Having depression really, really, REALLY sucks the smegma off horse cock.

The BBQ Pit
1

A little background: In September of 1999 I suddenly had a bad case of depression. I mean, bad depression. The kind where all you think about is suicide. It sucked, but I eventually got on some meds for it in December of 2001.

The meds are Risperdol, Seroquel, Lexapro, and some crap called Depakote. If I am on too much Risperdol, I get really, really paranoid and nervous. Too little, and I get real angry and depressed. The Seroquel just sits there and doesn’t do jack fucking shit. The Lexapro just makes any sexual activity take a long time. Hell, when I jack off, I think of a lesbian cheerleader orgy, and it takes as long for me as it would for you if you were jacking off and could think of nothing besides Fred Phelps and Ronald Reagan getting it on. And the Depakote just screws with me in all sorts of ways.

Making it worse is that none of these medications are reliable in the least. I still think about killing myself a lot. I don’t have much anger now, thank Cthulhu, but that will probably change. I think I’ve tweaked with my meds, all of which I am on huge doses of, a grand total of at least 650,000,000,000 times. More times than the number of people on this board. More times than channels I get on my TV. More times than scars on my arms from my depressed days back in 2000.

Now I’m having to increase the Risperdol and drop more of the Seroquel to fix this depression. And you know what? It ain’t fuckin’ working.

I hate my brain.

2

Disclaimer: IANADoctor or a shrink. Anything I say is purely uninformed and speculative.

Anyway, really sorry to hear that. Was it the first episode of depression? Has your therapist tried to reduce the amount of drugs? The reason I ask is that it might have been an isolated episode, yet you’re still on meds. I’m NOT recommending that you come off the meds, but it just seems that nearly 2 years of meds for a single episode might maybe be a bit long, if the underlying symptoms might have cleared up?

3

My experience, from the personal side (meds in 1988-1989 and again 2001 to present), and from observational (soon to be ex-wife on all sorts of meds, plus a number of depressive friends on meds) is;

The Docs don’t have the slightest fucking clue what they’re doing. They just roll the dice and hope that something they give you is going to work. If it doesn’t, they jigger up and down the various doses until you can’t take it anymore, then they try something else.

My wife was, for a time, on Serzone. The marriage counselor and I sent her back to the Doc three times because it was not working. The shithead just kept increasing her dosage to the point where I told her that if he did it again, I would personally go into his office and tear his head off. He tried to do so and she (thankfully) fired him. Of course, a month later she tried to kill herself and self-committed for 3 days.

Oh, and…

The rate of sexual side effects is grossly under-rated.

4

Chimera:

Everyone reacts differently to meds. One of the suck-y parts of depression is that reality. After years of trial and error (really. I’ve done practically the entire anti-depressant sampler platter) I am now on a combo of Effexor and Celexa that has literally saved my life.

Frankly, your opinion that “Docs don’t have the slightest fucking clue what they’re doing” really, really pisses me off. Okay, so how many people are going to read that and not take any goddamn action at all to deal with a disease that is very treatable?

Look, there are lots of other things you have to do when you’re dealing with depression, and one of the most important is to take ownership of your own healing. You can’t just and simply rely on doctors. You have to be willing to do the work in therapy. You have to read up and become educated. You have to be willing to adjust thought patterns and behavior that don’t help. You have to get HELP.

Jesus Christ. Without good, caring, and highly knowledgeable and professional psychiatrists (plus one exceptional GP) I’d be dead. Granted, doctors exist on a spectrum of skill, talent, and experience, just like everybody else. But, good god, I would hate for someone to read your post and NOT get help because it reinforces their mistaken belief that all doctors are hacks.

Now, on to TMWTGG: I know exactly how you feel. And you are not alone, by any stretch. Please continue to post. If you would like to share, I’m curious to here what other strategies and tactics you are using. What is your diagnosis? Are you bipolar?
You can get through this and it will get better.

5

Been there, though it’s never been that bad, and a low maintenance dose of Prozac keeps me on a pretty even keel (though you couldn’t tell this week).

TMWTGG, when you say you are tweaking your meds, are you making the tweaking, or are you doing it with the assistance and direction of a knowledgeable and helpful doc. If it’s not the latter, it should be. Get back in. Bug him to keep seeing you until you mix and match meds and get a combo that actually works. And if you haven’t already done so:

  • get into some talk therapy
  • start an exercise program
  • say hi to Opal (no, seriously, the lady has gone through what you’re talking about. She is a fountain of knowledge and sympathy.)

