Help with medication for anxiety and a strange story!

[bassman_2_1]

Hi everyone this is my first time posting anything. My story starts about 10 years i stopped smoking cannibis, i started feeling anxious a couple of times and i thought id take a break from it while i was moving into my first home. About 3 weeks later i went to work one morning and i was really tired because i didnt sleep the night before at all, what happened next was i literally burst, felt like a stroke or something severely happened to my brain and was instantly paralized with extreme anxiety. After a week or so i started citalopram, and was basically all over the place for a few months. After running the hospital thinking i was actually mad my doctor doubled my citalopram to 40mg and after 2 days i was NORMAL! the relief was amazing to feel life again. I was quickly enjoning being back in work and back to my funny self. After a while told the doc i was better and tappered off. Anxiety quickly returned after that and i then tried alternate therapy (the linden method) and just got no where. Ended up getting married through it all and enventually just simply couldnt take anymore, no sleep, mind just would not stop talking about it etc. Then i tried prozac-- this was the beginning of the end, after 2 days i begged my mum to take me to hospital. Extreme extreme anxiety. After a short stay i was told it was anxiety etc and they started me on DOXEPIN/DOSULAPIN. This literally did nothing and after 9 months decided to stop. I dont know how i carried on but survived and my wife begged me to go back the doctors. NOW THIS IS THE INTERESTING PART. Doctor put me back on citalopram. WOW!!!!!!! I was so scared to take the pill, but to my absoultue amazment i felt a shift in my brain (no pkacebo or exaggeration no lies) after about 3 hours!! I went to bed and the next day i just felt normal from what i remember and the first day i didnt wake up feeling extreme dread. I even remeber the next day i felt excited and actually wanted to do thinks and felt joy and everything else good, something i hadnt felt in a very long time! Basically i made a 180 turn around very quickly and my negative obsessive thoughts just slowly dissapeared. I stayed on the citalopram for 6 years. I actually didnt want to stop taking them at all. I still suffered a slight bit of anxiety every now and then but it was nothing!

Then after an amazing run of life all my syptoms retured out of the blue and felt like i was in crisis! I returned the doctor who upped citalopram but i only lasted 3 days and begged for help. I was the on venlafaxine. IT didnt really help. I had a couple of small windows or relief (feeling well) then went through the doses and after nearly a year i was told to swop back to CITALOPRAM.

Again this is going to sound crazy but its the truth, i was terrified , one because i was dropping 75mg venlaxine and belived it was terrible to come off, and i was just doing a straight swop. WOWZER! I basically started citalopram before bed and to be fair was coping ok, the next morning i was just getting on with things and then i just felt amazing like a complete shift in my fear and basically AGAIN FELT GREAT!!! i was quickly looking forward to life again and sure enough was doing great!

This lasted 6 weeks 2 days before christmas my body just creased and then im battling extreme anxiety again. Needed sleeping pills just to get an hour or two. Tried 40mg citalopram but it was extreme. I then when on sertraline recently and gave it 3 months, but it just didnt really help snd it irritated my stomach really bad. So i came of sertraline about 3 weeks ago nearly and was actually much improved for a few days... i was taking LITHIUM ORATATE AND 5HTP STILL AM TOO. But im now doing terrible. The doctors dont want to try another anti depressant and talking about SEROQUAL/QUINTAPINE. i really appriate any time anybody has took to read this and i am going to list some questions below to see if anybody can help as im desperate!

Does anybody know why CITALOPRAM worked so well so quickly too? Obvoiusly i cant go back on it as it just poops out now looking at the evidence?

Is it possible to beat this using natural products?

I belive this is entirely chemical!!! Something is not working in my brain as it should. Cannabis withdrawal was the cause for sure, it happened to my best friend (he fully recoved but only described a similar situation to mine) Is there any tests in the UK that could rule out what i need to try and fix this??? Had numerous blood tests but im not sure i think they only test thyroid n stuff. Can snybody relate to this and maybe identified any problems. Is it gene testing i need etc etc??

