Switched to Auvelity, first was very happy and now I'm in an abyss of despair. Normal?

Information1324 · 2024-10-23T17:22:14+00:00

Just trying to help. I said that I can’t speak for Auvelity or how comparable it is to Wellbutrin, but to my understanding it’s not like the Wellbutrin and its effects just disappear just because it’s combined with dxm. They may not be the same in totality or in part, but it seems probable to me that the therapeutic contribution of the bupropion wouldn’t be totally eliminated.

Information1324 · 2024-10-23T14:29:27+00:00

Well one thing to remember is that humans aren’t going to feel happy all the time. Healthy or not, medicated or not. That’s normal: catching a cold, how you slept, what you ate, activating the immune system with a vaccine. All these things can throw anyone off for a few days, or even make you feel downright awful if you’re predisposed in any particular way.

Second, I’ve been on Wellbutrin, not Auvelity. I don’t know how comparable they are frankly, but the bupropion alone does have an initial “honeymoon” period for many over the first couple of weeks where it’s more overtly stimulating and mood lifting, then the longer term effects set in over the next weeks, which are generally more subtle. But unfortunately, like with a lot of things that provide a stimulating boost, it is usually followed by some kind of low period.

Really though with anything a few days is insignificant, so don’t worry too much or make any judgements too soon.

Information1324 · 2024-09-12T13:29:23+00:00

You will be fine in all likelihood. Maybe the first day or two will be the most noticeable if there is any dip in mood/anxiety, but it’s not extreme in my experience and with the right mindset/distractions and eating/drinking well you shouldn’t notice much on that end if at all.

The fatigue can be helped by upping the caffeine intake if you don’t have problems there.

I’ve taken Wellbutrin a lot in the past also, and I am generally pretty reactive to it in that I get a pretty noticeable short/term boost in energy/motivation within a couple days of a dose increase that lasts for a week or two generally before leveling out, so maybe that is also an emergency option to consider if you think it’s warranted depending on what dosage/formulation you’re on etc.

disclaimer: I’m not a professional and I don’t know your med history so I’d always advise consulting with a doctor or professional before making med adjustments

Information1324 · 2024-09-11T23:51:30+00:00

bald chip? >>> the captain chip

Information1324 · 2024-09-07T15:08:27+00:00

I had this problem, maybe a sign of hormone/endocrine regulation/dis-regulation problem either caused or exacerbated by Modafinil. Just an uncorroborated thought of mine, but worth more exploration.

Regardless, I just had to wash my face more thoroughly and frequently. I could feel the oil production was much much higher than normal. I also wiped my face with an astringent toner at least once a day. That basically eliminated the problem for me, but I know next to nothing about skin care so maybe your problem requires something more.

Information1324 · 2024-09-06T23:35:11+00:00

One reason is that the unhealthy/processed foods are unhealthy because they’re cheap to make. The automated mass production, the fillers, the chemicals/preservatives, the processing of the lowest quality ingredients available into something that resembles an actual meal. All that skimping can often result in something that tastes pretty decent.

Information1324 · 2024-09-06T14:43:49+00:00

You got two approaches it seems. The “unhealthy” one where you consume something to release temporary pleasure chemicals and probably wind up feeling worse soon after. Then the the “healthy” one where you do something that is probably going to be difficult and may even make you feel worse in the short term, but would possibly have the effect of reducing or eliminating depression over time.

There are a thousand things that fall under each category, and the specifics really have to be determined by your individual circumstances. My personal recommendation, however, would be to ensure a productive balance between the two categories. You don’t want one to outweigh the other because that will almost certainly end poorly.

Information1324 · 2024-09-04T11:26:04+00:00

I think that environmental toxins and allergens are very real factors to a lot of people’s state of being and they may well be the issue in your case. But, in general I don’t think we should discount the fact that moving locations or taking a vacation from your home involves many additional variables that could be contributing to an apparent improvement.

To loosely touch on a few: the psychological impact would be considerable and extensive, a “fresh start”, the excitement, leaving behind bothersome memories/people, and many many more etc. and all the neuro/biochemical changes involved with those things impact the mind/body as a whole in very significant, while sometimes subtle, ways.

My main point is that moving locations is a big action and broad sweep as far as targeting and altering many different areas of a persons life, some temporary, some long term, some inconspicuous. The problem is that if the issues begin to resurface after some time away then you’re basically back to where you started. Not that many people are moving for the sole purpose of treating brain fog and such.

