Yeah, and equally irritating is the fact that they insist in the marketing that it’s “not PMS.” It IS PMS as any layman would understand it - or basically PMS that is bad enough to interfere with your functioning. Talk about marketing illness.
You got me on that. Good question.
FDA has several tiers before it approves a drug. I believe the first tier is to establish that it is safe. Next, they test it on animals for efficacy, and then on a select few experimental individuals for efficacy. Then there is broader testing before it is approved.
[[FDA has several tiers before it approves a drug. I believe the first tier is to establish that it is safe. Next, they test it on animals for efficacy, and then on a select few experimental individuals for efficacy. Then there is broader testing before it is approved.]]
I’m not sure at all if the FDA takes this into account, but many drugs are approved in other countries (with more liberal laws about drug testing, I guess)and used for many years, giving us the ability to see if there are any longterm effects. This does NOT mean the US is “testing drugs on third world countries,” mind you (though I’m sure that’s been done, too). The monthly injectable hormonal birth control is one example and there are many others. You will often see such evidence cited in studies here, “This drug/immunization has been used in Japan for 12 years and this is what we’ve seen there…”
Did you mean as a substitute for nicotine patches? Zyban comes in 150mg sustained release tablets, the same as one of the strengths of Wellbutrin SR. The problem is that many 3rd party plans will not pay for Zyban, but they will pay for the Wellbutrin. Most times, in order for the patient to get the drug my pharmacy winds up calling the Dr’s office for a substitution even though it’s the exact same drug.
I like how it is no longer PMS, but "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder".They can’t do that - PDD alread stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder, a spectrum of syndromes including (among others) autism and Rett syndrome. Don’t steal our acronym!
(My son is autistic.)
To get back on topic, I’ve been on and off Serzone for about five years now. Only side effect I ever had was some slight headaches which never occur now. I only take them ‘casually’ now, i.e., when I feel myself heading for a depressive episode. Less than yearly now, which is very relieving. When I initially started taking them, it took about a month for the effects to kick in, but these days it seems that it’s just a couple days after I start taking them that I’m functioning better. Is this psychosomatic or a result of my brain getting rewired? I have never had any withdrawal symptoms when I stop taking it. Am I just lucky, or is Serzone better for that sort of thing?
That was Mr. Death, posting at 3am.
In Canada, Wellbutrin comes in 100mg and 150mg tablets. Zyban comes in 150mg. “Dose” may have been the wrong word to use, but it is good to start anti-depressants at minimal doses. Also, there are definite legal implications of switching the drugs in Canada. FOrtunately, most insurance plans cover both here.
here is afairly complete description of Fluoxetine. In addition there is wide spead discussion of a large number of withdrawal syptoms being reported, if anyone requires references searching under “Prozac Withdrawal” on Google will turn up many such reports as well as so support groups for people going through this.
The general advice is yes there can be withdrawal effects, these can be quite extreme in som cases, so you should always withdraw from such medications with medical support, if your phyisition does not understand th issues associated with these drugs find one that does.
Keep safe
Britt
Nope, you’re not bonkers, Sexy and gigi…I’ve been on Zoloft for what seems like an eternity (I’m guessing 7 or 8 years), and I’d give anything to stop taking it, as that 1) I am no longer depressed, never mind not being in therapy, and 2)the thought that I may be on this little yellow pill for the rest of my life irks me to no end, like I’m a slave to it or something. The times when my doctor has attempted to taper me off it have been horribly unsuccessful – pounding headaches, spontaneous sobbing for no apparent reason, and, what frightens me the most, a seething eruption of anger – again, for no apparent reason.
You wouldn’t mind, but I was originally put on Prozac because my doctor feared that I was becoming anorexic. I gained something like 10 lbs. in a month, and nearly became a babbling idiot in the meantime. Ergo, the switch to Zoloft…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SexyWriter *
**
I’m wondering if there are other antidepressants that don’t have the side effects such as loss of libido/difficulty achieving orgasm that Prozac has. It’s been a lifesaver in some ways, but I hate to give that up!
