Well, maybe this will give you hope.....I wrote this when I had been on it a few weeks.

I'm bipolar with treatment resistance and med sensitivities. I ran into my last antidepressant choice a few weeks ago and am really suffering.

I've been on Emsam for about 2 1/2 weeks now. I had to be hospitalized to start because the taper off my old AD (imipramine) was dreadful. That was expected, although I did wind up in the hospital 2 weeks sooner than anticipated.

I am in a weird place because my psychiatrist is on medical leave and because of various issues with allergies and med sensitivities seeing another doctor isn't in my best interest. So my family doctor is handling this the best he can.

I'm on 9 mg/24 hours now. Today is the first day I've felt even remotely better and it's not exactly a huge difference. I'm dealing with very severe, constant anxiety that is barely touched by meds (and I'm taking a lot. 600 mg of Seroquel, up to 300 mg Vistaril, 2 mg Klonopin and ativan, plus lithium if that helps anxiety).

I know Emsam takes time. I'm getting tired of hearing that, in fact. But what I'm needing to know is is this slowness normal? Is the anxiety normal? In the hospital I got hypomanic and they had me skip a couple days, which did end that, but I'm reluctant to go back to that since I'm not hypomanic anymore.

If you had the horrible anxiety, how was it treated?

(Along with all the meds I'm seeing my psychologist twice a week, following carefully with my family doctor, and will see my psychiatrist as soon as she's back to work in a couple weeks).


So I guess it wasn't so easy back then. But it did get better.