Good luck.

6

Chimera, not only is your post blatantly wrong, it is dangerous. Medication can be a life-saver for many, many chronically depressed people.. I’m sorry that it hasn’t worked for you and some others that you know. But your anecdotal comments mean little here.

You wouldn’t believe how much more that sentence says about you than it does your wife.

Man with the Golden Gun, are you completely content with this particular psychiatrist? Sometimes it takes more than one to find the right match. Another doctor might look at your medications with fresh eyes and find a solution.

I was diagnosed with clinical depression over forty years ago. It wasn’t until the newer medications such as prozac came out that I have been able to get relief. The best psychiatrist I’ve ever had is the one I have now. I see him once a month for about twenty minutes. But previously I have been through a lot of counselling. I just wanted to illustrate that it doesn’t have to be a tremendous financial burden.

It wouldn’t hurt you at all to get a second opinion since you are still this aggitated. Yes, depression is really, really bad. But what’s hard to realize is that when you are depressed, your brain is not perceiving reality accurately. Things seem a lot worse than they really are. Of course it still feels like hell!

You must endure. If you feel the urge to take your own life, get yourself to a safe place such as an emergency room. Just put yourself on automatic and do it! Don’t opt for the permanent solution to a temporary problem.

There is also always someone around here to talk to. So many of us have been where you are.

7

If you have spent 2 years on the same meds and are constantly tweaking them (not on your own, I hope) it is time to discuss possibly changing the drug regimen with your doctor. Or weaning off them altogether. Do not attempt this on your own. Abrupt withdrawal from some of the newer drugs can be nasty.

Risperdol and Seroquel are antipsychotics. Depakote is an anticonvulsant. While they all may be used as adjuncts in the treatment of depression they are generally not the first line of attack. Lexapro is the only true antidepressant in this mix.

When you were first prescribed an antidepressant, was it as a single drug or did you immediately start on multiple drugs? In my experience, some doctors have a “favorite cocktail” all their depressed patients are prescribed. I prefer my psychotropic drugs the same way I take liquor - straight up, no chaser. IMO too many drugs all at once makes it hard to differentiate side effects of the meds from symptoms of the illness. I became extremely angry and aggressive on Buspar. If I had taken it in combo with something else we would have had to experiment to determine the offending drug. Note - I am not averse to adding a drug if it seems warranted.

Prescribing psychitric medicine is not an exact science. What works for one can have the opposite effect on another. If the drugs work as expected it is great. If not, your life can continue to feel like hell until the right drug/dosage is hit upon.

Good luck to you.

8

Chimera, you’re an Asshat.

Doctors are not perfect, they are human beings just like everyone else. They make mistakes.

Your attitude is a crystal clear example of why malpractice insurance costs have skyrocketed and as a result so have medical costs.

TMWTGG, ignore everything that Cimera said. Just pretend his post doesn’t even exist or that it’s in Swahili or something. As some others have said, it is not a good idea to regulate your meds yourself, no matter how well you think you know your own body. That sort of thing should only be done after consulting your physician.

Maybe the drugs you’re taking now aren’t the right ones for you.

That’s ok. It can be frustrating as hell, because you’re taking a bunch of different stuff and it can make you feel crummy and even worse then when you weren’t on anything.

It sucks, I know.

But, there is something out there that can help you, it may just take a bit of time to find it. Which is also frustrating.

But you can stick it out and make it through. I( know you can.

Make an appointment with your physician and if you aren’t seeing a counselor/therapist I would suggest asking your doc if they can reccomend one.

Things will get better.

9

Bingo.

10

Chimera, chill the fuck out, asshole.

The Man With The Golden Gun, are you also in therapy? It’s not just meds alone.

11

I agree 100%. Read the patient monograph for just about any antidepressant. They all say something like, “The therapeutic mechanism of Upsydaisium is not clearly understood; it is is presumed to be linked to its ability to inhibit the neuronal reuptake of serotonin.” Antidepressants work in more people than not, but there is still a significant percentage of the population that get no relief at all, and the side effects destroy their life. It’s a crapshoot.

12

While some of you are jumping on Chimera as if he had killed some baby-kittens or something, it is true (as Fear Itself noted) that the pharmaceutical bods do not understand how or why antidepressants work. And for doctors prescribing these drugs, it is very much a case of Pharmaceutical Roulette, spinning the drug-dial until they find something that works for their particular patients.

