Instead of focusing on what not to do, focus on what to do instead--makes sense to me.

Ralph, I am sorry, I did not understand -why did you decrease your wellbutrin? Were you improving as far as your panic attacs and shaking?

Lana

My pdoc said wellbutrin might have caused the panic attacks. It has a reputation for making anxiety worse and pdoc suggested going down to 150 when I started Symbyax. That didn't go so well, so pdoc said change only one variable at a time. Now I feel somewhat adjusted to the symbyax but it doesn't do anything for my anxiety. I started to get panic attacks again, giving me more incentive to get off wellbutrin if for no other reason than to eliminate as a cause of anxiety.

My understanding of Wellbutrin is that it is the only antidepressant that doesn't completely numb you. I think of it as having both an 'upper' and a 'downer' in one pill.

I find it all very confusing. Antidepressants bring me DOWN - I thought they were supposed to do the opposite. So I started looking at stimulants - but that will cause anxiety - which will exhaust me and ultimately lead to DOWN again. It's kind of like a chicken and egg scenario - are you down because you get exhausted from the anxiety or are you anxious because you are down so much and so every little thing that goes wrong pisses you off to the point of getting anxiety attacks over it?

I've given up trying to figure it out. I just take something to knock me out once in a while when I feel hopeless and helpless enough to something truly stupid.

I hadn't heard that about Wellbutrin Athena but makes sense to me as to why it is the only one that's helped with my depression. Emotional numbness is what I experience that my past therapists/pdocs have described as depression and why I need to be on meds.

I think that pdocs often describe depression and anxiety as opposite poles of a continuum with I guess "normal" in between. My current pdoc uses gas and brake pedals as an analogy. I've heard other people talk about you shouldn't take anti-anxiety and anti-depressant at the same time because it's like running the heat and the A/C together.

Not in my experience. I can be depressed and anxious at the same time and meds have different effects than just being "uppers" or "downers." If that's all there was to it you'd only need caffeine and Valium for any psychiatric problem, ever. Just take enough of the caffeine to get you up or enough valium to get you down. You're not supposed to figure it out, that's up to the doctors. That's why they get paid $100-200 to spend 15 minutes per patient. Sadly I doubt many of them know much more than I do - it seems like they're not doing anything that could be distinguished from trial and error.

Not in my experience. I can be depressed and anxious at the same time and meds have different effects than just being "uppers" or "downers." If that's all there was to it you'd only need caffeine and Valium for any psychiatric problem' date=' ever. Just take enough of the caffeine to get you up or enough valium to get you down. You're not supposed to figure it out, that's up to the doctors. That's why they get paid $100-200 to spend 15 minutes per patient. Sadly I doubt many of them know much more than I do - it seems like they're not doing anything that could be distinguished from trial and error.[/quote'] Sadly, I wholeheartedly agree.