New Anti-Depressant, Pristiq

Off Topic
1

Some of you in SAMA might remember my post, a few thought it was a troll job, but some took me seriously, about having a depressive episode and my PAXIL dose being doubled. This led to ED, and caused me to be somewhat anorgasmic. Well I finally got in to see the psychiatrist today, and he is putting me on a comparable dose of a very new drug, pristiq. I will be letting everyone here know how it goes. I am tapering off of the paxil for 2 days at 20 mg, then switching on sunday. which is good, because wal-mart is having to order the drug for me.

This is supposed to have a much lower occurence of side effects, though I haven’t learned much abnout it, and I have no idea what the cost is going to be :frowning:

if anyone wants to try to find something, here is the official website.
http://www.wyeth.com/hcp/pristiq/home

hope all goes well, and I will do my best to report on the drug and how it works, for anyone else out there suffering from depression.

2

It will probably be more effective than Paxil, so your dose won’t need to be as high. I doubt it is any better than Effexor or Cymbalta though. Also, since it is an SNRI, be prepared for the possible side effect of painful orgasms. If you do get it, just wait two weeks, and the pain will not be as intense.

3

Those drugs are all fucking prescription crack to me. I really can’t think of anything more unsound across the entire spectrum of current medical practices than administering psychotrophic drugs to artificially inflate patients’ moods. I had a stint with anti-depressants years ago and consider it one of the biggest mistakes of my life. That fucking shit doesn’t just affect your mood, it fundamentally alters your mind and changes the way you think. You literally aren’t sober when you’re on that shit, but the effects are insideous, so you don’t even realize how coked out you are. You “feel” better, so you assume the drug is “working,” when all that it’s really doing is disrupting the completely normal physiological process of serotonin metabolism and suppressing whatever mental processes cause you to feel badly about your shitty circumstanes in life.

Also, you should be aware that anti-depressants may have seriously deleterious effects on your training and physical development. They are endocrine disruptors which may inhibit the production of anabolic hormones, likely due to the disruption of the sleep cyle, and have been proven to stunt growth in children. As a personal anecdote, I noticed that SSRIs impaired my recovery from training and dampened my mental intensity.

I strongly recommend that health conscious people stay away from anti-depressants and psychiatry in general, if they can avoid it.

4

Why all the sexual side effects from antidepressants?

5

[quote]Defekt wrote:
Why all the sexual side effects from antidepressants? [/quote]

Because they fuck up your central nervous and endocrine systems?

6

I don’t like guerrilla marketing.

A while ago finished a fairly large study that ultimately showed that these drugs work no better then placebo. Save for the worst cases, where they were a tad better.
I’ve known some guys who were depressed, and all I can say is that you need routine, some loving friends or family near you, sleep, and sport (Weights or plain cardio). They also need to stay away from stress and drugs.
But that’s about it.

7

If you are not depressed and take an anti-depressant, what will happen?

8

Wow, I just started taking “sertraline 50mg” (generic zoloft) 4 days ago and was told by my doctor it wouldn’t affect my training. I take it I was lied to? I’m actually pretty pissed about this, could anyone give me more information?

9

[quote]belligerent wrote:
Defekt wrote:
Why all the sexual side effects from antidepressants?

Because they fuck up your central nervous and endocrine systems?[/quote]

It’s even worse if you are dating someone on antidepressants. In women it decreases sex drive to the point that unless you remind your gf about having sex, they might not ever mention it. Sex still feels good for them, but it makes the other person feel worthless because there is no spontaneity. Before the “you must not know what your doing” comments come, I’ll mention that when she tapered off the drug for a couple months, everything was back to normal, including the attraction and spontaneity thing.

yeah, I see your point on the pitfalls of being medicated, but for some people it really does help. At the same time, the tendency for mental health professionals to prescribe them all the time does concern me.

10

My depressive ex wouldn’t feel much after 10 minutes when I was boning her. Damn drugs.

11

the drugs can have sexual side effects, because SSRI drugs affect your seratonin levels. Form what I understand, what happens is, your body’s chemical levels fool your organs into thinking you’ve already had sex. not sure if thats 100% correct or not, but its how i understand it.
However, HGH and testosterone are not effected.

and an update… got the drug today, even though i’m not starting it till sunday
and apparently, since it just came out, insurance will not cover it.
So i went ahead and shelled out the 126 dollars for this month’s supply, and am going to talk to my insurance company to see when they are planning on covering the drug, and if they aren’t any time soon, talk to my psychiatrist at our 1 month appointment to see about switching to effexor.

doing more research, this drug seems almost exactly like effexor, and some are pointing the finger at the company saying it is just a blatant patent extender. not sure, but that does mean i should be able to switch to effexor if my insurance doesn’t cover pristiq.

12

masterpate:
You’re right, it is a patent-extender. I hope they don’t persuade doctors to prescribe it instead of generic Effexor after the patent runs out. That would just be dirty.

belligerent:
do you have a source on SSRIs messing with your endocrine system? I highly doubt it has a substantial effect on any hormones - except possibly stopping the constant release of cortisol caused by anxiety.

13

[quote]belligerent wrote:
Defekt wrote:
Why all the sexual side effects from antidepressants?

Because they fuck up your central nervous and endocrine systems?[/quote]

By what mechanisms? Can you elaborate please?

14

The physiological mechanisms are primarily inferred, but there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that.

