Still, now that I’m weaning myself off it (almost four years later), I’d recommend against Paxil. Paxil has achieved some notariety of late as among the most difficult antidepressants to quit, in part because its half-life in the body is quite short. (Prozac, on the other hand, is apparently much longer.) Withdrawal problems are one reason to speak with a psych, since GPs tend to be much less aware of them.
So far it’s taken me about six weeks to get off paxil and I think it’ll take another week or so. In the meantime, I’ve had a couple of lousy days feeling lots of weird electrical effects (known among patients as “the zaps,” they feel like a small jolt joing through much of your body; at their worst I was getting them about twice a minute).
Don’t get me wrong - paxil was terrific at a terrible time in my life, and now that I’ve reduced to about 3 mg, I think I’m ready to live without it. Plus it’s nice to have the bits back in total working order. But were I making the decision today I’d choose a different drug.
I knew a girl who had severe depression. Her doctor prescribed an excess of Prozac. Whoops! Big mistake. She nose-dived and tried to kill herself. Fortunately she failed.
Well, the dry mouth ain’t too bad, but the not eating part scared me, (I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I didn’t want to eat at all) and I figured that I’d better quit taking the stuff at that point. I certainly didn’t have the increased sex drive (just the opposite), not that it really matters. 