tailspin
10-25-2013, 06:00 PM
Hi there,
I have ongoing depression and anxiety issues and my depression has flared up really badly again over the past few weeks.
I have been dealing with depression and anxiety on and off throughout most of my life, though, thankfully, there have been long periods where I've been much better.
I'm now 49 years old and I probably started taking anti-depressant medication about 15 years ago. Over the years I have been on (in this order): Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Effexor, Zoloft and now Lexapro. And I've given each drug a fair crack of the whip, remaining on it for months, if not years, and experimenting with different dosages (the only exception being Paxil which literally turned me into a zombie and I actually preferred being depressed and anxious to feeling like that). All the meds I've tried have helped a bit. Mainly they have helped with my panic attacks. But at the end of the day, they don't help enough.
My depression has been really awful lately. I realize that medication is only one part of the equation and I know I need to work on other things, but for the purposes of this post I just want to focus on the medication piece.
I'm especially interested to hear from other people who have tried several different medications without much success and what happened next. Did you simply find other ways to cope? Or did you continue trying different medications and eventually find one that worked? Or did you just accept the limitations of medication and settle with the little help that it does give?
Since I've tried most of the SSRI's and SNRI's already, I'm wondering whether to take a step back in time and go with an older tricyclic? Has anyone had any success with these? Or perhaps switch to another different class of medication? Though this would in all likelihood be very difficult for me to do since my anxiety would undoubtedly kick up a hell of a fuss about trying something completely new. At least I know that I tolerate the SSRI's pretty well.
Sadly, it is a fact that anti-depressant medication doesn't help everyone. I really want to remain hopeful that I may yet find something that does help, but it's getting harder. I realize that medication is usually a trial and error process, but I'm already on drug #6 and it's been 15 years or so.
Thanks for any feedback from anyone in a similar situation.
I have ongoing depression and anxiety issues and my depression has flared up really badly again over the past few weeks.
I have been dealing with depression and anxiety on and off throughout most of my life, though, thankfully, there have been long periods where I've been much better.
I'm now 49 years old and I probably started taking anti-depressant medication about 15 years ago. Over the years I have been on (in this order): Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Effexor, Zoloft and now Lexapro. And I've given each drug a fair crack of the whip, remaining on it for months, if not years, and experimenting with different dosages (the only exception being Paxil which literally turned me into a zombie and I actually preferred being depressed and anxious to feeling like that). All the meds I've tried have helped a bit. Mainly they have helped with my panic attacks. But at the end of the day, they don't help enough.
My depression has been really awful lately. I realize that medication is only one part of the equation and I know I need to work on other things, but for the purposes of this post I just want to focus on the medication piece.
I'm especially interested to hear from other people who have tried several different medications without much success and what happened next. Did you simply find other ways to cope? Or did you continue trying different medications and eventually find one that worked? Or did you just accept the limitations of medication and settle with the little help that it does give?
Since I've tried most of the SSRI's and SNRI's already, I'm wondering whether to take a step back in time and go with an older tricyclic? Has anyone had any success with these? Or perhaps switch to another different class of medication? Though this would in all likelihood be very difficult for me to do since my anxiety would undoubtedly kick up a hell of a fuss about trying something completely new. At least I know that I tolerate the SSRI's pretty well.
Sadly, it is a fact that anti-depressant medication doesn't help everyone. I really want to remain hopeful that I may yet find something that does help, but it's getting harder. I realize that medication is usually a trial and error process, but I'm already on drug #6 and it's been 15 years or so.
Thanks for any feedback from anyone in a similar situation.