It is well known that SSRI drugs severely disrupt the sleep cycle. Even small doses have been shown to reduce the duration of REM sleep by 30-50%. As many of you know, it’s during REM sleep that your body releases large amounts of anabolic hormones, particularly testosterone and growth hormone. Thus, we can infer that any drug which impairs REM sleep may consequently impair the secretion of anabolic hormones. And that’s just one possible mechanism. You have to appreciate that the endocrine system is intimately related to the central nervous system, and that many of the relevant physiological processes, especially those which occur in the pineal gland, depend on serotogenic pathways- which SSRIs blatantly disrupt.

Admittedly there has not been a great deal of research on this subject- they certainly didn’t bother to study it during the FDA clinical trials- so it’s easy for psychiatric apologists to dismiss these concerns as unscientific. However, there is at least a small body of research to support the notion that SSRIs may impair physical development. Several small studies have shown that people taking SSRIs have low testosterone levels (although causation was not necessary established), and at least one case study has clearly demonstrated that SSRIs impair GH secretion in children, with subsequent growth attenuation.

[i]
Decreased Growth During Therapy With Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors
Naomi Weintrob, MD; Daniela Cohen, MD; Yaffa Klipper-Aurbach, MSc; Zvi Zadik, MD; Zvi Dickerman, MD

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2002;156:696-701.

ABSTRACT

Background There is no information on the effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on growth and puberty in children. We examined growth and growth hormone secretion in 4 children treated with SSRIs for various psychiatric disorders.

Design Case study.

Participants Four children (3 boys) aged 11.6 to 13.7 years with obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette syndrome.

Main Outcome Measures Growth, pubertal progression, and hypothalamic pituitary function.

Methods The patients were treated with SSRIs for 6 months to 5 years (dosage, 20-100 mg/d). All were regularly examined for changes in height and bone age and for pubertal progression. They also underwent evaluation of somatotrophic axis and hypothalamic-pituitary axis function.

Results All 4 patients had growth attenuation. Three of them exhibited growth retardation at a pubertal stage when a growth spurt was anticipated. Three had a decreased growth hormone response to clonidine hydrochloride stimulation and 2 to both clonidine and glucagon stimulation, and 1 had decreased 24-hour secretion of growth hormone that normalized when therapy was stopped. The rest of the endocrine evaluations were within reference ranges in all patients. At follow-up, 2 patients were being treated with somatropin while continuing SSRI therapy, and the other 2 resumed normal growth after discontinuation of therapy.

Conclusions A decrease in growth rate, possibly secondary to suppression of growth hormone secretion, may occur during SSRI therapy. As the use of this group of drugs is expected to increase in the young age groups, larger studies are warranted to investigate their effect on growth and growth hormone secretion.
[/i]

15

that study, well I am not trying to discredit, leaves some to be desired for me. It was done on children during puberty, when chemical levels are changing and parents make awkward attempts to talk to you about sex. It makes no comment or speculation on what could happen in grown men or women. and it was done on 4 children, that is not a very large test group and there was no control group.

16

I JUST got off that damn Effexor. You don’t feel anything when on it, but you sure feel withdrawls after missing a dose. I’ve got through 6 days of dizziness, brain electrical curret zaps, nausia, and hot flashes.

It’s scarey stuff, and I’m glad I stopped.

I feel just fine finally!!

17

[quote]Rockscar wrote:
I JUST got off that damn Effexor. You don’t feel anything when on it, but you sure feel withdrawls after missing a dose. I’ve got through 6 days of dizziness, brain electrical curret zaps, nausia, and hot flashes.

It’s scarey stuff, and I’m glad I stopped.

I feel just fine finally!! [/quote]

Another major problem with anti-depressants, and one that the psychiatric establisment is criminally guilty of trivializing, is that they create a condition of dependency- the more you use them, the worse you function without them, and the harder it is to discontinue them. Often when people quit SSRIs, their depression comes back with a raging passion, with the symptoms being much worse than before they started using the drugs. Then, their deterioration is mistakenly attributed to “relapse” when in reality they are in a state of drug withdrawal. In this way, the drugs actually perpetuate mental illness.

18

[quote]rephore wrote:
If you are not depressed and take an anti-depressant, what will happen?[/quote]

I do not know the answer to this particular question. However, I do know that too much serotonin can be as bad as not enough. First, an individual would have to be responsive to the particular pharmaceutical therapy (depression medications target serotonin or dopamin(sp?) or both, for different symptoms or effectiveness). If that condition is met and the individual’s depression is NOT due to some chemical imbalance then I’d imagine they would get worse.

The diagnosis of mental illnesses is very difficult. A lot of people are probably put on these when there is no need. There is also the problem of diagnosing someone with bi-polar as someone with depression. There are different drugs that can/must be used for the various mental illnesses.

There is a problem of overmedicating America, which probably has no practical solution.

19

[quote]rephore wrote:
If you are not depressed and take an anti-depressant, what will happen?[/quote]

This question relies on the assumption that depression is a meterial disease, which is a dubious notion at best. Depression is a psychiatric label. Physiologically there is no difference between a “depressed” person and a “normal” person. So, if you are not depressed and you take an anti-depressant, the result will be the same- you’ll get coked out on SSRIs and live in a medicated fog with your emotions anesthetized and diminished sensitivity to the stresses in your life. Which most psychiatrists would probably think is a good thing.

20

Thanks for all the information belligerent, I’ll bring up a few things with my doctor.

I was hesitant of anti-depressants to begin with, but figured it may be worth just trying. I’ve taken them for 4 days now and was told it would take about 2 weeks for them to build up in my system and begin affecting me. Has anyone been on them and gone off only to feel better physically or mentally? I’m considering dropping them already.