Misc Anyone Have Experience with Agomelatine?

I was prescribed this the other day to help combat my depression and lower my insatiable libido. It's a relatively new antidepressant. So these are my questions:

1. Has anyone found this drug to be effective in terms of alleviating depression?

2. Has anyone found that it significantly lowered his libido? And if so, does it lower it more so than SSRI antidepressants? (SSRIs simply made it harder for me to maintain an erection and ejaculate; it didn't really help lower my libido.)

3. This drug indirectly affects the liver, so is taking Percocets recreationally still do-able while on this drug? (I want to find out whether the combination of APAP and agomelatine may cause liver problems.)

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, guys.

Hey, I'm really interested in this drug as well! I'm going to ask my doctor to prescribe it in an attempt to combat pretty bad case of insomnia and also to alleviate depression. How do you take the drug, do you take it in the evening/before going to bed and do you find that it makes you sleepy?

FnX said:

Hey, I'm really interested in this drug as well! I'm going to ask my doctor to prescribe it in an attempt to combat pretty bad case of insomnia and also to alleviate depression. How do you take the drug, do you take it in the evening/before going to bed and do you find that it makes you sleepy?

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Well, I've only taken one dose (25 mg) so far. 50 mg is the maximum therapeutic dose. Its hypnotic effects aren't really that pronounced, nothing like the tricyclic antidepressant mirtazapine, or the anti-psychotic Seroquel. But I don't use agomelatine for insomnia (my Seroquel and olanzapine takes care of that aspect... for now).

The dose I've been told to take is 25 mg daily, orally, approximately 1 hour before I wish to go to sleep. Personally, if I were using an antidepressant primarily for its hypnotic-inducing effects, I would go with Remeron (mirtazapine), as it's far more sedating. However, weight can is almost inevitable -- the stuff gives you late-night munchies worse than pot.

It killed my libido. Most people say it has no affect on sex drive, but I found it diminished mine more than Prozac (although I've only been on the latter for three weeks.)

I've just moved from Luvox (fluvoxamine) to Agomelatine, which I'm taking along with 7.5 mg (a quarter of a tablet) of mirtazapine, mainly for major insomnia. At the moment it's giving me about six hours a night of sleep, which is not quite enough, and it's taking me an hour an half each night to get to sleep. But I think I will stick with it because, unlike the Luvox, it does not leave me slightly drugged during the day (I've been building my house, and on Luvox I have not wanted to do anything until about 3pm). I also like the much better orgasms.

The instructions which come with the Ago say not to take Luvox concurrently, but don't say how long a washout period one needs between them. A South African site recommended 3 days; another site says 8. I waited 4, and was zonked until about 10am the next day, with milder impairment until about 2pm. I took another Ago on day 6, with no ill effects the next day. So my advice would be to wait 6 days.

For what it is worth, my history is:

1991 - 1999: I took 5mg (a tiny dose) of amitriptyline each night, and slept like a baby. Unfortunately, the anticholinergic effects began to obtrude after 9 years, giving me a raging thirst which kept me up all night, drinking and visiting the loo.

1999 - c2001: I took 100mg of Luvox, which made me sleep at night, and half the afternoon as well. Not good.

c2001 - 2011: I took 25 mg (a fairly small dose) of Luvox each night, along with 7.5mg of mirtazapine. I also took a quarter of a zopiclone tablet each night, which got me to sleep in ten to fifteen minutes. This worked well. From time to time I would drop the zopiclone for a few months at a time, and would take 40 minutes to get to sleep.

2011: The zopiclone stopped working (and I stopped taking it). I had to increase the Luvox dose to 150mg per night, and increase the mirtazapine to 30mg, to get enough sleep. I could sit around and read, but work on the house petered out.

2013: By now, the higher dose of mirtazapine was leaving me thirsty, which meant I was getting up four or five times a night. Not good. Hence my move to Ago. I'm enjoying being alert during the day, though I'd like another hour of sleep. I'm hoping that the FDA approves Suvorexant soon, since I think that it might be the drug I've been waiting for.

I had a friend who did a open label trial for MK4305. Apparently if you stay awake on it you get crushing depression, and food tastes like wax. He was on a pretty heroic dose though. I too am watching this drug intently.

The melatonin agonists don't really leap out at me as major improvements however. They just seem really underwhelming from the research I've looked at. Granted I've been wrong before.