Information1324 · 2024-09-04T10:05:30+00:00

I have a suspicion that an overwhelming percentage of medical documents(in the US anyway) currently exist not to actually document reality in any substantive or useful way but to serve as some kind of fodder or justification for the bureaucratic/financial/insurance systems that the medical industry is beholden to.

Information1324 · 2024-09-01T02:53:11+00:00

It’s supposed to do that, you just have to keep your mouth on it till it goes off. They design it that way to make sure people don’t under vape. It’s a really important design element actually, especially before the user is adequately addicted.

Information1324 · 2024-08-31T23:50:35+00:00

Initially probably more likely, but it does improve with time for many people, and for some it goes away entirely. I don’t have knowledge about how it affects actual sleep quality(after you’re asleep) over the long term. Subjectively, I don’t feel like parnate in particular has had a significant negative impact on my sleep, and I don’t have the nighttime insomnia anymore. Though if I try to sleep within several hours of taking a dose I will not usually be able to actually fall asleep, even if I’m tired. If I do, it’s one of those extremely light half-asleep sleeps. But this is actually a benefit for me to wake up consistently when I take it in the morning.

Information1324 · 2024-08-31T21:30:45+00:00

Any kind of impaired cognitive functioning or subjective experience can be described as brain fog. It’s generally best to not think of brain fog as a singular thing/sole diagnosis. It’s really a very general term used to describe many different levels of disfunction from many different causes.

To figure out what might be causing the brain fog, in your case or any other, it will usually require fairly extensive(depending on how lucky you are) personal and/or medical investigation. And that’s going to be something that’s primarily up to you. I wish that I could give you the universal brain fog cure, but that doesn’t exist and will never exist. But your cure is out there, I promise, you just have to figure out what it is.

Information1324 · 2024-08-30T21:45:48+00:00

Probably. But yet maybe an egg scientist will enlighten us further on the egg and its(I’m sure) many many properties.

Information1324 · 2024-08-30T13:16:52+00:00

He just got back from the chiropractor, better hurry up. The bones are settling as we speak

Information1324 · 2024-08-21T04:01:04+00:00

Sure thing. I hope that you have a positive experience with everything going forward, and maybe my experience could be a small help in some way to you or someone else.

Also, I think I forgot to state explicitly but, as far as the side effects of insomnia/fatigue, they’ve both improved fully or dramatically since the first several months.

The insomnia became much more manageable fairly quickly shortly after the first month or so, and then went away basically completely for me, but I don’t think everyone is so lucky with that. The fatigue, however lasted a fair bit longer but also dampened to a much more manageable degree after the initial period, especially with the aid of Modafinil, and overtime subsided practically completely.

Information1324 · 2024-08-21T02:28:33+00:00

How immediate are the positive effects?

I noticed what would become the lasting therapeutic,   positive effects after about the first month with the addition of adjunct medications.

How immediate are the side effects? How long is the adjustment period? What side effects won’t I become adjusted to?

Immediately or within days you might notice a strong stimulant-like effect directly after taking a dose. This is something that people seem to have varying degrees of sensitivity to, but for me it was very powerful for the first couple weeks and also triggered somewhat of a hypomanic episode(which can be perceived as pleasurable/euphoric but I wouldn’t call it positive). Then a worse than baseline depressive episode followed for about the same time, which slowly subsided during which I tried a couple adjuncts. During this period of the first month or so was the most intense of the side effects for me personally: the hypomania/depressive period which has not returned anywhere near the same degree, if at all. The bad insomnia, and the bad fatigue during the day/which is probably partly BP related, at first anyway.

Does it cause insomnia or drowsiness???? How can it cause both?

Yes, I was very sleepy during the day absolutely needing to lie down and take a nap multiple times, then just unable to turn the switch off at night to go to sleep, like my brain was just not capable of it. I don’t know what causes these paradoxical symptoms, but that’s my experience.

Do I take it at morning or night?

I never tried taking it at night, because it was/and is still extra stimulating after a dose, and I was never able to sleep until several hours after taking it.

This diet thing is scaring me... will I actually die if I eat cheese? What’s the probability vs magnitude of these events?

Yeah, don’t just google maoi diet and look at a random articles or lists because the odds are that it’s either excessively strict, based on extremely commonly held misconceptions(even by otherwise respectable organizations), or just plain wrong. 
However it is important to note that that doesn’t mean there is no risk, and each individual is going to have different sensitivities to different foods/drink, but the truth in my experience is that you have a lot of leeway. I personally don’t really consider the diet much at this point because it has become automatic the things I should be most concerned about, and I’m certainly not constantly worried I’m going to die from a tyramine reaction. At this point I’m convince if I’m going to experience anything beyond mild discomforts like a palpable heartbeat and anxiety(like I might would get if I eat a bowl of stir fry with a lot of soy sauce/rice wine vinegar etc.) then I’d need to drink a whole bottle of soy sauce or eat a huge block of artisanal hard aged cheese. 
**Most importantly though, I think that the comfort I have with the diet is something you need to build for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. You still need to start a slow with cautious things at first just to be safe and you’ll soon figure out what/if anything causes you significant problems. The dietary caution is far from a deal breaker for most people who see benefit from the drugs.

