Mental Health what antidepressants have actually worked for you?

[Mycophile]

Have you talked to a doctor and/or therapist?

It's good you're able to work as a teacher.

It's possible to stop Klonopin. If you decide to just make sure you taper off to minimize withdrawal and acknowledge (so you can plan to address) the causes of your anxiety. If the side effects are bothering you be glad when they're not. The withdrawal doesn't last forever either. Try to manage environmental stress as much as possible so it doesn't bother you as much.

I haven't found an antidepressant that works. Masking the symptoms can get you out of the door but you have to address the cause to make progress. Don't beat yourself up expecting overnight results. It's gradual. First step may just be recognizing what is causing the depression and anxiety. Here's a hint that took me too long to figure out: You're in control of what you do to make your life better.

Moderating caffeine does help, and so does purposefully choosing what you do each day, being okay with not getting everything done, going to sleep on time, eating right, remembering to make time to have fun, working on your relationships etc. You're worth taking care of yourself. Be okay with making a good effort every day.

You mentioned psychedelic drugs a few times. How are you using them and what for? What benefits are you seeing from them?

I worry about eye contact. It isn't a big deal. Most people worry too much what others think of them.

You can choose constructive behavior. Everyone has self destructive thoughts but you don't have to act them out. Have you tried yoga or mindfulness meditation?

I have talked to a lot of doctors and therapists.

I'm going to see a new one pretty soon, but just a therapist, not a psychiatrist.

I kind of need a new one, but I'll get around to it.

The last time I used any kind of psychedelic was like 10 years ago or so when I last took shrooms as I don't have source for any right now and I've never quite had the guts to order RC psychs online or figure out how bitcoin works, though I would like to.

I would definitely like to grow shrooms and just use them for both fun and to gain perspective and for depression on the weekends, but my current set up isn't adequate for growing right now.

I have only done a little Yoga and I have tried some meditation but it's been a long time.

I did neurofeedback too but it didn't really work which sucked. I had a lot of hope for it and I could feel it have effects while doing it in session but they didn't last.

You are right that people are in control of what they do to get better.

I don't know, I don't know if I'll ever be able to completely get off Klonopin, or if I can do it it will take a lot of effort, so at the moment I'm not trying to get off of it.

 

[Factualist]

I think Wellbutrin can be good for some people with major depression if you have a lot of physical symptoms and issues with concentration and motivation. And up until a couple weeks ago I would've said Wellbutrin along with Lamictal works for me. It worked great for a lot of the depressive symptoms of bipolar like anhedonia, lack of motivation, overeating (on 300mg XR I had to force myself to eat, and often didn't cause fuck not losing weight when you don't even have to try), energy, etc. but at this point it seems once again it's started to do the same thing SSRIs do but in a different way, which is send me into mania. It started causing really bad insomnia or rather made my already bad sleeping patterns worse, to the point for weeks I slept for a few hours every OTHER night, and now that things are getting really bad I haven't slept in two nights and I'm on my way to work at 4am on the dawn of the third day. My best guess is the constant stimulation from the Wellbutrin as well as the stimulants I use to function during days caused it. Might have to do a couple week run on an anti-psychotic unfortunately, might try a new one, fuck Abilify, Invega, Seroquel, in that order Seroquel I don't mind as much, at least it's kind of comfy. Abilify absolutely SUCKED, terrible extrapyridal side-effects, all sorts of tremors, cramps, constantly on edge, irritable, made my anxiety so much worse and started getting panic attacks way more frequently. Once got Haldol in a psychward, that was actually legitimately nice, but idk if they're prescribe that. Thankfully my doc agrees people with only episodic mania/psychosis shouldn't be on these things daily indefinitely, they're pretty destructive drugs, very very helpful for certain situations but it comes at a cost.

I'd honestly say more than anything Lamictal has helped greatly with the more emotional sides of depression which are quite a bit worse for me anyway, and usually keeps me from getting too high on the other end but not as well as it works for depression. IIRC lithium works better for that side of things, and of course neuroleptics I don't think they prescribe Lamictal as a monotreatment for MDD, but if you have mood swings as a huge part of it they'll definitely add it, even if you don't have something like bipolar or borderline personality, It's a great drug ime, absolutely NO cognitive side-effects, I only really noticed how much it helps when I lost a bottle and had to go without it for 5 days. Rough 5 days. And TERRIFYING physical symptoms it being an anticonvulsant I have taken daily at max dose for over a year now, constant shaking, tremors, stuttering when I talked, couldn't get words out, really lucky I didn't have a full-blown seizure. tl;dr Wellbutrin is good, Lamictal is great for me, works best on depressive symptoms which are whats worse for me, no psychoactive effect whatsoever, no flat feeling whatsoever, still a very flighty excitable person, just not to the extremes where I do dangerous things. The doctor may prescribe it if you think it's right for you, especially if you have emotional problems as part of depression, and if you have bipolar, definitely go the anticonvulsant route unless you have SEVERE mania all the time, since they're so much better for you than lithium

 

[LadyAlkaline]

CELEXA.

BEST EVER.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Firstly, none of the traditional SSRIs etc helped me. If anything all they did was make my symptoms worse mostly by fully killing off any remaining emotion I had left (apathy is a major symptom of depression at least for me).

Ketamine will straight up treat mild to moderate depression, often light depression will even just disappear for a bit. I find S-isomer is best. I seem to get SAD and ketamine sorts that out very well.

Opiates can fix depression too but only in the very short-term due to the obvious tolerance buildup issues. And I found once I have a habit my mood actually worsens in the long run. So I recommend against opiates. One pharma company recently tried to license buprenorphine for depression but the FDA rejected it. I think that was more down to side effects rather than tolerance interestingly though.

Since we're discussing anxiety here too, benzos work wonders! The trick is to keep the dose at the lowest effective therapeutic range and use them PRN only. With PRN use you should be able to keep using the same dose without tolerance to the anxiolysis becoming a concern. I've used various benzos over a number of years and easily a dose as low as 1mg of alprazolam or clonazepam is enough for me. With alprazolam I can often even go as low as 0.5mg.

And for both depression and anxiety, I really think the classic psychedelics like LSD can help significantly also. They're like an intense therapy session going on inside your head. As we're seeing with the MAPS research even MDMA, not even a proper psychedelic, is assisting in treatment for PTSD, social anxiety, autism, and others. MAPS also did a study into LSD for end of life anxiety and IIRC the participants got on average a 20% decrease in their anxiety levels for a full year without taking other meds for it. But this is psychedelic assisted therapy so for it to do its job you want a therapist trained to do it properly in a controlled setting. When that starts to take off again - and I do believe it will eventually - it's gonna change the game.