The bottom line is: they don’t really have a bloody clue, and I think you would find that they are the first to acknowledge that. They don’t understand the physiology of depression, and they sure as hell don’t understand why drugs work or don’t work (depending on the patient).

SSRI’s work for some people, MAOI’s work for some people, Tricyclics work for some people, and SOME people find no relief from any sort of drug intervention. Sometimes one SSRI will work while another will have no efficacy whatsoever. And the severity of the depression has no bearing on the likelihood of an amelioration of symptoms when using a particular drug or a particular dosage.

TMWTGG, it’s really important that you tell your prescribing dr. all of what you are experiencing on your meds, because often, when we’re most depressed, we fail to share with them the real extent of our distress. Mostly, depressed people just go along with whatever the doc recommends, regardless of how it makes us feel…we’re just too apathetic to get too worked up about it and shrug our shoulders in acquiesence. And doc’s tend to take our agreement at face-value, unfortunately. They’re mostly good people, but it is hard to appreciate what we’re going through unless we spell it out.

Good luck with everything, and of course, if all else fails, you could try another Dr.* But as someone else mentioned, DO NOT GO OFF MEDS COLD TURKEY in the meantime OK? It’s not nice.
*Do you know anyone battling depression who could recommend another Doc for you?

13

I tend to agree with Chimera, but maybe it’s because I just can’t catch a fucking break with this stuff. I’ve been on Prozac, Effexor, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Buspar, and at least a couple others that I can’t remember right now. Everything I try either doesn’t help at all, or makes me feel an indescribable feeling that may not quite be depression, but sure as hell ain’t happiness either.

I’d been getting all my meds from GPs. Last time I went to my GP, I was asked if I wanted to see a psychiatrist. I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I did. I waited 90 minutes for what turned out to be a ten minute appointment with the jackass. In the time I was waiting, two drug reps spent more time in his office than I ended up spending. After telling him I was shy due to low self esteem, he proceeded to interrupt several of my answers to his questions. Yeah, that’s the way to get me talking, doc.

But he didn’t want to get me talking. He rushed me out of his office as quickly as he could and tried to write me a prescription for Wellbutrin without even asking me if I’d been on any meds before. When I pointed out that I’d already tried it, he prescribed another drug-of-the-month and gave me a sample. Another drug that works in the same way that half the other drugs I tried work.

When he wrapped up the quick appointment, he waited until I was walking out the damn office door before he asked me if I had anything else I wanted to talk about. Geez. I’m picking up your signals loud and clear, dickhead. You don’t give a fuck about how I feel, but you do want my money. Go to hell. My GP may not be a specialist, but at least she listens to what I have to say and seems to genuinely care about getting me better. You want to fucking throw pills at me and collect a paycheck. To make matters worse, my GP tells me that there are very few psychiatrists and psychologists in the area and that to get an appointment with one often takes months.

Fuck. I’m so soured on all of this shit that I’m about ready to give up and resign myself to a life of depression. I can’t, though. I’ll just keep dragging my wife down with me until finally she can’t take it any more and leaves me. I don’t want that, so I keep trying new fucking useless pills. I feel like a gerbil spinning around in a wheel going nowhere. I don’t even need a wheel, though. The Buspar makes me dizzy enough that I feel like I just got off one.

It’s frustrating standing on the sidelines watching all of these meds work wonders for other people. Every doctor who actually listened to me said that mine sounded like a textbook case of seratonin imbalance, yet none of the drugs worked.

14

neutron AND The Man With the Golden Gun, please don’t give up. Some folk get lucky on the first round of antidepressants, and others like yourselves (and me) can take bloody years to get it right. I went through around ten different sorts of medications before I finally got the one that lifted me out of my pit and into something resembling normality…and that was AFTER a round of ECT (that didn’t work) as well!!

God, it’s a shitful tunnel to travel, and when you can’t see any light at the end of it you oftentimes wonder if it is worth trudging on. Waking up to a new day that offers nothing more than the same shitty mind-set you had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and you pray to Og that THIS morning might be different. And whaddya know…it’s not.

But please take heart that there IS some sort of recovery out there. It might take time, it might not happen for yonks…but then again, it might happen tomorrow. That’s how it was for me, after nigh on twelve years of varying degrees of depression (the last four seeing me hospitalized on occasion). One morning I woke up, and I didn’t feel sick to my stomach…and I couldn’t figure out what was WRONG with me!! I couldn’t understand why I felt sort-of healthy. After so many years of feeling crook and flat, to get out of bed with a sense of optimism threw me for a sixer…I was so sure that my ‘wellbeing’ was a temporary state, that I really didn’t get to appreciate it fully. But I do now.

