[drunksunflower]

to take meds again. considering i only ever gave the 2 i have tried about a month each, this is really big for me (yes i'm a wuss ) but prozac made me sick and celexa made me fat, so i gave up on each pretty fast.

after a bit of a meltdown at work where my manager took me to lunch and asked what was going on (i just said a bit of stress and stuff) i went to the doctor and got Aropax (paxil to you). but i haven't started taking it till like ... today ... and that was over two months ago. the reason i decided to start was cos i had a couple of really irrational crying spells over the weekend in front of a friend and it was just dumb and embarrassing.

i am REALLY scared of what this drug will do and really annoyed that i am not able to get my mind around things and just get OVER it and be in control of my emotions. there is nothing causing this - great job, great friends, family, and flatmates.

i dont know if this was the right decision, the doctor said i would have to take the med for at least a year as i have had 'depression' before. Isn't this too long?? i thought it would be three or four months.

if anyone can give me some advice or share their experiences i would be REALLY grateful. i don't like this one bit ...

[drunksunflower]

please can someone post something ... i hate this ... people look at ur post and dont say anything ... makes me feel so stupid for posting it.

im sorry i wont do this again

[SleepsWithButterFlies]

I am sorry youre feeling a bit afraid to take the meds...I think that is common. I do not take it but know 2 people who do and they took it for years and liked it....I think it takes a month or so to get the effects of the med and blow off any side effects you may or may not have. Some people feel tired others get like anxiety and have to have a add on med. I think if you search Paxil while waiting on someone with experience to come on you may find some useful posts. There is a search at the top of the site Good luck

[drunksunflower]

thank you thank you thank you for posting.

i will search.

[SleepsWithButterFlies]

You are very welcome this time of night you mau not find many peolpe in here I will email you a site to check out too

[bipolar_bear]

I am sorry I don't take that particular med either but I do know that it can take up to a month to really get the full effects of paxil. Of course it varies with individuals and some have good effects right away. I hope you are one of these.

I know people who take meds similar to paxil for years and seem to function well. As they have told me they function better on the med than off.

I would suggest making a list of your fears and questions about paxil and calling your pdoc to help you feel more assured. Ask them about the duration as this seems to be the biggest fear you have.

I hope you well and that the med works quickly for you.

[eskielover]

I am a horrible person with meds.....but do have one comment regarding the taking of meds.

My depression was caused by a "situation" that I was in over 11 years ago. I was put on almost every psych med that is on the market.....only to find that NOTHING worked. For me, I had to get in touch with what was bothering me & deal with it mentally. For me, there is no drug on the market that can fix the thinking in my head......It is something I have to deal with. I also had so many horrible reactions to the meds that on top of everything, my body rejected them all. Meds are the answer for some. There are many people who have a chemical imbalance in their brain's that is caused by a situation....& the meds can make that more stable.....

Even with the trauma I went through at the end of last year & beginning of this one, the med I was initially given did no good. I am now on something that does allow me to sleep without the nightmares.....but the bottom line is that my mind has to be the thing that puts the situation into perspective. I do appreciate the fact that I get some relief from a med but it isn't the answer.

I am not against meds......I know that for some it does good & helps.....but it depends on the person & their thought process too as to how they get along with what they are dealing with. For some, the meds are the answer, for others it takes both meds & therapy, & for others that meds don't seem to effect (except in a bad way) them at all.

I took paxil but it continued the headaches (migraines) I was dealing with & made the pain worse.....not something my body could tolerate......lol.....Prozac made me anorexic....& celexa wasn't around then.

I hope you can find something that works for you.....I am pro therapy to help me with my thinking process.....for me...it seems to me the best answer. It is so dependent on your own body as to your reaction to Paxil to determine how much help it will be for you.

Debbie

[drunksunflower]

thank you for the replies ... it is really helpful to read about others' experiences ...

i just dont know if i am doing the right thing ... arrrghhh.

[Genevieve]

OK, here's the scoop as it was told to me by a psychiatrist I trust:

If your depression is situational, you probably don't *need* drugs -- although they will kickstart your recovery -- you need psychotherapy. Therapy will help you learn to cope with situations that come up, and head many of them off.

On the other hand, if your depression has a more biological basis, which doesn't mean that it isn't triggered by a situation, just that it isn't only a specific situation that you're not coping with well -- then medications are probably necessary to help you avoid repeated relapses.

Current thinking is that jumping on the first episode of depression and medicating it into remission is the best way to avoid most relapses. While that doesn't mean that you can't do pretty much the same thing with subsequent episodes, it just means that if you medicate, say, the third depressive episode, you're more likely to relapse again at some point.

A combination of therapy and medications is more effective than either alone.

As for how long to stay on the medications, that depends a lot on the history of the patient, but in all cases it is highly recommended that one stay on medication at a therapeutic dose for a minimum of six months after full remission is achieved. For those of us with recurrent episodes of severe depression, staying on indefinitely is probably the only answer. (I hate that part a lot, since it's my status.) For people with a couple of episodes of depression, especially moderate depression, who have never really been medicated before, the suggestion is to try staying on the drug for two years post-remission. All of these suggestions are based on trying to minimize the chance of relapse. It's worth staying on the meds for that period of time to see if that will work in your case. The medications do not simply mask depression -- they actually help certain regions in your brain regenerate, which will in turn help make you less susceptible to depression in the future.

I hope that helps. Keep in mind that I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV -- I'm just a depressive who has asked a lot of the same questions myself.

