Depression

Think this goes here better than on the ADD/ADHD thread.

Never updated on that particular thread, but going to a counseller and getting on medication was essentially a bust. Stopped drinking, was put on adderall. Because I was an idiot and took my husband's word that my visits were being covered by his policy (couldn't have been bothered to educate myself on it beyond him telling me 'ya babe its covered') I found out eventually not only were my visits not getting covered, but that I was going to have to start paying 140$ a pop to fill my monthly prescription. The bill was fucking egregious, but I paid it off. Stopped getting refills.

The entire rigamarole ended up being pointless. By the time I was down to my last bottle some pretty bad side effects were starting to surface. I work in the gaming industry as a freelancer and took on a pretty sizeable project that was well-received by my employers and clients, but the Adderall started causing weird circulatory problems. My hands would start going numb 1-2 hours into working and I'd have painful CT-esque attacks that would lock me up to the point where I couldn't move my fingers. My sleep was terrible before the medication, but on it the nightmares increased and it would take 2-3 hours every night for me to fall asleep.

I've been experiencing some weird shit lately on top of that. As of right now I lose 12+ hours a day to 'sleeping'. No matter how long I'm in bed or if I nap during the day, I'm exhausted. The weirdest part is that half of my sleep time is spent in some sort've...weird dissassociative state. I'm not awake, but I lay there half-conscious for hours while my brain does its own thing. I don't have any control over my thought processes- it's a weird, cyclical Tetris effect. It's gotten worse over the last few weeks, to the point where I've been slipping into it as soon as I lay down/while I'm sitting around doing nothing. I've tried researching it but I can't find any information on it relating specifically to symptoms of depression.

Anyone have any experience with this sort've thing? When I was still seeing the therapist/doctor they both told me that disassociation was a known side-effect of mixing Adderall with marijuana, but I haven't been on meds for a few months now.

What was the prescription strength of your Adderall? Was it XR? BTW, $140 for Adderall (non generic) is still pretty good seeing as how it cost over $1600 for one month without insurance.

Yeah, Adderall XR 20mg (Which I was told isn't that strong.) Was warned the XR was more likely to cause sleeping problems.

When I was on Adderall XR a couple years back, I was on 10mg per day. Took it first thing in the morning, around 6-7 am. Helped me concentrate and focus through the day, but I'd start to crash early in the evening. Once I'd built up a bit of a tolerance to it a couple times I took a second one around lunch time, and pretty much spend the afternoon bouncing off the goddamn walls. And yeah, it would fuck with being able to sleep later that night.

20mg isn't a huge dose, but it's fairly significant.

Well, panic attacks returning was enough to get me to go back to seeing my doctor, and it has been nothing but a disaster since.

First, an attempt to go back onto celexa, which I had taken for ten years after a bit of "holy fuck I'm having a heart attack" fun and stopped about about 18 months ago because I'm an idiot. Holy shit. A few hours in my throat felt like I had a baseball lodged in it, and after hours of that my neck felt like a steel cord. This is just another form of panic attack, but not one I'd ever experienced before. And then came the flood of saliva - as fast as I could spit, and more than I could tolerate swallowing. (yeah yeah, what she said) That part was something that I've dealt with before from celexa, but not for an entire goddamn evening and night all the way through morning. And somehow even most annoying was the constant feeling that I was clenching my dick like I was trying not to pee myself - this was new also. Eventually it did a 180 and then I was pissing every five to ten minutes for a couple of hours. Sleep was fucking impossible. Time to get ready for work rolled around and I actually started getting clothes together, hah. I saw spots and nearly blacked out. Full on freak out for the next six hours or so.

Eventually I got the Doc to cal me back, said not to take more celexa (NO SHIT?) and we'd try Prozac next. I waited for the weekend this time, so no stress about making it in to work.

Well, prozac seemed pretty okay for about five days, but again it turned to shit. See, during all of this I also had some poison ivy rashes on my leg which spread and after two weeks became unbearable. I wasn't scratching them - just drowning them in calamine - but it didn't matter, the shit just kept getting worse. So I visit the doc again and get Prednisone added into the mix. Day 3 of that and yay, knob in my throat again. Only it hasn't stopped all night and all day. Tendons in my neck are so tight it seems they'd snap. And a return of the flood of saliva. Sleep? Yeah right. Laying down feels like drowning.