So, hang in there, and believe me it CAN get better. And don’t give up on the medication…just keep trying new ones until you hit the right formula. There might be a bit of a journey until that happens, but honestly, it IS worth it. If you can manage it, find yourself a therapist to help you negotiate the tough times until you get to the Jackpot. The joy that we depressives feel when the cloud of crap is finally lifted is something extra special that no-one else can possibly imagine. You’ll get there, and as the old saying goes, Og speed. ;j

15

Depression it TRULY a bitch. I’ve suffered with it for oh… about 24 YEARS now and have been diagnosed with… clinical depression, manic depression, borderline personality disorder, MULTIPLE personality disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and paranoid dilusional. WTF!!! I’ve been in and out of the hospitals in 7 different states, therapy in 10 different states with 15-20 different therapists and on 76 DIFFERENT medications all of which have a variety of fucked up side effects. Fast forward to today… I’ve been on NO meds for a year, not having ANY depression or other psych problems and have a WONDERFUL psychiatrist that actually LISTENS to me.
Basically what I’m saying TMWTGG is don’t give up. There is someone out here that understands you. PM me if you need to talk.

16

The best advice is to find a good psychiatrist who is aggressive in treating your depression. GPs can manage many people’s depression quite well but for people who fail a trial of SSRIs at an adequate dose (many people underdose) a multidrug regimen may be required.

A good idea is to have a thorough medical check-up when you are depressed. Thyroid problems and diabetes, among other conditions, can cause or exacerbate an underlying depression and in these cases appropriate treatment for these conditions (i.e., thyorid hormone supplementation or adequate control of blood sugar levels) is needed in addition to antidepressant treatment.

I’ll be keeping everyone here suffering from a MI in my thoughts and prayers – I’ve been there (long history of depression, suicidal thoughts, and some real scary thoughts) and with the help of a great psychiatrist who didn’t give up on my treatment I’m better. Yes, I do take eight pills every day but it is worth it to not feel so bad.

17

The Man with the Golden Gun , forgive me if I overlooked this in your post but have you tried wellbutrin? Substituiting that for your lexapro might get rid of any sexual side effects.

18

I, too, agree with Chimera - it really is a matter of trial and error with drugs. I’ve also read many times that talk therapy is just as effective as pills for most patients - talk therapy just takes a bit longer, so insurance companies are pushing the cheaper, faster fix of drugs.

IMHO, even if the drugs are working, it’s still a good idea to see a therapist once you find one with whom you click. And if the drugs aren’t working then you really, really need a good shrink! It’s not always easy to find one, I’ve seen some real turkeys over the years (including one who called to chide me for not showing up for my appointment at the exact moment that I was sitting in his damn waiting room!). BUT once you find a good therapist, then you can make light years’ progress.

You didn’t say anything about your life so I don’t know if this suggestion could help - perhaps not - but I’ll throw it out there just in case. You might enjoy reading If You Meet the Buddha In the Road, Kill Him by Sheldon Kopp. There are also a lot of good books on the market about toxic parents and co-dependence. And I liked I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay is interesting as well. Perhaps some time in the library might help?

Good luck, I wish you well in battling your demons and getting some peace.

19

Agree with fessie on this point. My psychiatrist isn’t there to talk with me (apart from the normal doctor-patient talk, that is), he’s there to keep up on the latest drugs and sign the slips that get me said drugs. My therapist, on the other hand, is the person I talk with, where I learn coping strategies and get things off my chest. If you can find a psychiatrist who does therapy, that’s great, but I don’t see that as a necessity.

Even if my biochemistry was normal (which the drugs are attempting to do), the effects of living with untreated depression would require therapy.

20

I’m glad to see that other people have defended Chimera in this thread.

He didn’t say that anti-depressants don’t work. He said that finding the right one is hit-and-miss, which is the same painful experience many sufferers of mental illness have to cope with.

I have four mentally ill friends, two with depression, one with schizophrenia and one with manic-depression, and they have ALL been on that roller-coaster of tweaking dosages, trying new drugs, and having to sit around for weeks while they wait for them to take effect. Not fun, and from what I understand, it’s a common experience.