[drunksunflower]

two years is a long time

my doctor said at LEAST a year.

i just wanna be off them ASAP.

thank you so much for the post.

hi dsf glad you decided to take the meds offered, i know it is hard to accept that you need the meds but you have taken the first step, keep us appraised on how they are working for you, you know i am only a pm away if you need to talk.

simon

[burton]

I was involved in an accident almost 10 years ago. I went crazy and have been on medicatio for approximately 7 years. No telling how many different ones I took before "settling" on one - PAXIL. I do mean settled, In my opinion there is no magic bullet and you hopefully can find one or a combination of Medications which will provide more positives than negitives. They all do take time to work and some of the side effects start to ease as time goes on and the brain adjust. As others have said med's alone will help but its therapy where you learn to cope, so do both.

[drunksunflower]

ty mellors (hugs)

so burton what side effects etc do u/did u get?

i feel a bit sick

[JustBen]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Genevieve said:If your depression is situational, you probably don't *need* drugs -- although they will kickstart your recovery -- you need psychotherapy. Therapy will help you learn to cope with situations that come up, and head many of them off.

On the other hand, if your depression has a more biological basis, which doesn't mean that it isn't triggered by a situation, just that it isn't only a specific situation that you're not coping with well -- then medications are probably necessary to help you avoid repeated relapses.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Interesting stuff. I just got finished reading this psychopharm textbook (snooze) and the authors claim that if the depression is "situational" or caused by some definite biological problem, then meds shouldn't be prescribed unless therapy doesn't help. Only if no biological cause or sitautional cause can be found should meds be used first.

And this was written by psychiatrist/researchers who work for the drug companies! I re-read it twice because I was sure I had misunderstood what they were saying.I was shocked. In any case, I don't know any MD's that follow those guidelines.

[drunksunflower]

so JustBen are you saying meds are a bad idea?

i am starting to change my mind lol.

[(JD)]

ah hem! DR. Unk YOU have enough brains to know that you can't go into this thinking you want to get off them as fast as you want to. You will have to be on them until your own body begins to produce the chemicals and regulate them as your body needs to... until then you take the med. One of the main reasons ppl have trouble with feeling better is they quit taking the med (because they feel better) and forget it's the med causing the possibility! Now be a good girl, take your medicine! Feel better, gal.

[JustBen]

Nope, not saying meds are a bad idea at all. Just passing along this info from this book...as I said, I don't know anyone who follows those guidelines.

I think the term "biological base" is being used differently by Genevieve and Ben. Genevieve, I think, means chemically based - if your depression is caused solely by your brains processing of neurotransmitters. I think Ben means issues like a poorly functioning thyroid.

So Genevieve says those folks SHOULD use meds for relief since their brain needs help, and Ben's book is saying that is the wrong move for them since they need to fix the medical cause first. Both are true.

IMO if someone is depressed, they need to see an MD to look for biological causes first. I think people should then see a psychologist for a good assessment....and stick to just therapy for about 3 months. THEN if the depression hasn't abated - get thee to a psychiatrist. And if you've been depressed for a long time, even after meds have helped some, you may still need therapy. CBT can really help change those long-engrained patterns of negative thinking....imo.

emmy

I hope that makes sense.

emmy

[JustBen]

Yeah, that's a good clarification. It's easy to get confused with so many different perspectives -- especially since of them use the same words to mean different things.

[JustBen]

Not to beat this thing into the ground, but just to clarify where I was coming from. The book in question ("Psychopharmocology: An Introduction" by Rene Spiegel, if anyone is interested) classifies depression into three categories:

Somatic Depression
Depression that comes about because of some physical illness. The authors recommend neither therapy nor meds for this -- they just figure the doc needs to treat the underlying problem to fix it.

Psychogenic Depression
Depression due to some traceable psychological or life circumstance. The authors recommend therapy for this, only to be followed with meds if the therapy isn't working.

Endogenous Depression
Depression that doesn't result from either physical illness or obvious psychological issues. (The concept of a chemical imbalance falls into this category, too.) The authors recommend meds for this, to be followed with therapy if the meds aren't working.

I only mentioned it because I expected drug company researchers to recommend meds for everything, and I was surprised at how conservative they were. I think docs out in the real world have their own guidelines for prescription.

[Genevieve]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
emily4040 said:
I think the term "biological base" is being used differently by Genevieve and Ben. Genevieve, I think, means chemically based - if your depression is caused solely by your brains processing of neurotransmitters. I think Ben means issues like a poorly functioning thyroid.

So Genevieve says those folks SHOULD use meds for relief since their brain needs help, and Ben's book is saying that is the wrong move for them since they need to fix the medical cause first. Both are true.

IMO if someone is depressed, they need to see an MD to look for biological causes first. I think people should then see a psychologist for a good assessment....and stick to just therapy for about 3 months. THEN if the depression hasn't abated - get thee to a psychiatrist. And if you've been depressed for a long time, even after meds have helped some, you may still need therapy. CBT can really help change those long-engrained patterns of negative thinking....imo.

emmy

I hope that makes sense.

emmy

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

LOL! It more than makes sense -- it expresses it concisely and clearly.

I told a psychiatrist once that I didn't think it was asking too much to get nearly the same standard of care that i demanded from vets! That went over better than one might have expected, too. For an animal who looks "depressed" or shows any weird behaviors, the first thing you do is to check for any physical causes. You never start out with behavioral strategies, because you don't want to punish physical discomfort. Same should be true for humans, no?

Then again, it's a lot harder to get into vet school than medical school...

[drunksunflower]

ok ... that makes sense

i'd just rather do nothing and wait for it to go away lol.

i had a bad experience with prozac once before (made me really sick so i lasted about 2 months on that, although it did improve my mood) and with celexa (lasted about 4 weeks cos i put on sooooo much weight heh).

so i am a bit reluctant to take anything and also i feel that i should just get over it - i have no reason to feel bad at all. great job, friends, family.

meh.

ty for the advice.