Ive got constant like feeling in my brain like something is trying to correct. Kind of like blood or chemicals moving round all the time (sounds strange i know) but my mood and anxiety level bad.

After i came of sertraline a few weeks ago i was pretty good for a few days even with the withdrawal effect. I am taking 5htp 2x 50mg and lithium oratate 5mg . Does anybidy have any success or help in is there a way to test do i need these elevated seretonin or i can i find out if my brain is damaged or not getting certain chemicals. I mean literally when i took citalopram it was like a swich was flicked! ( it might have worked quickly because i took it initally is my guess and my body knew what to do with it.)

Anybody been in a similar situation with meds and then found relief again?

Im basically trapped in my mind and feel dead. I am going the gym regularly and two protien shakes a day etc. Very good diet and multi vit etc. So scarred of living like this. Any help would be amazing! Thankyou to anybidy who reads this and replies

Also could it be dopamine my problem??? I sometimes take dl phenylalanine

[Paxiled]

There's an awful lot in there.  Because you've taken a lot of antidepressants that didn't work, it's more unlikely the citalopram was placebo -- if you were the type to get placebo effects by taking what your doc recommended, it would have happened with others, too, probably.  Medication is very weird, and individuals have very different experiences. In your case, and I can only guess, anyone can only guess, the citalopram was your drug but it pooped out.  The only caveat to this is the sense of euphoria -- I'm not sure anyone gets that feeling from an antidepressant unless it's pushing them into a manic state, something they can do to some people.  Now, you don't say you were suddenly running around accomplishing record amounts of stuff, not needing sleep, or running around naked so it might have pushed you to a slightly manic state, not a psychotic level.  For most of us, antidepressants take some time to start working and they don't work nearly as well as yours did, but you are the only you and this is what happened to you.  The other meds you took didn't work, so again, you don't respond to just anything.  But some clarity is needed here -- there is no real withdrawal from marijuana.  Yeah, you might miss it, you might find it hard to enjoy things as much as you did, but weed really doesn't have withdrawal effects in the same way that addictive drugs and antidepressants do.  What can and often does happen to us anxiety sufferers is that our first anxiety attacks are brought out when we're stoned because pot focuses us inward so intensely.  It happened to me, it's happened to many on this forum.  As for the theory of chemical imbalance, it's a myth largely that was spread by Eli Lilly when they came out with Prozac many years ago.  If there is a chemical imbalance nobody has found out what it is yet.  Most anxiety research today is on the amygdyla in the primitive brain, and it's very hard to isolate how that part of the brain works with the more complex parts of the brain.  There are a very very few people who can't make serotonin out of tryptophan, B6 and vitamin c and have a shortage, but they aren't necessarily anxious and there aren't but a handful of such people.  These drugs don't make more serotonin -- they take what you have and alter the way the brain uses it.  Now, 5-HTP is a metabolite of tryptophan that crosses the blood/brain barrier and, in combination with B6 and Vitamin C and other cofactors is how the brain manufactures serotonin, which then manufactures melatonin.  Most serotonin isn't in the brain -- most of it is in the digestive system and in other parts of the body.  What we know is that if we alter serotonin with ssris some people feel better as long as it keeps working, but it doesn't address the cause of the problem.  We don't know the biological cause.  As for the 5-HTP, if you started it soon after stopping an antidepressant that targeted serotonin it can make things worse -- your brain needs some time to re-learn how to operate normally again.  But when it works, your body decides it does need more serotonin and makes more; if your body decides you don't need more, it evacuates it out of your system, the process that the drugs prevent from happening that makes them work.  Many people are helped by HTP, and many aren't -- but it takes time to know if it will help, what dosage you need, and whether you need more than that to have it work.  Most natural medicine uses multiple remedies, not just one, and will also use therapy, exercise, meditation, dietary and lifestyle changes in a holistic attempt to fix the imbalance whatever it is.  In the anxiety case, that would probably involve also using natural substances that affect GABA, which is what benzos do to an extent.  As for the DLPA, that is used for depression, not anxiety.  It can be very stimulating and cause anxiety -- many antidepressants are intentionally stimulating, such as the Effexor you were on, because depression is a downer disorder so to speak whereas anxiety is an upper disorder.  If anxiety is your main problem, you don't want to take DLPA, as it's like adrenaline, and in anxiety sufferers, adrenaline is part of our problem.  If your anxiety is caused by depression, it might help.  I'd also look into the ingredients of those protein shakes, and I'd also ask why you take two a day -- that's a lot of protein from a non-food source.  Are you a bodybuilder?  It might very well contain tons of sugar and also energy boosters, which anxiety sufferers don't want -- it's that adrenaline thing again.  I wish I could tell you what is going on and how to help you, but I can't, but I hope I've helped you to see you need to do some more homework and calm down some on the cause of all this -- you may never figure this out.  I also second AnxiousNoMore on a need for a good psychologist who specializes in anxiety treatment no matter what you do next with medication.  But it is not true that meds have ever been a "cure."  None are.  You can't cure what you don't know the cause of.  You can make the symptoms less, but the only "cure" we know of so far is through therapy and the lucky ones who just have it go away the way it came and those who find a spiritual fix to it -- in other words, some way to change the anxious thinking that brings this on.  None of these methods works a high percentage of the time, but because there is so much to try, if you keep trying you might find the right one for you.

