Turd_Ferguson
09-09-2014, 11:51 AM
Get ready for a rambling post ramblers:
I've suffered from life long anxiety and very mild OCD. The OCD is practically gone but the anxiety and a case of insomnia have really kicked in the last 5 years or so.
It was within that 5 years that I first began taking medication (prescribed of course) to treat the condition. Studying pharmacology and observing what doctors tend to do base on friends, I know they mostly have their preferred drugs (SSRIs, SNRIs, atypicals, and eventually TCAs) and they just go down the list until the find one that works (of course benzos as well but some are more willing than others to prescribe them). Then if that doesn't work they label you bipolar and start down another list. I KNOW I am not bipolar. I have never had a manic episode in my life. Any serotonin reuptake inhibitor seems to make me shaky as hell once it reaches a certain blood concentration and makes my anxiety 10x worse.
*Fun fact, all the 5HT2a antagonists would do the exact opposite of make me drowsy. A new doctor I had tried to prescribe me it for sleep and I chuckled for a bit. Nefazodone helped a bit but the sensation of my skin being on fire all day was slightly unpleasant.
The ironic thing is even though I am anxious often, in most situations I am cool calm, and down to Earth. I don't delusions of grandeur. The only thing that has really helped me is clonazepam or alprozolam for the rare panic attack. The clonazepam helps me get to sleep by stopping my thoughts from racing.
As a last ditch, one of my docs prescribed adderall which made me hyper as hell and the crash was awful. Then I asked him about dexmethylphenidate and we gave that a try. It was wondrous for about 4 months. It was everything I wanted. My anxiety was gone, I felt better about getting work done, and I was more outgoing like I used to be. It was like my old self circa 2009. But then some life events turned everything to shit and I found myself getting depressed once it wore off. Clonazepam seemed to make the depression worse at times. Now I've been on Vilazodone which is making things WORSE so I have stopped it. Its somehow shifted my sleep wake cycle to roughly 5 hours from 11pm to 4am. Taking 3x the dose of my clonazepam was the only thing that could get me back to sleep. When I don't sleep things are much worse the next day. I wake up every morning depressed and anxious at this point and am freezing cold in rooms that are 75F. I just stopped the Vilazodone today after tapering up to 20mg and then back down to 10.
My question is does has anyone had a similar experience and ever found anything that actually helps them?
List of drugs prescribed in the past: Fluoxetine (Prozac), Lexapro, Cymbalta, Effexor (nightmare), Viibryd (Vilazodone), Nortriptyline, Trazodone, Nefazodone, Adderall, Dexmethylphenidate, alprozolam, and clonazepam.
Supplements I've tried: Dozens! But I found "Phenibut" Phenyl-amino-butyric acid to actually work (it actually a prescription drug in Russia). It just suffers from the same issues with dependence that benzos do.
I've suffered from life long anxiety and very mild OCD. The OCD is practically gone but the anxiety and a case of insomnia have really kicked in the last 5 years or so.
It was within that 5 years that I first began taking medication (prescribed of course) to treat the condition. Studying pharmacology and observing what doctors tend to do base on friends, I know they mostly have their preferred drugs (SSRIs, SNRIs, atypicals, and eventually TCAs) and they just go down the list until the find one that works (of course benzos as well but some are more willing than others to prescribe them). Then if that doesn't work they label you bipolar and start down another list. I KNOW I am not bipolar. I have never had a manic episode in my life. Any serotonin reuptake inhibitor seems to make me shaky as hell once it reaches a certain blood concentration and makes my anxiety 10x worse.
*Fun fact, all the 5HT2a antagonists would do the exact opposite of make me drowsy. A new doctor I had tried to prescribe me it for sleep and I chuckled for a bit. Nefazodone helped a bit but the sensation of my skin being on fire all day was slightly unpleasant.
The ironic thing is even though I am anxious often, in most situations I am cool calm, and down to Earth. I don't delusions of grandeur. The only thing that has really helped me is clonazepam or alprozolam for the rare panic attack. The clonazepam helps me get to sleep by stopping my thoughts from racing.
As a last ditch, one of my docs prescribed adderall which made me hyper as hell and the crash was awful. Then I asked him about dexmethylphenidate and we gave that a try. It was wondrous for about 4 months. It was everything I wanted. My anxiety was gone, I felt better about getting work done, and I was more outgoing like I used to be. It was like my old self circa 2009. But then some life events turned everything to shit and I found myself getting depressed once it wore off. Clonazepam seemed to make the depression worse at times. Now I've been on Vilazodone which is making things WORSE so I have stopped it. Its somehow shifted my sleep wake cycle to roughly 5 hours from 11pm to 4am. Taking 3x the dose of my clonazepam was the only thing that could get me back to sleep. When I don't sleep things are much worse the next day. I wake up every morning depressed and anxious at this point and am freezing cold in rooms that are 75F. I just stopped the Vilazodone today after tapering up to 20mg and then back down to 10.
My question is does has anyone had a similar experience and ever found anything that actually helps them?
List of drugs prescribed in the past: Fluoxetine (Prozac), Lexapro, Cymbalta, Effexor (nightmare), Viibryd (Vilazodone), Nortriptyline, Trazodone, Nefazodone, Adderall, Dexmethylphenidate, alprozolam, and clonazepam.
Supplements I've tried: Dozens! But I found "Phenibut" Phenyl-amino-butyric acid to actually work (it actually a prescription drug in Russia). It just suffers from the same issues with dependence that benzos do.