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Re: Re: Re: Any Recoveries? |
| Name: |
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Jeff |
| Date Posted: |
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May 24, 08 - 4:55 PM |
| Email: |
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info@depersonalization.info |
| Message: |
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I will try to answer carefully and honestly. It forces me to look back and remember the stream of events, the symptoms, the search for help, and eventually, effective help. But remember, I am an anecdote, a single case history, not a clinical study providing proof of anything.
Like you, my DPD was triggered by pot, many years ago, before SSRIs, before people even knew what panic attacks were. It began with an extreme panic reaction and the fear that I had wrecked by brain. In the morning, incredibly, I felt fine, thankful that I hadn't done permanent damage. But then, inexplicably, these severe panic attacks came back at night, for several days. Within a week or so, I settled into pure, hardcore DPD. Periods of nervousness, and the complete feeling of a disintegrated mind followed for months. I went to a doctor who thought I had mononucleosis. Time passed, the panic attacks subsided, but the extreme discomfort in my head, the feeling of separation of mind and body, and the loss of "self" persisted for years, even as I adapted to it and finished college. This went on, to varying degrees for years, as I said, but, I soon found, every few years I would hit a crisis point—a point at which I could no longer cope with it. At that point the panic attacks would resume. Panic had caused the DPD, and living with DPD in turn threw me back into panic disorder. Whether any of this involves "depression" is a matter of who you ask. At no point did I feel down or "depressed." I only felt that my head/mind was fractured, ruined, a place of misery, even thoigh my intellectual skills were in tact.
Ultimately, during these low cycles or the worst misery, fear and inability to function, I went to more serious doctors. One prescribed TRIAVIL, an older antidepressant. Within a few weeks I was much better and improved to about 85- 95 percent "normal." It was good enough for me. Then, after a few years weaned off the Triavil, A crisis came again. Only this time, it didn't work. Nothing seemed to as I tried drug after drug. In time I wanted to kill myself—not because I was depressed, I wasn't—but because I was no more than a container of anxiety and unreality in human form. I could not live that way another day. I feared what my brain would do next, and what I might do as a result. By some miracle, a friend referred me to Oscar Janiger, (who is mentioned in our Overview). He knew exactly what I had and for the first time I heard the words Depersonalization Syndrome. He prescribed a powerful monoamineoxidase inhibitor called marplan. Within a few days, I improved. Within a few weeks I felt better than I had in years. I remained on this med for many years. Then, a few years ago, the company announced that they were no longer going to produce it. In a panic, I tried Nardil and Parnate (two other MAOIs) and they didn't work. I thought it was all over again as I sank into a whirlpool of anxiety and dysfunction. Luckily, before long, i was able to receive a "compassionate" supply from the drug company, and after a strong grass roots effort, Oxford Pharmaceuticals stepped in and began manufacturing it again. Patients, it turned out, knew something that the durg companies themselves didn't even know—that there are subtle differences between these drugs, despite their generic overall category. In this case, marplan helped some people when other MAOIs did not. So, what do I recommend? I really can't do anything except relay this, my story, and tell you what the most recent research seems to indicate In clinical trials, the newer tricyclic called Anafranil has probably had the most success. DPD clearly involves much more than serotonin levels, so SSRI's have shown to be pretty worthless, unless you have mild depression. Anafranil, like marplan, affects several neurotransmitters at once, and there's good reason to think it will help. Marplan is a suggestion if all else fails, because of my own experience, and because of a trail of anecdotal case histories going back many decades when Sir Martin Roth, a British expert in DPD, began trying it with some of his patients. In some cases it worked. I myself have recommended it to a number of people, for some it helped tremendously, for others it had no effect at all. There is a lot of thinking among the people who study and treat DPD that something that "wakes up" a patient to some degree may have more impact that meds that "deaden" them, like benzos. The MAOI's will indeed make you manic if you take to much. Anyway, I hope this helps. You will not find any rays of hope about marplan in the book I co-wrote with Dr. Simeon (Feeling Unreal). Trials using MAOIs as a treatment for DPD indicated they had no affect at all. My contention is that the proper MAOI was not used. Ultimately, I reached of point of nothing to lose. Perhaps you feel the same. Maybe try Anafranil first, then let's talk. |
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