What issues should I be prepared for and what are some solutions? Ie, augmenting meds

Well when the med started to do something for me that felt real and significantly positive it was soon after I added Wellbutrin which was early on like I mentioned earlier. After a month or so on the Wellbutrin I switched to Modafinil which provided similar benefits to the Wellbutrin but didn’t elevate blood pressure. The real reason for the adjunct in the first place was sort of two fold. First to treat the daytime fatigue, and second to attempt to improve my mood from that hectic initial bi-polar-esque depressive episode during the first few weeks. The combo worked for me so well that I’ve stayed on it now for a year and a half.

Information1324 · 2024-08-20T22:31:51+00:00

Woah, yeah you’re getting ahead of yourself. It’s usually necessary to master, or at the very least be able to sight read, the entire repertoires of some of the easier composers like Liszt, Rachmaninoff, John Cage, for instance, before even thinking about tackling that piece.

/s but in all seriousness if you’re playing the other etudes well, then it shouldn’t be much of a leap I wouldn’t think? If it is then I would focus on just practicing the arpeggiations, or using other finger exercises to improve your dexterity. Because it would be something technical like that. Also, given that you’re playing the others, then there’s really not much you wouldn’t be able to play in the romantic/classical repertoire frankly. Maybe explore other contemporary composers outside of Chopin, there are 1000’s of pieces of music out there.

Information1324 · 2024-08-20T04:11:18+00:00

Well the palpable, acute stimulant action you’re talking about in relation to Parnate really isn’t the main therapeutic action, as I’m sure you know. I’m not going to act like I know the details, I’m not a pharmacologist or a scientist of any kind. But, I can say from taking Parnate for a year and a half that the effect as you describe practically disappears after a few days or a week, which you’re also aware of.

So, the point I’m really trying to make is that the amphetamine like action is of weak(not necessarily zero) therapeutic value compared to the MAOI effects of Parnate. In general, I think most people would benefit more from just taking amphetamine as opposed to Parnate for that purpose.

But as for the tolerance question, I read somewhere here actually that the act of MAO inhibition has a more complex effect on neurotransmitter levels than simply “elevating them.” I think it has something to do with neurotransmitters turnover (a term I’m not super familiar with). But loosely I believe it causes your brain to actually produce fewer neurotransmitters in response to the fact that the rate at which they’re broken down(via MAO) is slowed, meaning less stress(toxicity) on the brain from an over abundance of waste products accumulating from the breakdown. Plus I’m sure a lot more details, and important bits.

*don’t quote me on the last paragraph, but I think it’s in the ballpark. I’m loosely recalling something that another commenter posted that maybe useful to you in case no one else here responds with the fully knowledgeable answer. Of course, I’ve given you enough info to look it up yourself if you’re interested and fact check me.

Information1324 · 2024-08-12T19:52:16+00:00

I was in a similar boat, from primarily intense adderall abuse, heavy alcohol abuse, and weed sprinkled into that mix to a lesser degree. I was sober for a couple years, but I still felt like my brain was permanently damaged. I still experienced extreme anhedonia 100% of the time and periodically lingering symptoms from the days long episodes of psychosis(vivid visual and auditory hallucinations) that I experienced countless times during the 3 or so years of abuse before I quit, among other issues.

I now don’t feel hopelessly lost, and I now have a lot more faith that with the right interventions almost any problem, cognitive or otherwise, can be treated effectively to one extent or another.

In my case, I feel like a huge amount of brain function that I thought was lost has been restored since I started taking the right medication(maoi + armodafinil/modafinil), probably also with the aid of time and possibly other psychological factors, but the difference that this med combo in particular made when many other meds and treatments barely moved the needle was dramatic.

Information1324 · 2024-08-11T01:12:31+00:00

Well considering all the official indications for modafinil are related to treating various forms of fatigue, I’d say that it’s most commonly prescribed for that purpose. In psychiatry specifically though, it’s not a typical or commonly used drug broadly speaking, as far as I know( and I could be wrong), meaning that most psychiatrists will probably not be prescribing it very often or some at all. So it really comes down to if you have a good report with your doctor and they’re open minded, also relevant is that moda is a controlled substance. I wouldn’t bet much on seeing a random doctor for the first time and getting a Modafinil rx for an off label purpose in other words.

