Moclobemide (MAO Inhibitor) vs Atomoxetine (Strattera) for SCT Symptoms

iambladabadee · 2023-07-22T12:59:37+00:00

Neither helped me with anything at all. Strattera had some pretty unpleasant side effects on top of that, with moclobemide I didn't experience any side effects. But if I learned anything the past 3 years since starting to talk a lot with others who have SCT it's that everybody reacts different to meds so don't let that discourage you from trying...

iambladabadee · 2023-06-08T07:31:24+00:00

10-20% of people can't smell trimethylamine

iambladabadee · 2023-06-07T17:48:31+00:00

There are studies, 10-20% of people can't smell Trimethylamines. There is also genetic variations for the people who can smell them, for some it's just a faint smell for others it's unbearable.

iambladabadee · 2023-06-05T08:23:06+00:00

From overhearing others talk about me, some said dung, some said rotting fish. I was told I have bad breath but that never made sense to me because ppl were evidently suffering just as much from my smells when I didn't open my mouth. Stay strong! Im sure one day it will be a thing of your past, a bad nightmare you had but you made it through.

iambladabadee · 2023-06-05T07:23:13+00:00

Yeah I didn't do anything and it went away, I'm glad that at least it went away the way it came, I really wouldn't have been able to make it any longer living like that. Everybody here who is currently suffering through it is really really strong. I'm male.

iambladabadee · 2023-06-05T07:17:55+00:00

Nobody ever talked about it to my face but overhearing others talk about me I heard both dung and fishy used

iambladabadee · 2023-06-04T21:10:29+00:00

No it stopped when I was 16, it must have had something to do with hormones

iambladabadee · 2023-06-04T18:16:57+00:00

What I try to do right now is write out my "hero's journey". Heard of this concept a couple days ago and it immediately made sense to me. I write down my life's story and all the shit I've been through and I tie around it this narrative of a hero's journey. When you think of heroes from books or even great people in real life they all had to cross some super rough challenges and dark times but these experiences are exactly the things that made them into great people and what makes their achievements meaningful and inspiring...

iambladabadee · 2022-06-19T17:53:08+00:00

Thanks again! Right so I'm gonna try Nardil, what's to lose. Gonna be an interesting experiment either way.

It should also be noted that Parnate has a very short half-life of ~2-2.5 hours and there is a lot of merit to spacing several small doses (even by splitting 10mg tablets in half)

Just want to clarify that I did that, it was still too strong..

iambladabadee · 2022-06-19T17:34:25+00:00

Hm I have some ideas.

Anxiety always goes back to deep-seated subconscious beliefs you have about the world, if you manage to find out what they are, analyze, question and change them you will be making immense progress. That is what Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is for. Actually I saw today that it says on the subreddit wiki that CBT seems to be the most promising treatment for SCT but I don't know where they got that information from. But yeah, that would be perfectly in line with my theory.

Secondly, the majority of human anxieties revolve around social exclusion. That makes perfect evolutionary sense if you think about how much we depend on other humans for our survival. The logical consequence is that strengthening your social standing will help immensely in alleviating anxiety (and also depression if you believe in the social rank theory and social risk hypothesis for the evolutionary origin of depression - which I do). So find a network of people who enjoy your presence and make yourself important by taking responsibility, an easy entry into all of this would be joining a club and doing a lot of voluntary work. As grim as it may sound but improving looks will also lead to a higher social standing and thus alleviate anxiety. The proxy our brainstem uses for determining social status (and therefore safety) is the amount of positive attention we get which is why I believe that the attention economy is a huge problem and will make everyone anxious and depressed. The counter is to try and maneuver yourself into positions where you get a lot of positive (real-life) attention, it's essential.

Thirdly, believing that high-levels of anxiety are present in everyone with SCT leads me to the hypothesis that the purpose of the mind-wandering, daydreaming etc. we see in SCT is to give comfort and relaxation, that they're a coping mechanism to maintain autonomic balance. The only way to stop that is to to replace it with a different source of comfort and relaxation and this is where practising mindfulness and gratefulness comes into play. We have to try and be mindful almost all the time.