[Paxiled]

Oh, and the lithium -- that is also more of a depression treatment than for anxiety.  Pure anxiety remedies are things like adrenal balancers (adaptogens), relaxants (think kava and velerian and passionflower, for example), and taurine, which the body uses to manufacture GABA.  HTP is like taking an ssri, it helps with both anxiety and depression when it works.  Pure antidepressants, which can be stimulating and cause more anxiety like the more stimulating drugs, are things like SAMe and St. John's Wort.  Lots of things out there in the naked city.

[AnxiousNoMore]

"i felt a shift in my brain (no placebo or exaggeration no lies) after about 3 hours!! I went to bed and the next day i just felt normal"
You probably didn't feel there was a placebo effect, but either your mental approach to your problem changed by coincidence so you came out of your anxiety when you started the Celexa or else it was a placebo effect, because Celexa can't possibly provide relief in 3 hours.
Anxiety and depression go hand in hand, working in a vicious circle escalating the problem so it is sometimes hard to tell if you have an anxiety issue or is it depression caused, especially when it gets to a high level of mental discomfort. So don't rule out depression unless you can be sure, and the best thing to do at this point would be to see a therapist to help you figure it out
Different studies have provided conflicting results about the power of the meds to help, with at least one study saying it is really the skill of those who work with the anxious person that provided the cure, not the med. Unfortunately we live in the stone age of figuring solutions to anxiety, so the poor sufferer is left to trial and error in his search for relief.

Anxiety isn't a simple problem for some people because it can have many complicated causes, so it is best to work with a therapist to try to see if there are any tools you can get to help deal with it. Anxiety can hit anyone  at any time so just going to the gym and eating protein and some vitamins aren't always enough.

[bassman_2_1]

I dont know if my body knew exactly how to get the drug going quickly, that initial tablet really did work, and fast! I felt euphoric the next evening and my anxious thoughts started breaking up. Ie/ instead of constantly thinking about it i was able to feel at ease and do tasks and concentrate! I just wish it didnt poop out , life was really good -(
I still did get anxious every now and again and the odd flash panic but my mind set was so good because i felt well it just didnt bother me.

It is hard to tell if it is anxiety or depression but definatly experience both but mainly obsessive thinking is my main problem.

Does anybody on here use anti depressants for life or more than 7 years and if they poop out get success from another AD?

[AnxiousNoMore]

Since everyone is different, someone else's anecdotal evidence may not be applicable to your body or situation. Have you ever tried therapy or read any self help books about this subject?