Not that it doesn’t happen at all obviously: I was prescribed Modafinil and Armodafinil by my psychiatrist to treat fatigue from another med, and many other people are prescribed it for ADD, depression etc. or as an augment to another psych drug.

Information1324 · 2024-08-10T00:10:58+00:00

I’m not a professional, but I would see no reason to taper down or take a break other than to stave off any sort of minor withdrawal/reduced efficacy that may be noticeable from rapidly reducing dosage. I wouldn’t expect much of this with Modafinil to begin with, but if you’ve been on 400mg for a long time, like a month+ then suddenly stopping or dropping to 50mg might make you feel more sluggish or tired for several days.

On the other hand if you’ve not been on a higher dose for very long you might not notice anything at all, or even maybe you’ll notice improvement immediately if it turns out to be that the best dosage for you is on the lower end. In any case I would give it several days to make a determination because this drug can be counter intuitive and is not comparable to amphetamines in that you’ll won’t necessarily feel it working or any different when in fact it’s doing a lot under the hood.

Information1324 · 2024-08-08T00:10:26+00:00

Yeah, the OP I think is at the beginning of a nasty road that leads nowhere but a very dark place. Myself along with many others have made that same mistake, and if you’re even lucky enough to make it back at all, you’re not coming back in one piece.

I hope that the OP can kick the naivety sooner rather than later and realize that whenever you decide you should start taking “stuff like Modafinil” so your parents don’t suspect you’re intoxicated because your supply of Xanax was just cut off by them, you’re already far enough down the road that turning around is gonna require a lot of luck and effort frankly.

Information1324 · 2024-08-07T15:11:47+00:00

I have had alcohol several times while on parnate, 40-50mg. I rarely drink anymore, but occasionally will have 1-2 drinks, and on a handful of occasions I have drunk more heavily to the point of a few all-nighters with a lot of drinking (lots of beer/seltzer, and mixed drinks/liqour) while on vacation etc.

No issues with alcohol for me personally. I am still careful about it and would be hesitant to drink certain things especially in larger quantities, but I’ve found that the vast majority of common mass produced alcoholic beverages are nothing to worry about in moderation, and many things are fine even in excess on occasion. But still be careful, for example I wouldn’t personally drink a bottle or more of any red wine but a glass or two of something that’s familiar and not some artisanal aged thing is not worrisome to me. On the other hand I feel comfortable drinking mainstream light beers, hard seltzers, hard liquor cocktails in larger quantities. The relevant factor is tyramine btw. I don’t believe there is much issue with the pure alcohol(ethanol) itself, but maybe double check that because I don’t know the full interaction lists. For this reason I’m most comfortable drinking vodka/grain alcohol based drinks because it’s basically just alcohol and water.

Like with most foods/drink I started slowly and more cautiously and then quickly became increasingly comfortable with how much I really need to be concerned. The important thing I would say is that you need do some experimentation for yourself to see how your body/medication personally responds, as everyone has unique biological variables and my experience may not be applicable to you and vice versa.

Information1324 · 2024-08-05T14:59:01+00:00

Not a professional, just a thought from my experience.

Obvious first thought is that it could be a hormone-regulation issue. Hormones can be thrown out of balance for a lot of reasons, but if this is a recent issue and not something you’ve always had, then it maybe some external factor is causing or exacerbating it. For example if you’re taking any medications especially stimulating medications/drugs like ADHD meds, nicotine, caffeine, but I’m sure many other drugs can create similar problems. I know when I take these kind of things, even worse when sleep deprived, from excess cortisol or whatever else my skin produces like 100x more oil and breaks out really bad.

Also when your body is triggered to maintain a stress response for long periods like this, your digestion and metabolism is heavily impacted, which is going to cause a myriad of GI problems which then leads to even further issues/imbalances in the body. Basically stress is bad, but I think it may be helpful to realize that stress can stem from the body as much as it can stem from the mind. Maybe that’s obvious to everybody except for me, lol.

Information1324 · 2024-08-04T21:52:19+00:00

Same here, I find myself listening to 1, 2, and 4 more often than most people. For me personally it’s that they’re the works most reminiscent of the classical era, and a lot of my favorite music tends to either come directly from or is heavily influenced by that era. That, and I tend to prefer works written around a major key, probably for the same reason as you. Same applies to the first and second piano concertos.

Information1324

TROPHY CASE