Meds Experiences Thread!!

Tomorrow I'm starting a new medication (I think)! Which may help to dispel some of the side effects I felt on Concerta. This may also include antidepressants. I will report back tomorrow when I get them. It might be Sunday when I actually start them but I will tell you all what I'm taking tomorrow!

 

wellbutrin withdrawal started effective this morning when I missed my first dose (on purpose).

positive thoughts would be nice. it's hell already.

 

So I started Focalin/dexmethylphenidate a couple days ago for my shiny new ADHD diagnosis, and so far it is... not doing much? The first day I felt like I'd drunk eight cups of coffee and was constantly jittery, which was not fun so I was hoping it would chill out some, but it seems to have chilled out a bit too much because the next two days it did exactly nothing :/ My shrink did say I could double the dose if this one didn't do anything though, so we will see?

In better news the Luvox/fluvoxamine I switched to a couple months ago is great so far and works exactly like the prozac I was on before, except it costs $300 less and doesn't make my sex life miserable. I am all aboard the luvox train.

(I tried Remeron/mirtazapine for a few months before the luvox, and 0/10 do not recommend. I gained ten pounds and my sleep schedule got fucked up HARD.)

Oh man, good luck ): That sounds miserable.

 

I'm thinking positive thoughts toward you. I hope the withdrawal stops being godawful for you quickly!

 

*sends hugs*
feel better

 

Okay! So as it turns out, I'm taking Strattera now. I'm starting on 18 mg in addition to my normal 56 mg Concerta, because apparently we either need to 1) wean me off the Concerta, or 2) let it build up in my body so it's effective enough not just to be a supplement. Apparently it can also act as an antidepressant!
A weird thing that just happened. I was typing up a paper for my ethics class when suddenly everything seemed real. The looking-at-the-world-through-a-glass-screen feeling I've had for the past few years went away for just a moment. Then it was gone, but then a couple minutes later, it happened again, and it lasted for a little longer. It happened just as I was typing that! Maybe it's a placebo because I know I'm taking new meds and my brain is doing funky shit for some reason. But it still feels nice to feel cemented in the world instead of feeling like I'm outside looking in.

 

Semi-breaking my forum hiatus bc datemate wanted me to share this...just discovered that his resurgences of depression can be pretty well linked to his being prescribed the steroid prednisone. First in November, for a bout of pertussis, then recently for a pinched nerve. From his facebook post about it:

Also, it can have bad interaction with some brain drugs - the brain drugs block the effect of the prednisone, usually leading to a larger dose being prescribed, leading to worsened depressive symptoms, leading to more brain drugs...etc.

Sorry if I'm preaching to the choir, but he wasn't told anything about this when they prescribed it, and he's going to do his damnedest to get alternatives in the future if he needs them, and I thought this was a good place to share it around.

 

my psychiatric nurse practitioner prescribed me Vistaril for the nausea caused by my Abilify. i took one today for the first time... i'm prone to getting nauseous in the afternoon, for some reason, so i took one at around 1:30 and i've been feeling fine all afternoon! i'm a little sleepy, but not overly so. this might actually work for me.

 

welp, since that first effective Vistaril, it's been a lot less useful. today i woke up nauseous so i took a Vistaril in the morning, before work. now i'm at work, sleepy, and nauseous. gdi.

 

oh, i'm on vistaril, too! prescribed for anxiety.
i thought it was just me and my other habits that made it feel less effective after the first time, but? huh.

my pcp put me on a small, starter doze of prozac last spring. bad idea. i'm too "bipolar"/borderline/moodswingy for an antidepressant, it just made me nonstop suicidal. so i went inpatient for 5 days.

when i was hospitalized they gave me two medications: latuda (lurasidone) and vistaril (atarax, hydroxyzine). i'm not entirely sure if vistaril helped me at all when i was hospitalized, because most of my time was trying to grit my teeth and function through the side effects of latuda.

latuda really, really sucked, a lot, and later i found out the side effect i was suffering through was something called akathisia (linked), and that the doctors should have taken me off of it right away, had they actually noticed. i remember sitting there, completely dissociated, agitated out of mind, answering a nurse's questions so i could be approved for discharge. apparently i'm that good at concealing physical manifestations of my symptoms that even the nurses didn't notice how out of it i was. :p

a year later, just this past month, i convinced my new psychiatrist that i need some kind of anxiety medication to help me calm down and not spiral as hard as i usually do. she put me on vistaril, at a dose of 25mg. i don't recall if she remembered that they'd given vistaril to me at the hospital?

so lately, new vistaril. it most definitely helped me the first one or two times, but i'm not entirely sure if it's losing its effectiveness or not. too many variables! i have a bad caffeine habit, and my restlessness could have been the battle between vistaril putting me to sleep and caffeine trying to keep me awake. caffeine might have completely canceled out the anti-anxiety effects of vistaril. a Different psych once told me that one of the side effects of vistaril can be restlessness??? i need to take it again at a time where i've not drowned myself in monster or chai, and see if it helps calm me down from anxiety/agitation-spiraling.