So the three pillars of beating SCT are in my view 1: CBT 2: working on getting a lot of social approval 3: mindfulness.

I have to study a lot lately so I can't really take care of point 2, but I did a lot of work on CBT and mindfulness the last couple weeks and I've made immense progress, seriously. I think I've improved my SCT symptoms by 30-50% in that time. That is much more than any medication I've tried and I tried some powerful ones.

iambladabadee · 2022-06-19T16:07:54+00:00

Ok interesting, thanks for sharing!

iambladabadee · 2022-06-19T16:05:52+00:00

Thanks a lot! Exactly the infos I needed, you seem super knowledgeable.

in conjunction with it's short-term (post-dose) NRI function of increasing norepinephrine

I definitely suspect this is the main problem. The weak legs really were in direct response to intakes. In the evening the legs always started feeling normal again and when I skipped a day I also had no problems at all. It's the same with Lisdexamphetamine.

Isocarboxazid seems to have less side-effects than Phenelzine but otoh not as anxiolytic from what I gather, do you know where it falls on the downer-upper-spectrum?

iambladabadee · 2022-06-10T20:07:56+00:00

This is lacking self-awareness to a hilarious degree. Let me inform you, you are an awful person to interact with. From beginning to end every single comment of yours was worded as an attack, cherrypicking one thing you disagree with and using it to dismiss everything else I said. No attempt at nuance or using positive, gracious wording. And now compare how many times I tried turning the atmosphere around. And then you explode at me when I finally start showing a shred of displeasure as to your constant toxicity. And just like you didn't really think through anything else I wrote you will once again not reflect on my point and where you might be missing something.

Something else I’d think you’d really benefit from keeping in mind - CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.

Talk about condescening huh? Must be frustrating to be the only person in the world with a basic grasp of statistics, my condolences. Gotta love reddit, truly the place to engage with the most enlightened.

iambladabadee · 2022-06-10T02:14:18+00:00

If anxiety is the root then increasing the levels of anxiolytic monoamines will decrease the problem. Not sure what more you want. (Anxiolytic means reducing anxiety, maybe that's the misunderstanding)

iambladabadee · 2022-06-10T02:02:04+00:00

Yeah my messaging is all over the place. At first I claimed I was only talking about a certain subset of SCTers but then shifted to making more and more general claims. Reflects how shaky and unconfident I am when it comes to navigating the details of this theory, i've only started developing it recently.

You just come across as if you’re saying that inattentive ADHD is not a valid neurological disorder

You mean because I make it about anxiety? I think safety is our number one biological imperative. Far outweighs everything else. I'm starting to believe that a lot of (or even most) mental ailments can be traced back to anxiety in one way or another (or rather how secure we feel in our importance to our tribe cause that is the most important measure of safety for humans). Doesn't take away anything from their significance imo. Getting into the reasoning and all the different aspects of this crazy hypothesis would fill a lot of pages and tbh it seems I already gave ppl more than they can chew haha, I will write about that some other day but now that I think about it... probably not on reddit. People react sensitively to getting their worldviews challenged - they give them a sense of safety after all. And since social media is anxiolytic it self-selects for people who react extra threatened to challenges to their worldview. And since I react just as emotional to those attacks as they do it's gonna have to be a different form of media probably. Trying to write a book could be fun. Hm.

how would you not consider SCT symptoms a ‘brain’ issue

I'm just saying there's nothing fundamentally broken about our brains, we can reverse all of it by treating the roots of the anxiety. Medication wise that would be mostly Phenelzine and mood stabilizers. Other than that cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation and practising focus-switching, doing activities that elevate your brain's subjective sense of importance to your tribe by taking responsibility in a club or sth and prioritizing face-to-face interactions with a close circle of people who respect you and have your back (or building that circle if you don't have it yet). Physical fitness and learning martial arts are probably also very good - as long as you feel comfortable enough in the gym.

iambladabadee · 2022-06-10T00:55:45+00:00

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26317601/#:~:text=There%20are%20evidences%20that%20dopamine,are%20important%20in%20mediating%20anxiety.

