Hi all. I am a 40 year old male from the US. I posted a bit on AZ before they shut it down. I was very happy when i saw that Ian had found a new home at No More Panic. He is has a wealth of information and is always willing to share it. So most of my questions are for him but anyone else is welcome to chime in.
A not so quick summary of how i got to this point and hopefully it jogs Ian's mind about who i am. I started taking 50mg of Zoloft when i was 19 for anxiety. I would get better stop taking have a relapse and get back on it. This went on for the next 5 years until i graduated college got a job working in a cubical for a financial company. At this point i had a break down quit my job and went up to 100mg of Zoloft. After a rough couple months i recovered and started teaching tennis. Over the next 5 years life was pretty good. I got married, had a couple of kids bought a house. Man i was living the dream (mostly). During this time i would have a few setbacks here and there but nothing to seriously. Anxiety would show its face from time to time but for the most part i was able to get through it.
Five years later (2008) i had a very rough summer. There was nothing in particular that would cause my anxiety to come on. It just seemed to have a mind of its own. At this point i went up to 150mg for about 1.5 months then up to 200 after that. After a couple months i seemed to stabilize and went on with my life. Over the next few years i would once again have little periods (mostly a couple weeks) where i didn't feel right but nothing i wasn't able to manage. I then went about 4 years with nothing. I was even able to go to the Philippines with my family which i would have never been able to do before. In the fall of 2015 i dropped my dose down to 150mg. i did this mostly because my main side effect was being tired. It didn't help much with the sleepiness but it didn't affect my anxiety state either. That is until march of last year.
Last March i had i pretty big relapse so my pdoc decided to put me back on 200mgs. After about 5 weeks of hell i started to come out of it and it was time to get going with life again. At the beginning of June it all came crashing down on me again. i was very frustrated and scared not wanting to deal with this again after such a short period of relief. In the past i had never had an episode so quickly again. So we tried buspar which didn't seem to do anything (although i don't think i gave it a fair enough chance), enlyte which didn't do anything as well. So after another 6 weeks of struggle we decided to try a new med.
Enter Celexa. I started on 20 mg. The funny thing is at around this time i was starting to feel better. I never made it to feeling 100% but i definitely had a good month in a half. Around this time though the anxiety started to come back so we slowly increased my dose to 40mg. Over the next 6 to 8 weeks i was still not improving so we decided to try something else.
Next on the list was cymbalta. I started at 60mg. I would have some decent times but mostly rough ones. We then moved it to 90 and eventually 120 by the middle of December. I slowly started to improve where January i felt ok and February i was pretty close to 100%. Until i about a week ago the anxiety started creeping back in to the point where the last couple days i felt pretty miserable.
Sorry for the long post but now it is on to the questions.
1. Ian do you remember my post from AZ last year?
2. What next? I'm pretty discourage at the moment. Should i just stick it out on the cymbalta for a bit long to see if i can come out of it? Im not suposse to see the doc again till the end of the month. Ive tried 2 ssri and now an snri and im having trouble finding something that clicks with me. I know TCAs are an option but im a bit concerned with these. I know they have more side effects. Plus i believe there is some interactions with food and alcohol. (I could be wrong here)
3. I recently had a physical and blood work. I came back with low white blood cell count. My pdoc thinks it is probably from the cymbalta but she doesn't know for sure so i am in the process of making an appointment with a hematologist. Have you heard of ADs causing a decrease in white blood cells.
4. In the blood work it also showed that i have the double recessive gene in the mthfr 677C>T. So about 2 weeks ago i started taking enltye again. Do you think this is a waste of time or something that could help me. I seem to have gotten worse since i started on it. Although that is probably just a coincident.
Thanks for the replies in advance. I am sure i will have some more questions soon.