(i was spiraling pretty badly last night, and didn't trust vistaril to help, so i took valium (diazepam) instead, and even a gentle benzo as valium seems to help so much more than vistaril does. which makes sense. i told my psych i needed something more than vistaril.)

no matter how effective or not vistaril is, after so many years without being medicated at all, i'm glad to have a scrip for something legal. especially how it is an anxiety-treating med and not an antidepressant, or an antipsychotic/mood stabilizer like latuda, which really fucked me up. any progress in getting medicated is some, right!

so the next time i need to take vistaril, i'll make sure i've not caffeinated, and watch my anxiety levels and restlessness to see how much it still helps or not.

EDIT: I'VE JUST REMEMBERED, the hospital doctors also had me on trazodone to help me sleep, and THAT'S what i remember old psych telling me might have caused restlessness in the hospital. fuck if i know

 

@hyrax i have acid reflux/GERD, and it comes with a lot of nausea. ranitidine/zantac is an OTC medication that helps me with that? i'm not sure about how it may interact with any of the other medications you're taking, though.

also: i don't mean to preach homeopathy in a meds thread, but tea with ginger and honey always helps my nausea. if a warm drink doesn't sound appealing, just anything with ginger and/or honey can help at least a little bit. tastes good, too. blackseed is also beneficial, but most people don't like the taste of that :p

family tradition, home remedies... they work sometimes. (may i clarify: when people suggest home remedies should replace medication altogether, they're full of shit.)

 

ginger anything always helps take the edge of my nausea! not that much, though. weed honestly helps a lot more, and i DO have a medical marijuana card. (fun fact: it's spelled "marihuana" on the card and official forms, which always makes me laugh.) today, though, i was like "hmm maybe i should not go to work reeking of weed" and took Vistaril instead. i should give it an anti-anxiety shoutout, i guess; i'm too sleepy to be anxious today.

it's interesting to me that they started me on the same dose (25mg) that they did @hyperfuck. i guess that's the basic starting dose, whether you're taking it for anxiety or nausea?

 

i suppose so! it seems a bit large for a starter dose compared to other medications, really.

 

i'm allergic to most antibiotics too!

i also got a tonsillectomy + adenoid removal as a child, high five

 

Hey everyone, I'd like to ask a question for those people who have tried Ritalin and had it actually help on the ADHD front. Or hell, any stimulant-type medication for ADHD. What should I be expecting when it starts to kick in/work at a low dose? Like... my uni course doesn't start back up until next week, but I've gotta report to my shrink about how 20mg has been going for me before then... but I'm not really sure what to look out for outside of the context of studying. I don't really feel less distractable or anything, but I'm also not really sure how to measure that. Only thing I've really noticed so far is my appetite going to absolute shit, but that's a side effect rather than something it's intended to do to help, so... yeah.

 

had some nausea again today, so i doubled my Vistaril and took 50mg. (the prescription says 1 to 2 tablets, up to 4 times a day, so that's definitely fine.) it seems to have taken care of the nausea, though i'm now feeling slightly lethargic and spacey. fun times.

 

When I took Ritalin...mm, it's hard to explain, but everything felt more precise somehow. Sharper, sort of?

To be less vague, I was able to quantify it by how many more notes I could take during lectures, which was a lot!

I unfortunately ended up with some nasty side effects so I don't take it or any other stimulant anymore, but when it worked it was pretty cool

 

Wellbutrin makes so I don't have to fight crushing self hatred or feel like I'm going to shatter into pieces if something remotely bad happens. Yay! I was on..zoloft for awhile becuase my doctor wanted me on something that also treated anxiety, unfortunately the stuff made me nausous and I pretty much laid around for a whole month and barely did anything. Mentally I was very foggy too, and I didn't feel like a human anymore, that wasn't a fun time.

 

I'm actually back on the Welbutrin. My vision improved, which my psychiatrist says shouldn't have happened if it was the Welbutrin. Don't know what all that was about, then.

I recently developed the ability to sit down and watch videos. I've been watching a TV show and I know 90% of the plot because I could actually focus on one thing. I can't remember the last time this happened. My psychiatrist told me it might. This is amazing!!

 

starting effexor on friday, wish me luck. ive had nothing but shit luck with antidepressants so far