Posted by SLS on August 24, 2021, at 10:36:02
In reply to Re: My Disappointment here + My early years, posted by undopaminergic on August 24, 2021, at 8:04:32
Hi, UD.
> > This is a repost of something I wrote to Lambdage earlier today. I would like to thank him for his logic and sage insight:
> Not to be critical, but it's "Lamdage".
I don't see your correction of me to be at all critical. I corrected myself in a thread below.Thanks.
> Thank you for another story of your adventures. For some reason, I find them inspiring.
> > The lesson I hoped everyone would learn from me is that there is always hope - and that you never know when you will strike gold with a life-changing treatment. A rebirth into a new awareness is worth working for. Please - everyone - don't give up, especially when you already have. I had an advantage, though. Every now and then, I was given a brief demonstration of what life could be in the absence of depression when I experienced brief remissions.
> I have that advantage as well. My (hypo)manic episodes demonstrate that I can feel good. I've also had temporary remissions with some drugs, such as pramipexole which transiently resolved even my stubborn anhedonia.
Maybe you should try combining Nardil with pramipexole? Between Nardil and Parnate, I found Nardil to be a much better anti-anhedonic drug. It is also pro-social. However, mania can occur with Nardil, especially in bipolar disorder. I would be prepared and have on hand Zyprexa (olanzapine) as an antidote. It should work quickly, and you might be able to continue with Nardil and discontinue the Zyprexa once you get through the critical period early in treatment. Euphoria is a common experience for people in the very beginning of treatment, even people who are not bipolar. However, even without intervention, it usually resolves in unipolars. People often go chasing the eurphoria afterwards with dosage escalation.
> > It was an amazing coincidence that I saw his name on one of the doors while sitting in the waiting room for my very first visit to a psychiatrist. I was accepted into the research program at Columbia Presbyterian / New York Psychiatric Institute in 1982. All they had to work with were MAOIs, tricyclics, and lithium.
> Really only those? What about antipsychotics like chlorpromazine, stimulants like methylphenidate and amphetamine, barbiturates and benzodiazepines?
Good point. I was referring to depression, but I should have been more specific. Stimulants were definitely used as prior to the serendipitous discovery of MAO inhibitors in the late 1950s. They were then used primarily as augmenters. At the time I entered the program in 1982, Xanax (alprazolam) was being looked at for depression, with good reason. It is the most euphoric of the benzodiazepines. In addition, another benzodiazepine, adinazolam, was also being looked at for depression. I tried in 1984, I believe. My doctor, Baron Shopsin, was surprised to see it work so well for some of his patients. I experienced *no* sedative or anxiolytic effect. It was amazingly clean, but it didn't produse an improvement in my depression. I think adinazolam is approved in Japan. So is rolipram, a phosphodiesterase inhibitor. I imagine it works intracelullarly along the second-messenger cascade.
> > Later, I was one of the first people in the U.S. to be treated with experimental serotonin reuptake inhibitors and releasers in 1983.
> Releasers? Like amphetamines?
I'm not sure of the mechanism. I think Pharmuca designated it PK-1058 or something like that. Pharmuca also developed a serotonin reuptake inhibitor named indalpine that was sold in France for many years. I think it was discontinued, probably because of inferior therapeutic effect and sedation as a side effect. Pharmuca developed one more experimental serotonergic drug. It was both a reuptake inhibitor and releaser. I should look the numbers of the up.
> > I was very, very angry to discover that my moods and thoughts were beyond my control to work through, and that feeling profoundly depressed and non-functional as a human being was biological rather than psychological. I would have gone to psychotherapy three times a day if it meant not being tethered to a chemical in order to live life normally.
> It can seem purely biological, when your condition responds to drugs, but there is always a two-way relationship between the mind/psyche and the brain.
See my thread below entitled "Biology or Psychology". I wrote it 20 years ago and posted it on Psycho-Babble after distributing it to an unenlightened staff at a local clinic.One other thing. While I was a research patient at the NIH in 1992, I was one of the first people to have his brain imaged by a PET scan. Not fun. My head was completely immobilized in a cast of my face and head. The image on the left is almost exactly like mine.
- Scott
Some see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
poster:SLS
thread:1116650
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20210723/msgs/1116676.html