💊 I Don't Like My Drugs (But My Drugs Like Me) 💊

[anon6955837]

+1. I get the added benefit of paranoia during the taper off.

[TobinL]

Yeah while my dad handled it reasonably well when he learned he had arthritis BIG TIME all of a sudden. One of my good friends was taking it for some serious crohn’s flareups and he was real touchy for a few hours after taking it. He was good at realizing it was the drugs and only one time I remember him lashing out with before realizing it and he apologized big time right away, His choice at that time was the Prednisone or go back to living off the IV drip at the hospital.

[knoxblox]

And @Snowlark

Yes, I am well aware of the steroid implications, though it didn’t seem to affect me as badly in the short run as other people (actually, not badly at all).
I get the feeling my personal hell would have been winding up with a glass skeleton in 25 years’ time, when coupled with the omeprazole.

Either way, this is why I wish to find an alternative to that or the amphetamine-like anti-depressants.

[Snowlark]

@LDoBe’s suggestion of modafinil is probably the best place to start. From what I’ve read about, it seems to carry the fewest side effects and its benefits are very transparent—that is, it does what it says it does (promote vigilance and to a lesser extent, attention) without a cascade of other effects.

The runner-ups would be the NRIs atomoxetine and reboxetine and the NDRI bupropion.

NRI = norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor
NDRI = norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor

ETA: Adrafanil is the prodrug of modafinil. It’s also totally unregulated and freely available for bulk purchase here in the States, making it one of the more popular ‘nootropics’. But there’s a reason why it’s not FDA-approved: its conversion to modafinil may cause permanent liver damage if used long term.

Clinical trials: they’re the shit.

[LDoBe]

Yeah, I mixed up Armodafinil (100% levorotary version of Modafinl, while Modafinil is racemic) and Adrafinil (the prodrug.)

Thanks for getting that straight for me.

[popobawa4u]

@fuzzyfungus

If you just can’t seem to keep your attention on anything, psychostimulants can fix you right up; but if you just can’t keep your attention on what you need to be doing, psychostimulants may just allow you to slack off with incredible intensity. Assuming you can keep yourself on task, the increase in focus is a great boon; but if you can’t; don’t be surprised if the increase in focus just lets you research Platypus venom for 28 hours straight or drives you to see how quickly you can lead your Magyar horde to burn down all of civilization in Crusader Kings II.

Haha! I can relate.

@LDoBe

And there’s a legal, unregulated prodrug for Modafinil widely available in the US called Adrafinil. You have to deal with purity issues and the standard bullshit from chem suppliers, but it generally works. It’s harder on your liver though. And while I’ve never tried it, a friend has, and they get sleepy when they take Adrafinil, so, YMMV. They haven’t compared it with Modafinil because the real prescription stuff is so expensive.

I have compared them. They are subjectively similar, but Modafinil takes effect much more quickly and feels “cleaner”. Adrafinil takes more time to metabolize, its effects beginning and ending more gradually for me. IIRC I needed a greater dose of Adrafinil than Modafinil for similar peak effects. The “Olmifon”-branded stuff was the best.

@LDoBe

At my local pharmacy without insurance 30x200mg tablets costs $3000 even though it’s been out of patent for years now. It’s just that there’s only one company that makes it, and they’re not sharing how, even though patent filings BY LAW need to be good enough for an average pharmaceuticals chemist to synthesize the drug just using the patent.

That price is fucking insane! I used to pay around $150 for the same amount and dosage.* Is the manufacturer Novartis? There are generic versions of Modafinil also, but they might be kept out of your area to profit somebody else. I have used the Novartis as well as Sun’s Modalert 200 and they were comparable.

Poking around now, I found this article which says that the FDA bans Sun imports to the US because “reasons”. If they didn’t cite pharmacological reasons why I assume it’s probably because they undercut American suppliers. The Sun products are priced cheaper for the India market.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sun-pharma-india-fda-idUSBREA2C09S20140313

• …which illustrates why I advocate “just saying no” to the prescription/insurance racket.

[LDoBe]

The only Modafinil available in my area is made by Mylan, the original patent holder. There are no generics available even though it’s been out of patent for years.

ETA: since I’m properly diagnosed and insured, the $3000/month figure comes down to $15/month.

If I had to pay 3 grand a month for this I’d probably just switch back to ritalin.

[popobawa4u]

@LDoBe

The only Modafinil available in my area is made by Mylan, the original patent holder. There are no generics available even though it’s been out of patent for years.

According to Wackipedia, it was patented by and is still sold by Cephalon, and the Mylan version is a generic copy, which makes the price seem even more outrageous to me.