Hmm…as far as I know, there’s varying degrees of side effects, depending on the med and the person’s chemistry. My ex-fiance was on Paxil, and no matter how much we fooled around, etc., he could never achieve a full erection. Pre-meds, my libido was so charged up that I fancied to myself to be The Orgasm Queen! 
Nowadays my libido’s still intact, but it’s much more subtle, which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Good because it lends an air of mystery in that there’s no automatic “jumping one’s bones”. Bad because even if I AM in the mood, I can’t just go ahead and Do It…I gotta build up to it…
Sheesh, and to think that before now, I have never posted anything like this either here or anywhere! LOL!!!
Just my two cent’s worth to add to the body of experience here (I’m running out the door, don’t have time to read it all).
My wife went on Paxil. It killed whatever little libido she had, and made her emotionally “blank”. Things were not great between us, but she just couldn’t care if she tried. I urged her to switch to something else, and she ended up on Celexa. Her libido is better, and she’s more human. On the upside, she was depressed and prone to panic before drugs. Now she is much more even-keeled, and is doing things she never would have imagined doing before.
One of my sons is on Zoloft. He’s 11, and I worry about the effects of long-term usage during his puberty. But he’s no longer prone to violent fits of uncontrolled rage. My wife and I wonder if he’s simply growing up, and whether he can go off medication.
I was on Zoloft for a while. Starting up on it gave me flu-like symptoms, and I had them again when I went off of it. While I was on Zoloft, my libido dropped from being in a constant state of heat to being kind of bored with women, and sexuality in general. It took foreplay to get me exited, which I did readily. It’s just that mental side of sexual attraction just wasn’t happening. It’s like I had a hard time fantasizing, or having any other abstract thoughts for that matter. I also had a problem with delayed ejaculation (thankfully, I was able to get an erection easily). Since I never had a problem with premature ejaculation in the first place, this was not really welcome. My wife and I would hump along, she’d be finished, and after a while would ask me if was going to come anytime soon. Since I no longer could get off on the thought of what we were doing, I had to WORK to focus on my genitals, almost willing the plumbing to work. Also, masturbation became impossible.
The shrink added Wellbutrin. This helped somewhat with the side effects, but it made my ears ring and left me a little light-headed.
I got of both Zoloft and Wellbutrin, and onto Serzone. Serzone had been good to me side effect-wise, but I suspect that it may have had a role in me putting on 10-15 pounds recently.
In terms of the upsides, it has changed a lot. For one thing, I no longer calmly contemplate novel ways of commiting suicide 2-3 times a week. I also don’t take complaints as personal criticism. I am more apt to defend my rights when people are stepping on my toes.
Well, I have just started taking Paxil, 10 mg for about two weeks and now just starting 20 mg. I guess it is still too early to see if it will help or not and what side effects I have. I really hope this works, because it is very difficult right now, at work, at home. I just want my life back.
The posts where people have mentioned words to the effect that they are dependent on these meds concerns me a great deal. My mom is on Prozac, my sister is on one of these (possibly Prozac, I forgot), the girl I’m currently seeing is on Prozac, and there are others in my life as well.
I have personally believed these meds to be habit forming for a few years now, and it surprises me how quickly the medical community seems to be in proclaiming them all safe and non-addicting. It seems to me that any intelligent person intuitively should have been a bit more skeptical about drugs that do what these do than the medical community seems to have been.
I’m not saying these drugs are inherently bad. I have no doubts that they have changed many lives for the better, and I believe they should continue to be used in those extreme cases where the benefits outweigh the negatives.
I’m also not even anti-“habit forming” drugs. Some people have to take insulin their whole lives, and we are all much more accepting of that than we are of the notion of having to take psychoactive drugs forever. Perhaps, if the cause of depression and the other ailments these drugs are being used to treat are chemical/biological, as is diabetes, then it makes sense to use them to correct the chronic problem.
I don’t know.
But let’s all be a bit more skeptical about the notion that these drugs aren’t addicting. In Freud’s time, cocaine was not believed to be addicting. Heroine was once used as a safe way to treat morphine addiction (I believe). I have a feeling that my mom, my sister, and my dating interest will all be on these the rest of their life, though I’m sure they’d be the first 3 to deny it.
