Posted by naughtypuppy on December 22, 2006, at 9:47:05
In reply to Re: Imipramine for anxiety? Anyone tried? » med_empowered, posted by Quintal on December 21, 2006, at 9:32:10
> >Personally, I'd avoid TCAs if you can. They really aren't good drugs. If you have anxiety, try starting with the safest, most effective meds and then working out to less tolerable, less demonstrably effective meds. So...I'd say try starting with a benzo and possibly a first-tier Antidepressant.
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> That's curious because imipramine was the 'gold standard' to which the efficiency of other antidepressants were compared, and still are to some extent. The TCAs are generally very effective, sometimes more so than the SSRIs - it's mainly the toxicity that makes the SSRIs the preferred first-line treatments. Side effects can be harsh, but personally I prefer the side effect profile of the TCAs over most SSRIs.I believe that Imipramine is usually used as a control because it is easy to measure it's blood serum levels. This adjusts for things like being a fast/slow metabolizer. I just started it a few days ago and strangly enough my anxiety level has been reduced for the last couple of days, but I think that is mainly because many TCA's cause Depakote to be metabolized more slowly, so it's similar to increasing the Depakote dosage.
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> Benzos also cause cognitive impairment though people are not usually aware of how badly they are affected.
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> Q
poster:naughtypuppy
thread:715145
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061217/msgs/715655.html