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Recovery heroin to prozac..?

Single KO

Greenlighter
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Jan 18, 2020
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Hey guys, just wondering if anyone has gotten on prozac or something similar after quitting dope, and whether it helped or not.....?

I've been trying to get and stay clean for a while but can never make it longer than a few weeks. even after the paws settle down, the anxiety and depression i get is soo bad i always just end up using in the end. so, am thinking of maybe trying to get prescribed prozac or something similar. any thoughts/personal experiences? please let me know!
 
While it is best to try and let the brain heal without other drugs, there are a few that can be helpful. Have you ever tried Gabapentin? It's not an antiD but it really helps with many issues, even the mental.
Every time I've had to detox, I've been on a Lexapro/Lyrica combo before hand. I think it's been helpful.
It depends though....Have you ever been on any antidepressants in the past?
 
I've taken gabapentin in super high doses to help kick before, but def not trying to take that on a regular basis.
No, I've never been on an antidepressant before, and haven't ever been prescribed anything else either.
Ideally, I'd like to get it prescribed, and then stay on it for 6 months to a year and then stop.
 
Probably best to do it without anti depressants. Just starting on them alone can make you feel really shitty, which added to withdrawals wouldn't be fun. If you find you have a problem with depression then I would recommend starting an SSRI like prozac without coming off something else at the same time.
 
whether you choose to start an ssri in the future or not, what geekgrl says is true. while ssris tend to be effective, the have to be titrated up to a therapeutic dose and starting them is unpleasant. side effects of first starting include agitation and diarrhea. see how that’s not something you’d want to start taking while already in withdrawal?

look at mirtazapine. it’s an antidepressant but not an ssri. it will help you eat and sleep, maybe even help with depression. it’s side effects are weird dreams, dry eyes/mouth, and increased appetite. much easier to bare than an ssri.

it’s not reinforcing like lyrica. there’s no high to it.

in studies, it’s been shown to help with sobriety.

it’s not as serious of a drug as prozac. ssris are very powerful.

I took prozac as a teen. recently i tried luvox, another ssri. i couldn't stomach the side effects, literally. i’m not sure mirtazapine does much, but it’s gentle. mirtazapine isn’t instant either, but it starts to work faster than an ssri. it can take months for an ssri to start to give significant antidepressant effects. if you don’t want to be on whatever you choose, that’s a long time to wait for it to start working.
 
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I've taken gabapentin in super high doses to help kick before, but def not trying to take that on a regular basis.
No, I've never been on an antidepressant before, and haven't ever been prescribed anything else either.
Ideally, I'd like to get it prescribed, and then stay on it for 6 months to a year and then stop.
If you think the benefits outweigh any of the cons you read, try it. Someone mentioned mirtazapine. If you are also taking tryptophan (sometimes called L-tryptophan), those two don't need to be mixed.

The brain needs to heal without medicinal help BUT if you can't get beyond a few months of PAWs without help, you get stuck in that cycle. Just don't let the shrinks load you up, try one med at the time.
 
I think you're confusing your PAWs for a psychiatric illness and seeking to remedy it with a medication that has very little chance of working. There are no antidepressants that work on your opioid receptors except buprenorphine, because unfortunately any medication that affects your opioid receptors will by definition be an opiate/opioid, so there is no current pharmacological way to try to affect those receptors other than going back onto opioids, which would defeat the point of quitting in the first place. PAWs can last anywhere from weeks up to 2 years, but I've heard that 6 months is a pretty common figure for a long-term habit, though there will be continual non-linear improvement in that time - i.e. you will be getting better overall continually, but the nature of PAWs can mean that at times it may feel like your depression gets better & better only to intensify at random intervals, but the overall trend will be of improvement until they break completely. I don't know why you're assuming that your PAWs is over at a few weeks only to be replaced by some separate psychiatric condition when the most likely explanation is that you're still experiencing PAWs? i can understand the temptation to want to believe that, since unfortunately PAWs can only be temporarily ameliorated and the only real cure is time, whereas if you were suffering with depression and anxiety there's a chance Prozac would fix it all for you, but that is extremely unlikely to be the case. Unless I'm missing something here, it sounds like you're deluding yourself a little.

I know PAWs is hard - it's certainly too challenging for me to face at the moment, which is why I'm on a low dose of bupe, but that's just the price we pay for our addictions, and if being 100% sober is a goal of yours then there's nothing for it really other than living a healthy lifestyle, staying abstinent and waiting it out.
 
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