Posted by bleauberry on April 4, 2010, at 18:09:56
In reply to Need encouragement, posted by tensor on April 4, 2010, at 13:04:58
Abilify or Zyprexa both have good potential to help your symptom cluster.
I may differ from most, but my opinion is it would not be wise to add another medication to your existing cocktail. If the current stuff is already falling short, the addition of something else is not going to magically all of a sudden make them all work like miracle.
Gotta get rid of the duds, weed them out. Make room for other possible winners. Don't want your possible winners to be drowned out or watered down by dud losers. A drug that is not working right now can certainly stop an otherwise good med from working. Looking at your meds, I would say either modafinil or remeron have to go bye bye. You need to decide which one is doing the least good. Clonaz is probably not doing you many favors either except maybe somewhat in the SP department.
Judging from your symptoms despite all those meds, it makes no sense in my mind to add yet another med to an already underperforming mix. For all you know, it could be one of those meds, like remeron for example, or clonaz, making the symptoms worse than they would otherwise be without those meds. High dose effexor itself can create the very symptoms you are complaining of.
Someone has 5 meds. They say they are depressed, not alive, anxiety, yuck. So why do they keep taking those same meds? I don't get that backward logic.
Though I have done it myself. I'm guilty of that painful mistake.
We get caught in a trap and don't see what we are doing. Next thing you know, the person is on 7 or 8 meds, still in bad shape, and now they are real deep water. Dependent on all these drugs that aren't improving their lifestyle. I hate to see people go down that road. It's easy to get there, and so hard to get out. So I say, drop one of the meds if you want to add something else. At this point in the game, it has to be a one-for-one swap.
If zyprexa is the choice, 2.5mg to 5mg is a good starting point, and probably the final point as well, while 10mg would be an upper ceiling.
If abilify, others here already said it well I think. Low dose.
As for the longterm side effects, well, I was on zyprexa for about 8 years and escaped fine. It was a big help for a long time.
poster:bleauberry
thread:942154
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100328/msgs/942210.html