@LDoBe

ETA: since I’m properly diagnosed and insured, the $3000/month figure comes down to $15/month.

Well, somebody is still making $2985 for doing nothing off of your suffering. That has very real social consequences.

Fortunately, I gave up on using Modafinil years ago. When I first discovered the stuff I loved it and took advantage of being more easily able to stay awake and work on projects. My job (good riddance) was often 100-120 hours per week, of both heavy physical labor and IT/automation troubleshooting. I was able to get through a shift and get a few hours of sleep with the stuff, but eventually the accumulative effect of the drug and minimal sleep left me feeling strung out even worse than without it. It got to the point that I dreaded taking the stuff because I knew how gross I was going to feel a few days later.

When I moved out of my house about three years ago, I found a few leftover tabs of Adrafinil that I had lost in my room, and used those to help me to push through the last few days of my move. By then I was practicing Tae Kwon Do and the weird focus from the residual Adrafinil was hindering my natural concentration.

[LDoBe]

That’s interesting. I’ve never had any kind of adverse reaction to, or letdown or withdrawal symptoms from modafinil.

I suppose it’s to be expected though for me, since I’ve been on stimulants as far back as my useable memory goes. So whatever side effects are just normal to me.

The longest I’ve stayed up using modafinil was 48 hours. First 24 was a work day, the second I spent wandering around Seattle during PAX. Then I went home and went to bed and slept 14 hours. Woke up feeling like a million bucks. I guess timing is everything, and you gotta pay back the sandman with interest. The last few hours of uptime I was feeling very rundown, but as awake as ever.

[Medievalist]

How fast it wrecks you will depend on dosage, but prednisone will make you swell up like a toad and turn your skeleton into chalk. A month or two at high dosages will turn you into a confused, immobilized sack of puffy flesh constantly dripping urine.

It’s occasionally worth taking for a brief period… if you’ll die otherwise…

[miasm]

Prescription huh? Oh well, ok.

I used to have to take proton pump inhibitors all the time, and this kind of powdered plastic gel because my gut was absorbing water so quickly it made ablutions a crap-shoot. Ahem.

I think there was some kind of feed-back mechanism between the two because, whilst they seemed to eventually stabilise me, it was in a slightly uncomfortably ill place. Still better than the reflux and totally OTT-ridiculous levels of acid production going on in my stomach beforehand. The PPIs meant digestion was slow, energy levels low, I could barely ever finish half a meal at a sitting and had to slowly graze over the course of the rest of the day if I wanted any energy at all.

And this was still better than downing a large bottle of peopto-bismol at lunch and needing more an hour later.

I eventually had to quit the medication, after upping the dosage of the PPI from one a day to four, three times a day and the slow decline of my gut health.

Lettuce and water and regular exercise saved me. It’s probably quite unusual to drink more than 35 glasses of water a day, maybe slightly less so than including lettuce in absolutely every meal but the combination seemed to get the water to the bottom of my gut that I needed, and the lettuce, along with other foods, promoted a more alkaline environment in my stomach (my hatred of cucumber finally overcome). The exercise, which actually seemed to make things much worse at first, eventually seemed to start to draw food through me faster, I was actually hungry again and uh, regular, eating three square meals, not snacking as much.

I was very quickly back to drinking normal amounts of water again, and I should make sure to say, drinking massive quantities of water all the time IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU, but the road ahead was only downhill for me and led to intense, life-changing surgical procedures so I took a chance and luckily managed to break out of whatever feedback mechanism I was caught in.

Whilst I certainly don’t promote cleanses, and it wasn’t really what I did anyway, diet is so damn important it might as well be a powerful drug.

Also, once upon a time I took all the recreational drugs. Quantity and quality are important. You can overdo anything, and that thing may very well be impure and cut with fuck-knows what.

I just wanted to mention that history because I feel like there’s a connection between the two. Dependence.
A crutch is supposed to be there to help you until you no longer need it. Is it your goal to not need the thing? Is the crutch enabling its own existence?

Some people have to take their drugs for health issues. I consider myself very lucky to have always been in a position where the drugs were there for a temporary purpose, be it fun, or as a method to help my body get back on its own two feet. But realising that the thing that was helping me was also prolonging my ill health (be it at a lower level of ill) was, for me, a very high hurdle to clear.

Good health to you all. And if you can’t have that, good drugs and good medical professionals.

[anon62122146]

@japhroaig

Allopurinol and lisinipril. Super common medications that are currently making me feel like crap–light headed, nauseous, that sorta thing.

Exactly this, with exactly these medications.