And, how is this any different?
Our doctor in Japan was amazed when I showed her that the average price of the medication she was prescribing is $210 per month in the USA. She went ahead and gave us a 12 month prescription for about $25 per month with no insurance. Same medicine, same manufacturer, and Japan is definitely NOT a third world country. The savings easily pays for the airfare.
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On the one hand, I will never tell someone whose drugs are working to stop taking them. Consenting to treatment means you get whatever treatment you can afford, and that’s between you and your doctor (and your pharmacist, and his supplier, and…)
On the other hand, I look around at just how many people seem to be unable to cope with the world unmedicated, it’s a stupidly high number in the US… And I ask myself, which is more likely half the population is chemically unbalanced somehow, or that no functional political system, an economy going down the toilet, a fascist capitalist power structure and eroding family dynamic might just be making it harder to behave…
At which point it looks a lot like giving cattle antibiotics just so you can crowd them together and treat them worse and still make the money.
These two conditions are not mutually exclusive, they can both be true.
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Yes, I have found Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction extremely helpful for issues of depression & anxiety. I think it’s part of the system called Dialectical Behavior Therapy. That’s a mouthful of big words to describe what is basically buddhist practice of living in, & coping with, the present moment instead of what was or what might be.
DBT classes are usually taught in a small group, with simple & effective exercises based on scientific research into what works. It’s not therapy, though some people do discuss their issues; more like a skills class. DBT & mindfulness classes are often covered by med insurance, because they are proven to help avert crisis. If not covered, there are low-cost/sliding scale options. Most classes require a referral from a current psych therapist or doctor.
For many reasons, I never learned some basic skills of adult functioning: negotiating, self-care, tolerance for uncertainty, etc. I think of DBT as a way to make up for that. I sometimes wish I’d started earlier. But where there’s life there’s hope, as well as despair, love, stress, joy, & all the rest of the messy human condition.
Thank you for your openness, Seamus. It’s opened up a really good discussion. With a partner, a home, your work, & your awareness, you do have a lot going for you; & a number of people, including me, rooting for you. Hang in there.
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And cough medications can interact with other meds in odd ways. My depression always gets worse if I’ve had a bad cold the week before and been taking cough suppressants.
Which I have to be veeery careful with, as too much plus my other meds can cause serotonin syndrome
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I want to try that soooo bad. I keep looking for medical trials near by.
I used to take that. I had hyper-real dreams, even more hyper-real than before or now, but not nightmares. I must have been lucky. I switched to Viibryd- much more expensive, but less sexual side effects and much less of an effect on sleep. My sleep neurologist, the first time I saw him, said I should explore options besides Venalfaxine, because that anti-depressant is the worst one for sleep. Then he proved it with the data from my sleep study. It reduces your REM sleep and makes the onset of REM sleep later. Which can have its own problems. Be aware of that and be protective of your sleep in other ways.
If its working for you, by all fucking means, take the damn stuff. It was the only thing that worked for me for years and years. Now a combo of Viibryd and Wellbutrin does the trick.
Seamus- try to take care of yourself. Do whatever you need to do to get through the transition. I hope the new meds work better for you. To answer your question- my medications are necessary for me. There is no difference, in my mind, between my anti-depressants and my thyroid medication. The only difference between my depression and someone else’s diabetes or other chronic condition is that the medical establishment actually understands why diabetes happens and what they can do to fix it. Despite the medical myths about seratonin, what causes depression and PTSD (besides the root trauma) are unknown. Without knowing what is happening to cause them, treatment is a crap shoot. It is pathetic how little money goes to researching mood disorders and PTSD.
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I have been fortunate enough not to need meds to manage my low grade depression and anxiety. On the occasions when it has become something more I’ve been able to get through it with the support of my wife and through various other non-medicated options (white knuckling being my least favourite).
I can’t speak for anyone else, but the number one most effective mood stabilizer I’ve been able to engage with has been (almost) daily, non-optional physical exercise. I have experimented a bit, and if I miss a workout for more than a day then all the usual anxiety and depressive tendencies tend to show up.
I have had to find a way to give myself no option, so I work out within about 5 minutes of waking up, to an alarm, early in the morning. (Wake up, get dressed, stumble to car, drive or run 3 blocks to gym, instantly start exercising). I am grumpy and resentful for the first half hour, but inevitably the endorphins and exercise set the dials for my day. This has worked better than any other thing at keeping me positive and healthy. It only works because I have no role in deciding what the workout is, I just do what I’m told for an hour.