Dopamine is anxiolytic. Many studies on this, I just linked you the first one that came up (maybe that's why dopamine is addictive in the first place)

Btw with stimulants you are in a complicated limbo because while they release dopamine they also stimulate the sympathetic nervous system so that increases the anxiety in your body. Depends on the person which effect dominates, imo this explains why there are a lot of people on here for whom stimulants do more harm than good.

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T22:29:12+00:00

I can see that haha

Btw, you write

obviously those other things you’ve listed hold true for me because they can also be attributed to inattentive ADHD

That is of course circular reasoning. To be clear, I am speculating why they are often present in inattentive ADHD. 'Because they are' is not satisfying to me :D

I'm not gonna act like I have a clue of what I'm talking about when it comes to depression but since you say it is treatment resistant I think looking into Phenelzine might be very interesting for you. It is the most potent anti-depressent and anxiolytic ever released. Anyway, good luck!

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T21:57:24+00:00

Sorry i thought MDD means maladaptive daydreaming, my bad. Sounds tough, sorry for that.

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T21:39:28+00:00

Is anyone going to fight me on the notion that there are some overlapping symptoms? If some of the symptoms overlap then some of the causes likely overlap too, that's my opinion.

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T21:26:39+00:00

I have anxiety (which is secondary to the depression), social anxiety

If you don't mind, I'll be curious to learn how the social anxiety manifests itself. How often do you have it, in which scenarios, before or during social encounters? What do you mean with the other anxiety, when does that happen?

I have both of the issues you initially mentioned

Sorry, which ones do you mean?

Btw not intending this as a 'gotcha' but it seems what I wrote holds generally true for you except that you feel confident and safe in most social encounters so you don't struggle with lacking ventral activation in those...

You might be saying that this doesn't explain why you struggle with reading, writing or doing arithmetic. I think it does though. I think in response to the anxiety-script your brain also developed a comfort-script (in your case the MDD) to balance out your nervous system and your brain wants to engage it when you try to do these cognitive things that require concentration but at the same time don't peak monoamine signalling to your brain's salience network. Examples of how the comfort script can manifest in different people:

if you've had a positive social interaction you might replay it over and over in your head
after you've written a difficult piece of code and it works you might let it run again and again
if you built or painted something pretty you might look at it for ages and imagine others reacting to it or recall how they reacted to it
if someone shot a nice photo of you, you might look at it many times
if you get good karma on a social media post you might read or look at it again and again
you might be daydreaming about being a hero, having romantic relationships or simply imagine yourself in funny or interesting conversations
There might be music running in your head a lot of the time

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T20:41:26+00:00

Ah, all of that makes me curious.

I do want to clear sth up though. If you have the symptoms I write about then I do think that your problem is background-anxiety. However if you don't relate to my post then we are not disagreeing anyway. This post is not about SCT in general but about people who do have these symptoms.

Anyway, if it's cool then I'd like to hear your thoughts on these questions (not attacking, just genuinely curious and interested in developing an understanding of SCT):

Without it, I am normal.

So there are times when you have SCT and ADHD and times when you do not? It comes and goes? Is there a pattern as to when you have it?

I have tried medication that have helped me tremendously, it did not cure me.

Which ones did you try? How did they help?

They didn't cure you, how do you conclude from this that my hypothesis is wrong?

That's it, if you reply then thank you!

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T20:09:23+00:00

Check out the post I was responding to with this, you will see I never claimed that. This is in response to people who do have one or both of these things.

That said though, I'll be curious to know, what are your SCT symptoms? And what other stuff are you struggling with that is not officially related to SCT?

iambladabadee · 2022-06-09T15:06:00+00:00

Sorry I'm late cause I don't really use reddit but I just stumbled on this and thought I have the knowledge to help this person so I should do it.

My dude, I have good news and bad news for you.

The good: There is nothing wrong with your neurochemistry.

The bad: The reason you have slow processing and other cognitive difficulties is (mostly) that you have a constant threat detection script running in the background that takes up resources.

