My history with antidepressants

Deborah Gray is the creator of the Wing of Madness depression site Living With It Creator, Wing of Madness Deborah Gray lived with undiagnosed clinical depression, both major... Send Message Subscribe: Deborah Gray

Saturday, June 06, 2009
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I've been taking antidepressant medication for almost twenty years solid, with the exception of the period when I was switching antidepressants and when I was pregnant. The first antidepressant my depression was treated with was Norpramin, also known as Desipramine. I was very lucky, as it worked ver...

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Charlotte66
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 06:44 PM

I've been taking antidepressants for the last 20 years too, since the age of 23. I probably needed them as a kid - I was always super-sensitive to criticism, cried easily, and got very angry and black moods as a teenager. The tricyclics didn't work for me, so they put me on prozac shortly after it first came out. That was a life-saver, though I still had massive mood swings. I also had lots and lots of therapy, which kept me going, but didn't fix the problem. Since then I've tried lots of different antidepressants, mood stabilizers etc. The antidepressants are not effective enough alone, but the mood stabilizers (lamictal, depakote, etc) often have intolerable side effects. I'm on an SSRI currently and it's not very good, so may try to augment it with a bit of Abilify. I've been diagnosed with different labels - chronic dysthymia, cyclothymia, atypical depression, etc.

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Deborah Gray
Friday, June 12, 2009 at 02:39 PM

I think the augmenting of antidepressants shows promise. I was happy with the boost my mood got from Lamictal, and I'd still be on it if it weren't for the weight gain/uncontrollable eating.

Lamictal
Charlotte66
Friday, June 12, 2009 at 09:08 PM

I tried this one - it worked OK, but killed my memory - literally I could not retain anything and work became a little too challenging . . .

as for weight gain, I didn't notice a pbm with Lamictal but do with Seroplex alone, which I am on on now

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lovemykids
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 08:12 PM

I also take a SSRI...luvox and have had a very hard time with mood stabilizers...been on 4 so far & all had side effects...but Topamax made me lose weight. It is a side effect of it...it really messed with my vision..otherwise my mood was better...