YMMV of course, but I strongly recommend finding a way to force yourself to get exercise that works for you, first thing in the morning if you can. Even if it doesn’t help your symptoms it will help your health overall.
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Test and learn. Is your doc 100% on your side? If you were on a regime that worked, the doc had better be pretty damn certain the new one is worth the transition costs.
Also, sleep. Best medication out there, and it’s free.
I’ve fought meds off. I’ve paid for that. Best to you. Also PTSD. I was surprised.
Yes. Seamus, please be good to yourself as though you are someone else you were encouraging on this path. Because getting the treatment right for you takes time and it is a sustained effort. So be sure to do great things for you and yours that you know will help get you there.
And of course this goes for everyone doing this. I was unemployed last year and got hit with a bad bout of depression, and got back to the talking cure, and had a meds increase. I’m out of the woods now, but I know it requires perseverance to get there (even working up the effort to just call the damn doctor’s office). Giving yourself a break and remembering to treat yourself like a human being can help.
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I’m on antidepressants, schizoid I am. The depression is horrible and ever present. I like to think the drugs take the edge off but it’s hard to really know, been on them 10 years now, probably the rest of my life. Sometimes I think we’ve created a society so god damned horrific mental illness is the only logical response, sometimes I think I’m just broken and shit out of luck. Every time I wake up and realize I had a full nights sleep I’m absurdly pleased with myself. This is all I know.
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Yes.
Blessing and curse. Blessing because they eliminate most of the syptoms and pain, curse because side-effects.
My experience, for what it’s worth:
I’m near 60. This means that when I was growing up, they didn’t consider mental health as a health issue. This is important, because if I was growing up in these times, I’d have been diagnosed with tons of stuff and medicated since grade school. Because I had to learn to deal with my ADHD/ADD, depression, and being “on the spectrum” without prescribed medications, I spent my teen years seriously self-medicating with All the Drugs (it was the 70s, and there were lots available.) Thankfully, I had a kid at 20 and that stopped my death wish. I don’t recommend have a kid to fix your life, but it worked for me. Having someone to care for channeled my hyperness and craziness.
Flash forward 15 years, and breaking an abuse cycle that left both the kid and me with PTSD. I did 10 years of raging craziness, she did …other things. She’s currently on a drug cocktail that works for her, and using a cognitive behavioral therapist. Having had many changes of doctors and insurance over the years, she’s had many changes to her drug cocktail, and that’s seven kinds of hell. But when it works, it can take people from too broken to do anything to relatively happy, strike that, content productive human, and that’s usually a positive.
I’m already on a cocktail of drugs myself, for my chronic illnesses, and also using a therapist. Both my doctor and therapist have suggested adding in anti-depression drugs, but I’m much more settled and in a long-term stable relationship with a guy whose crazy fits well with my crazy, and I don’t want the zombieness that I get when I take them. I’d rather have what brain I have left semi-clear, and I don’t want my emotions and memory taken away, which is what happens when I’m on them. There’s over a year that I have no memory of because of them. I don’t want them, nope.
That being said, they work for my kid, and for a lot of people around me. We need to look at mental health the same way we should look at physical health, and just treat whatever needs treating to get to wellness. Sometimes you have to go thru all kinds of drug combinations to find what works for the whole you, but it’s worth it to get relief from pain and healing of the problem.
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When I talk to people about advice for raising kids I tell them they are going to get a lot of advice- some good - some bad - some that might work for them and some that will not. Some advice with have been miraculous for their kids but will not do a thing for yours since they are all different.
My advice on drug transitions is make sure you provide some push back against your natural tendencies that may take you out of balance. My natural tendacies are towards hermit. I am currently reading BB at Starbucks. I go here regularly to just be out and keep myself from going full introverted hermit. So my advice is not so much on the drugs but to just keep an eye on the rest of your life and make sure that the new drugs don’t end up letting you slip in a direction you should not and possibly one you might not notice. Feel free to say that does not apply to you.
Also be very vocal if it is not working when you talk to your doctor and talk to them sooner than later.
As for the rest of you in this thread - did the ketamine nasal spray make it onto boing boing? Let me look it up. It was still yet another trial but seemed closer to market than some of the preceding ones.
Edit:
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I have to take cabergoline to treat a microadenoma on my pituitary. One of the side effects is a warning about having darker thoughts or moodyness. I have definitely become more emotional, and sometimes when once I would just be tired and fed up I get waves of depression and feel very bleak. The feelings of depression go once I’ve had a good night sleep.
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