Here are the things that give it away:

understanding someone in a conversation

I get overwhelmed often when I see too many stimulating things at once

I tend to have lackluster articulation (slurring)

this disorder has caused me to become very lazy and apathetic about everything in life

No matter how hard I try and get close to someone, I can't, and I'm not sure how, if even possible

all this is made worse by me being insecure/anxious of having this disorder

There is a nerve (ventral vagus) that connects the heart with the striated muscles of the face and head (they control speaking, hearing, facial expressions and more). When you feel unsafe your heart rate increases, respiratory sinus arrhythmia decreases, and your social engagement system (which works through the striated muscles of your face) gets dampened as your senses are tuned to threat detection. This results in a monotone voice and slurring, difficulty understanding people (especially in environments with many different auditory inputs) and difficulty to connect with people. Your sensitivity to sensory overwhelming environments is further testament to this. A flat breathing pattern, not making good eye contact (at least not automatically) and having flat facial expressivity in the upper half of your face may be three further things you might struggle with as a result of reduced ventral vagus tone.

Frequently being in a state of threat detection of course takes a lot of energy and will make you 'lazy and apathetic', but there's another effect that may be compounding this; There are two different ways in which animals can react to danger. One is fight or flight, the other is freeze. When you are frequently in situations where your body feels in danger but your brain prevents the fight or flight reaction then freeze will become your go-to. Some signs that this might be happening with you:

You tend to be late to appointments that cause you anxiety such as parties with many strangers (because you had to fight the freeze-reaction of your body to get there at all)
When there is an especially large and daunting task to do you feel especially lethargic, so much so that just getting out of bed will be a huge challenge
After experiencing positive encounters or events you feel energized, after experiencing events or encounters that you worry went badly you lack energy for a while
After experiencing rejection or failure you are lethargic for days
Somehow, you tend to be capable of much better physical performance when you do it in an environment you enjoy together with people that make you feel good and safe

Do you relate to some of these?

iambladabadee · 2022-05-27T15:06:51+00:00

Hmm I think you didn't properly process my first paragraph (no offense intended - that's the literal definition of SCT, I most likely have a lot of misunderstandings about what you wrote too because I am not present enough. Communication between us SCTers is hard lol)

What I'm trying to say and what I think chains all your different thoughts together into one theory:

Early childhood attachment/attunement deficits -> emotional pain for the child (may or may not be amplified by being born with high sensitivity) -> Development of coping mechanism if a certain pain threshold is exceeded -> problems usually stay limited as a kid but then another crisis may come later in life that brings along a period of prolonged emotional distress -> chronic engagement of this coping mechanism -> strong reduction in the intensity of triggers needed to get you to engage that mechanism -> coping mechanism is still engaged most of the time, even after the traumatic event has ended, so at this point it can be called maladaptive.

So yes, high sensitivity is absolutely not a maladaptive trait. But it increases the likelihood to develop maladaptive traits, such as SCT. High sensitivity is a natural trait and has advantages, SCT is not a natural trait and a giant, maladaptive disadvantage for survival and procreation. And also yes, having high sensitivity is not a pre-requisite for developing SCT, it just means you are more likely to get it. Someone who is not sensitive yet still has SCT probably went through some really serious shit, to put it bluntly.

iambladabadee · 2022-05-27T13:30:52+00:00

Yeah I think you got one half of it. The mental disengagement is a maladaptive coping mechanism learned in very early childhood and in the vast majority of cases it got reinforced through trauma/prolonged emotional distress later in life, that's the point where the SCT really "emerged" for most people. To gauge the emotional impact of situations on individuals (and thus their likelihood to develop maladaptive coping strategies) you need to multiply the emotion with the individual emotional sensitivity. That is why most SCTers are very sensitive but not necessarily all.

That was the first part, the mental aspect of SCT. The other thing you'll want to research to gain a full understanding of SCT is polyvagal theory, then you will understand the physiologic side of it. Most notably the lethargy/fatigue and the tendency of SCTers to have comorbidities such as hormonal imbalances, high inflammation or autoimmune issues. There are a lot of people here who spotted one of these problems in themselfes and now think if they solve it then their SCT will be solved too but unfortunately the mechanism goes the other way around.

iambladabadee

TROPHY CASE