On Sun, 16 Mar 1997 10:39:24 +0000, Michael & Tracey
Quote:
>Well it's a little early to be declaring victory but I wanted to share
>my good results thus far. My zoloft died on me after 4 + good years. I
>tried a number of other meds to no avail. About a month ago my md was
>out of town and I was desperate so I thought I would give tyrosine a
>try. My reasoning followed the dopamine depletion theory that is
>implicated in ssri poop out. It seems that serotonin and dopamine act
>reciprically through a negative feedback loop. In other words if
>serotonin goes up dopamine comes down. Anecdotally, Dr's have had good
>success with dopamine agonists. tyrosine is the precursor to dopamine
>and a number of other neurotransmitters in a family called the
>catecholamines.
>To make a long story short I responded after 3 days of 1500 mg of
>tyrosine and have now had 26 good days. My concentration is even
>better than before poop out. Ironically while I had begun this
>self-medicating my doctor was at a conference discussing the use of
>tyrosine in refractory depression.
>A WARNING: TYROSINE CAN NOT BE TAKEN WITH MAO INHIBITORS OR ANY OTHER
>AD'S THAT WORK ON DOPAMINE OR NOREPINEPHRINE. THIS includes the the
>tricyclics. So any augmentation should be done under a dr's
>supervision.
>ANyhow I thought it was important that I share my story as this is a
>significant concern to the group. good luck
>Mike
I'm happy that tyrosine has worked for you and thank you for
sharing your story. My diagnosis is obsessive-compulsive disorder but
what I mostly feel is chronic depression, social phobia (I almost
never leave the house because I feel very uncomfortable around people)
and being obsessive about stuff. I myself had Paxil turn my life
around, but only for about 8 months until it pooped out on me too. I
have since tried about 10 medications including the tricyclics, an
MAOI and Buspar, but all do the same strange thing to me, first they
make me feel better (I swear it's not the placebo effect, my
psychiatrists always think it's the placebo effect) but then after a
few days the good effect wears off and about a week later I'm actually
feeling even worse than my original state before taking the
medication. To make them work again I have to restart them about a
week later, but only to get them to work for 3 more days, obviously
this isn't the way to go. Strange thing is that the tryciclic
(desipramine) which mostly effects norepephrine worked for up to a
week in contrast to the SSRI'S, which all stop working after no more
than 3 days. Buspar also worked for a whole week. My theory is that
since the tricyclics effect norepephrine and the SSRI'S effect
serotonin, my brain needs more norepephrine than serotonin, but still
the tricyclic still poops out so I don't know.
I always search for stuff about tolerance and poop outs, but
its scarce, more people encounter stuff that doesn't work and talk
about that as supposed to stuff that works but then poops out. When I
read your post, I found it very interesting. I have brought L-tyrosine
and plan to see if it works for me. I was gonna try St. John's
hypericum, the herb that I hear so much about, but when I read your
post I decided I would try tyrosine first, since we've both had
medications poop out in common. I hope it works for me as well as it
did for you.
If they don't work I'm gonna see what happens with a medication
that works on dopamine, I'm gonna tell my psychiatrist to prescribe
Wellbutrin to me since I haven't tried anything in that category yet.
Actually I have tried Ritalin with Paxil to test out the dopamine
theory but Ritalin also stopped working after a few days and I had to
raise the dose a couple of times to get it to keep working, though
Ritalin usually creates tolerance in most people. I used it for about
a week, but it really doesn't work all that well with Paxil, I don't
know maybe it works well alone since Paxil was probably making me feel
worse at the same time, but Ritalin creates tolerance anyway so
eventually it would stop working.
One thing about my poop out is that I first tried a medication
(Paxil) after I fell into a major depression that left me unable to
concentrate (as if I was senile) and in a very frightened depressed
state after it reached it's peak and I remained that way for about 5
months until I decided to try Paxil. When I took Paxil it worked right
away and I got better and better, but slowly I went back to being the
way I was before I fell into my major depression, that is being
chronically depressed. That is the strange thing about the
medications, for me it seems that they will work if I'm in that state
where I was left after my major depression, but for the chronic state
I am in now and was also before my major depression, it doesn't seem
to work. Strange huh, this chronic depression is a stubborn son of a
{*filter*}. Your lucky you got Zoloft to work as long as it did. I don't
know about you, but Paxil made an enormous difference, not only was I
very very happy, I was able to socialize. I long for the way I was
when I was on it. Oh well, I'm hoping the tyrosine will be a miracle
for me (don't we all think the same thing about the next thing we
take). What made you try tyrosine anyhow, you say doctors have had
success with dopamine agonists, but tyrosine isn't one of the ones
that are usually thought of as being a dopamine agonist like
bromocriptine or Ritalin.
I read something interesting about tyrosine in my encyclopedia.
Under a section that says "the hormones of the thyroid", it says that
tyrosine is one of the materials necessary to produce the hormones
secreted by the thyroid gland. That tyrosine has something to do with
the thyroid gland makes me think that since it helped you maybe the
thyroid gland could have something to do with your depression, I don't
know about me because I haven't tried it yet, but I plan on getting my
thyroid gland thouroughly checked to make sure it's not that.
Again, thank you for sharing your story and good luck to all of
us who have been pooped out or who don't respond.
ssri poop out success story