From what I've read, both Prozac and Prednisone can trigger or magnify anxiety attacks like this, even in people that weren't having them before. So they prescribe shit like xanax or atvien or whatever to take as needed to get through the worst of them. So fucking great, just what I wanted to avoid, the parade of drugs and side effects and drugs to mask the side effects and all the shit I was afraid this would be.

At this point I don't know whether to toss it all in the trash or keep going forward and brave discovering new exciting side effects that rival the original fucking problem. But treating the cause of all of this isn't going to happen without something to stabilize my moods, so giving up really means giving up.

Yes to gp, no to therapy. I was planning on trying it once the meds had things under control because there's pretty much no way I'd be able to talk things out otherwise - not after over 20 years of avoiding it all as everything just got worse and worse. It didn't take much research to figure out that I'm the poster child for avoidant personality as the root of all my ills. I had hoped they would help me find one but nope, it's just picking a name out of a phone book.

So at about 6am I felt no better but was finally tired enough to sleep, and now my throat seems okay but I feel super nervous and my goddamn leg already itches again. Left the doc a message.

Nice day, relaxed at work, no stress, getting lots of work done, everything running smooth. Raging unending panic attack. FFS.

Last day of the goddamn steroids at least.

How much steroids did you get? I'm still having major withdrawal inssues 3 weeks after I finished 5 days of a 1000mg a day and no tapering prescription after it ended. So sore I can barely move at times.

So I'm having real issues going back to that therapist. She started pulling out some pseudoscientific bullshit she wanted to try, like NLP. And she was throwing out that completely retarded hemisphere dominance shit.

So how does one live with someone with anxiety? I'm being serious here because my girlfriend has been diagnosed and she has been taking zoloft and something else. Like some shit that if I notice her acting really weird I have to call a doctor.

There are times when she goes off on some tangent because its bugging her and other times (before she starting taking meds) where she would freak out. Case in point once we had got done having sex and she started crying, saying shit like she is going to hell because we had sex before marriage. She is not religious at all, but it something she remembered and suddenly it was all she could focus on for days. Last night she called me (I work nights) and made me promise to wipe the sink out with some special soap because it was important. Another time she rearranged the living room and then worried that the room needed painted.

I'm not saying she is crazy and its rare when she freaks out but it always seems like shes worrying about something. The week of her period is always a time of turbulence. We have been living together for about a year and I honestly love this girl. She knows that but at the same time I have no experience with anxiety. My family is chill as fuck and worries about nothing. My dad used to always tell me and brothers that the only thing you cant recover from is death. When she starting freaking out or just worries it gets me agitated as fuck. Then I start snapping at her and everyone else which doesn't help matters at all and at times makes it worse. I want to be with her and I cant just tell her to man up and deal with it. On the other hand I don't want to live with someone who is constantly worried and anxious who drives me up the wall. So in short, what the fuck.

So are her meds working or not?

Aye, the meds seem to be helping. She seems to be on some stuff that is actually helping. There are times though when it hits her hard like when she is on her period.

So anxiety, at least for me, is like... having that voice in your head constantly running. And you can't turn it off. And it's a constant reminder of what makes you feel afraid or just like shit in general. And then it sometimes goes into hyperdrive and you can't do anything but kind of shut down to get some relief from the voice. You can tune it out, but it always comes back.

And if it's really bad, it'll flip your flight response, turning into a full-fledged phobia, as it does with me and social situations.

Jx3 sounds like that could be GAD or some form of OCD, egodystonic.

Kuriin_sl said:

Jx3 sounds like that could be GAD or some form of OCD, egodystonic.

Click to expand...

I agree. I believe she has anxiety, but that anxiety seems to be coming from a different problem

Don't get her pregnant.

So, I've started on Effexor.

Here's to drugs!

Oooookay. So this feels weird.

I feel restless as fuck right now.

That'll happen. Sometimes it goes away, sometimes it doesn't. Let your provider know.