Posted by Francisco on July 14, 2002, at 8:44:10
Hello, I want to share my problems with depression in hopes someone can help me out. I was first diagnosed with clinical depression when I was about 15. Now I am 25 and I still suffer from depression. I had a somewhat traumatic experience in my adolescence due to my family crisis (parents + financial) and I think that started my depression. However I believe, and my parents agree that a lot of it is from genetics. When I was first diagnosed, they tried to put me on prozac but I suffered too much side effects, mostly the jitters and gave up on it within the first week. Thinking back, I was probably given too much dosage and that is what my current doctor thinks too. She thinks one day I should give prozac another try, once we discovered I was super sensitive to meds.
Anyways, although I had hard time in high school due to depression, I was able to get enough studying done and go to a great university. In my college years, I found marijuana and fell in love with it. I eventually started abusing it to get me through when a breakup with a girlfriend caused me to become very depressed. I used the weed to get me through college and it helped me a lot with depression. I know abusing it is bad but I wasn't taking any meds and in college and being high all the time (just about every day for few years), I never really felt my depression was bad enough to seek out more help.
Later in my college years, I started noticing that I have symtoms associated with ADD. I was curious whether I had ADD and my mother suggested I see this brain therapist she knew. Well that doctor told me I do have ADD and that is what is causing depression. Anyways, I was put on some ECG(?) therapy (the brainwave calibration thing) but that didn't seem to help me at all. Anyways, I graduated college and when I found my self unable to find work in my field, I got somewhat depressed again. I was even more unmotivated, lazy, thanks to the weed I was smoking daily to supposedly help me with depression. The dependency to weed was something I wasn't willing to give up because I still think it has helped me with depression so much.
When I told my mother last year that I still have depression, she asked me to see a doctor and told me there are so many new medicines out there for depression now. I went to see the doctor who told me that the ADD was a mis-diagnose and I have dysthymia, and put me on paxil. Paxil helped me feel better but I was getting strong side effects. Even on minimal dosage, my sensitivity to meds caused me daily diarreah, excessive sweating, jitters. I changed to celexa for its weaker side effects and that went ok. I told my doc that the side effects weren't too bad on celexa but she urged me to try Remeron. I noticed remeron is nothing like the SSRI's. It worked great at first and helped me with my decade old insomnia. But I started noticing my mind was getting too affected by the drug. I noticed I was getting too messed up, especially when I combined it with marijuana. In fact, when I first combined it, I was so torn up that I had what I believe was my first panic attack. My vision was totally affected and my visual perception of depth was fading. I got used to this, since I couldn't quit marijuana and actually I started enjoying the different high in the remeron+pot combo. However, during this time, I had two terrible episodes of depression, anxiety, panic both coming after I had partied with the drug ecstasy. I noticed that mixing all these drugs started making me a bit psycotic and trip out for no reason. After going through such low times, now I feel permanently vunlerable to frequent depression, anxiety, and panic. I felt the lows of emotions I never knew existed, and my increased range of emotion, in both extremes is something I am having a hard time handling. I concluded that the depression that followed the usage of ecstasy was not worth it and I decided to never use the drug again.
Well here I am now, I am not taking any meds and I haven't seen my doc for a while. I am seeing a new doc this month though. Last time, when my old doc recommended Remeron, she told me if that doesn't work, its wellbutrin next. Since then, I had those crazy episodes and now I don't know I want to try medications. In retrospect, I think Remeron messed me up for good, while it could have been the ecstasy, or the prolonged use of marijuana, I am leaning more towards Remeron because everything bad started when I started it. Before remeron, I never had serious problems with usage of ecstasy and marijuana, I never knew how a panic attack felt like, I never knew how bad depression can be. I have a sample bottle of WB here at home, but I found out theres a warning that mixing WB and pot can cause psycotic episodes. So I am putting it off for now and contemplating stopping weed for a while so I can try WB.
I feel the need to wake up. I think these meds while helped me with depression initially, totally changed me. While on meds, I stopped caring about things anymore. I felt like my mind is clouded and I seem to zone out frequently, and unresponsive. When my family started to tell me, "Howcome you never talk to us anymore?", I totally realized how true that was. I was rarely talk to my siblings and mother, who care deeply about, and since then have made efforts to change this. While I now want to experience emotions again that were incapacitated by meds, I am scared of the lows of emotions. But I have noticed a somewhat strange change in me. I am scared to be alone. I am too scared because I get more depressed when I am alone where I tend to just go into constant thoughts of depressing things. Before, I used to enjoy my solitude and wanted to be alone a lot. Now, if I'm alone, I think I'll go mad and can't stand it. I want to be with my friends more where before I tried avoiding them a lot. This is really confusing for me. Since wanting to be with friends and going out more is a good normal healthy thing, I feel maybe I am starting to feel normal. On the other hand, I feel these efforts are due to the fact that I am so scared to fall into another scary relapse. My friends provide me so much comfort and I feel so happy to be with them now that it is so unlike me. I was always the one that my friends had to force to come and hang out. It has been two weeks since my last Remeron was taken and I feel like I'm starting to wake up. I don't know if I want to go back to meds, and I have always been scared about dependency to meds. l I am not sure where to go from here. If anyone can provide any insights or help it'd be appreciated. Also I want to hear from people with dysthymia and how they cope with it. I am really sorry about this long post, but I feel better now letting everything out.
poster:Francisco
thread:112307
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020709/msgs/112307.html