question about anti depressants.....

[katexxxx]

hi,
first of all i know that everyone is different when it comes to meds but i wanna ask this anyway.
wel ive taken 20mg citalopram for 2 years now,they do kind of help me but they make me quite tired and also i never 100% feel fully there,so someone told me peroxtine is better for anxiety.has anyone tried this and does it help better than citalopram??also ive tried goin up to 30mg but made me worse....
also,is it true that when you take tablets,you should change them every now and then becos your body gets used to them and they lose their full effects?

thanks xx

[Tyke]

Hi Kate

As far as I am aware there is no clear way of knowing what drug works best for anxiety. One persons ideal drug can be another persons nightmare! I am on Sertraline and that has helped me, but for a while I thought it wouldn't and my doctor said he would just try another one if I didn't get any relief. I wouldn't want to risk changing tablets now unless they stopped working. It is true that for some people they do stop working and they have to go on to something else, but this doesn't happen to everyone and some people stay on their drug for years if it is necessary.

I haven't any experience of Citalopram or Peroxitine, but if no one posts about these you can always try looking at the forum under medications for peoples experiences with these drugs to give you some idea.

Tyke

[suzy-sue]

They all make you feel tired lol .But you get used to it .well sort of it does get better with time usually and if you try taking it at a different time of day it might help .I know it did for me and has for others .:)If you increase you will feel worse for a while until you get used to it .4-6 weeks later you should see an improvement tho .Unless they have stopped working theres no need to change meds .They all basically do the same .Citalopram is the one that is mainly persribed and is good for Anxiety and Depression .Not one med suits all as the previous poster said .Sue x

[haz]

I personally found Paroxetine (Seroxat) to be THE best anti-depressant for anxiety. Despite it's bad press, and I started taking it in 1996 before all the "discontinuation" stuff came out in the media, I honestly believe it saved my life. I only came off it last June as it stopped working, I think this was/is due to hormonal changes (I'm 42yrs old). I was dreading coming off it as I was sure it would be horrendous. I was cross-tapered from seroxat onto escitalopram whilst in hospital with relatively few side effects. I was off Seroxat and onto escitalopram within two weeks. After five months of escitalopram, I had to admit it wasn't working for me which was really annoying as apart from initial insomnia and upset stomach, I had no side effects from it. Since then, I've spent another 11 weeks in hospital, tried Imipramine and am now on Sertraline. As Sue said, they're pretty much all the same but for SOME reason???? Some drugs suit people better than others.

I would consider going back on Paroxetine again at some stage in the future if my psychiatrist and myself thought it necessary.

Best Wishes.

Haz. x

[Jozone]

Hi

I started on Citalopram (sp?), but found I was putting on weight with them, although they did work. I then changed to Fluoxetine (Prozac) but these helped with depression but not the anxiety or panic.

I now take Sertraline, which I've been on for about a year. I find they help a lot, occasionally I get slightly panicked, like with vertigo etc, however I can get on the train fine (I used to have a real problem with this) and do most things.

I think its like anything else, give it time, if you don't feel its helping ask to be changed.

Good luck :yesyes:

[blueangel]

I used to work in a hospital pharmacy and whilst there, picked up quite a few useful bits of information about drugs and how they work. Quite a few drugs are grouped into different "families" (such as SSRIs, beta-blockers etc.) as they are all essentially but have very small chemical differences between them.

We're very similar - we're all made to the same "human being" recipe, but we all have minute differences in our body chemistry. Finding the right drug to suit us for a condition is, I suppose, a bit like finding the right piece for a jigsaw, which is why a number of people can all react differently to the same drug. At the moment, we don't have the technology to predict what will suit us best, so unfortunately it's a case of trial and error until we find the right one.

Personally, I've found citalopram fine - it gives me very few side effects and it seems to do the job. Of the modern anti-depressants, the one that didn't suit me was prozac; it made me feel very odd and gave me horrendous headaches, so I got it changed fairly quickly.