Actually, if it work to treat my neurophathic pain and help with anxiety, its still better then nothing. Antidepressants never did anything on my mood.
I kinda agree... Whilst they didn't help with my depression (nothing has so far), both Duloxetine & Venlafaxine did help reduce my anxiety as well as my migraines.
All it did was give me worsened insomnia and SHIT TONS of sweating. I'd be in school after PE sweating swimming pools in math. I don't remember if I actually liked the drug or not besides those sides.
Eugh, I know exactly what you mean with regards to having a bad case of the sweats, it's horrible isn't it? I suffered from really bad night-sweats on both Duloxetine and Venlafaxine. With the latter, I also experienced incredibly vivid lucid dreaming which is why I switched to Fluoxetine/Prozac. I'm sure you can relate, and it may seem really trivial to others, but every single morning I would wake up absolutely drenched in sweat and I had to wash my bed sheets every single day - before resorting to just sleeping on towels and washing them instead.
Whilst I found the vivid lucid dreaming to be quite a fun and novel experience to start with, it soon became very distressing when the content of my dreams started turning quite dark and sinister. (Now this part may sound like complete bullshit to most of you, and previous to experiencing it for myself I certainly didn't think it was possible and would've called bullshit on anyone else who claimed the same, but I promise it's absolutely true). But after ~3 months of lucid dreaming on Venlafaxine I could occasionally recognise when I was actually experiencing a lucid dream, and consequently, that whatever was going on around me in the dream wasn't actually real. Despite this, I was often left 'locked in' in my dreams and there was nothing I could do to wake myself up and I just had to endure them until they ended - though sometimes frantically 'kicking my legs' to wake me up could work. It's was a very surreal state to experience being in, but it wasn't always pleasant. I often found myself being 'locked in' during nightmares and more sinister dreams, as opposed to the more pleasant dreams.
Interestingly, I only experienced the lucid dreaming when I increased the dosage of Venlafaxine to the point in which its effects on Dopamine are thought to kick in, which is at ~300mg. Though I was actually taking 450mg XR, which I think is actually 75mg above the maximum licensed dose for use in the UK?
The lucid dreams and sweating both finally stopped when I could no longer cope with them and switched over to plain old Prozac. However, it didn't really help so I then switched over to
Agomelatine to try out as a novel 'antidepressant' which,
inter alia, increases the release of dopamine in the frontal cortex. After a few weeks of being on it, I was experiencing the horrible lucid dreams again and had to stop. Once I did, the lucid dreams went away...
My Psychiatrist kept a close eye on me with everything that he prescribed and was well aware of the lucid dreaming issues. He said it's quite rare to suffer to the extent that I did, but that a lot of patients do experience 'dopamine dreams' and that the role of dopamine and the influence that it has on our dreams is increasingly being studied.
TL;DR: Duloxetine and Venlafaxine didn't help with my depression and only gave me night-sweats and whack dreams.