There is a difference between psychological addiction and physical addiction. Far from quickly accepting a new drug, the drug approval process certainly does screen which drugs are physically addicting and a comparison to opiates in the time of Freud isn’t all that valid.
The response of the medical community to Prozac was and is swamped by reports on TV and the popular press and, as these things tend to do, gets further distorted by people in the medical profession with more extreme views on a topic (e.g. “Listening to Prozac” author). Most self-respecting doctors would draw the line at saying this drug seems to be quite safe and have relatively few serious side effect as compared with other medications; I believe the medical community was appropriately skeptical and the very ample data on the safety of SSRIs has been very convincing. The popular press does not draw this line, and I know of no Canadian doctor who believes they are perfectly safe. I believe that American health care is much more driven to the demands of the consumer than the Canadian system and hence is more likely to prescribe inappropriate antidepressants and ADHD drugs than Canadians.
Diabetes was a fatal disease 80 years ago. Insulin has, as you say, been an enormous medical success. Now that type II diabetes is essentially a North American epidemic, we’ll see how the newer drugs work.
Perhaps you are right about that. My sister works at CVS pharmacy and she said half the friggin’ town is on Prozac.
I don’t know much about the medical community in Canada, and I certainly have no reason to doubt you. From what I’ve seen in America (or at least the portion of America that I’ve been exposed to) these drugs are being prescribed irresponsibly and to a sickening degree.
I have a BA in psych, so I’m not exactly speaking from a completely uneducated POV, but I’m not sure that a single person I know whose currently taking an SSRI should’ve ever been put on it. (e.g. My mother began taking prozac to deal with the death of my grandmother. Mourning is much more difficult than Prozac).
BTW, I apologize for trying to hijack this into a GD. I haven’t re-read the OP, but I suspect I’m traveling away from it. I’ll shut up now.
I use Wellbutrin and before using it I did some research.
When Wellbutrin was first released it caused seizures in .04% of the test subjects, because of this higher than average siezure risk it was not widely prescribed by doctors. It was modified so that it is now a sustained release tablet, hence the SR at the end of the name. It now causes no more siezures than other anti-depressants such as Paxil or Prozac.
Unlike SSRI’s, Wellbutrin has actually been shown to increase sexual drive and performance to rise in a number of clinical trials. The most common side effect when taking Wellbutrin is overstimulation of the central nervous system. Taking it past 6 pm isn’t a good idea if you expect to get to sleep by 11pm.
When people first started taking Wellbutrin a side effect that was noticed was that 40% of the users who smoked just quit smoking. That’s why Wellbutrin is marketted under the name Zyban and is regarded as one of the most effective smoking cessation aids we know of.
My doctor informed me that the withdrawl effects of wellbutrin are usually minimal when one is using it as a cessation aid.
IIRC, Wellbutrin causes the body to release pseudoephedrin and affects the dopamine receptors in the brain, it affects the same centers in the brain that nicotine and other drugs such as cocaine do so this is why it has been used effectively to treat people’s addictions and the withdrawl they experience when they break a habit such as smoking.
The only negative effect I have experienced has been the occasional headache.
I don’t know if I’d call it “addicting” – whenever I see/hear that word, I automatically think of illicit drugs. Dependency? That word bothers me too, but perhaps it’s more fitting…
The fact that I may be on Zoloft for the rest of my life irks me to no end. Believe me, I would LOVE to be off it, but if being off it equals to my having crying fits, bouts of displaced anger, and my already-high energy level skyrocketing to Lord-knows-what, I think I’ll stick with it, although I don’t like it…
I’ve been on Prozac 20 mg for a month now. My side effects include loss of appitite and a raving libido! I’m like a 16 year old boy with a porn mag. I can’t get enough, my husband hides from me. My orgasms are stronger and there is nothing better than that. Not to mention the fact that I am for the first time in my life really calm and relaxed. It has really worked for me. I go back today to get my prescription refilled.
I tried Paxil but it didn’t work. It gave me the runs and I was still crying all the time.