From: lamontg@stein.u.washington.edu (Lamont Granquist)
Subject: Re: post-Prozac reactions
Organization: 'Operation: Mindcrime'
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 15:01:04 GMT

mdkline@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Mark D. Kline) writes:
>Results of large scale reviews - involving thousands of cases - suggests
>that the risk of suicidal or violent behavior is not different between
>patients taking Prozac and patients taking other antidepressant medications.

You see this isn't sufficient, however, to rule out a small population of
patients that have an honest-to-god biochemical reaction to Prozac which
causes either suicidal ideation or fits of rage.  What it *does* mean is
that Prozac is a relatively quite safe anti-depressant.  However, I got
effects off of Prozac which felt quite out-of-character, quite "detatched"
from my psychology, and felt like a drug reaction.

The thing is that I seem to have a hellishly screwed up biochemistry when
it comes to these drugs.  After three days on desipramine, I started to
develop something which looked like it was progressing into amphetamine
psychosis (I was definitely paranoid -- the faint mumbling voices were
getting a little louder each day...).  Nortryptyline and Wellbutrin just
had sedation and no were no particular help.  Prozac had the weirdness that
I posted about.  And phenelzine at 75mg/day 5 times/day knocked me into a
really, really, really bad bout of depressive ideation -- I kept on having
depressed thoughts feel like they zipped around my head, built up momentum
and slammed into me...  completely incapacitating and about an order of
magnitude worse than any dysphoric mood I ever encountered before (since I
normally don't have that bad of a problem with a dysphoric mood).  45mg of
phenelzine later I was asleep and the next day was completely sane -- other
than being in a bit of shock and scared shitless...  switched doses from
15mg x 5times/day to 75mg once/day and that problem has never come back... 

Someone out there is probably now sloughing this off as "pffft... its all
in his head...".  All, I can say, is you should really fuck around with
these drugs as much as I have...  eventually, I'll bet you'll find a magic
combination that gives you some really unusual psychiatric side effects...

However, I seem to have some exceptionally weird-ass side effects.  But,
since a person can't predict in advance if they will have typical or atypical
reactions to a drug, they should just be a little cautious and take note of
their mental state while on the drug.

And, the only other thing that bugs me is doctors who seem to have an amazing
amount of skepticism for biochemically produced phenominon.  If a patient
is genuinely experiencing a biochemical reaction of rage, depression, etc,
they well probably be told that "its just a normal symptom of depression and
not the drug."  How can the doctor actually tell though?  what questions can
be asked to tell the difference between a biochemical state due to a drug and
a nearly identical psychological state?  It seems like they're assuming a
psychological cause even though they know damn well that the patient has
a poorly-understood psychotropic drug in their system...  Strange, because its
like the opposite of the "blame the drug" phenominon WRT illegal drugs -- in
this case its the "blame the patient" phenominon...  It'd be nice to get a
little recognition that those studies cannot rule out possibilities of
unusual side effects in a small percentage of patients...

-- 
Lamont Granquist  lamontg@u.washington.edu
  "When dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases."
                                      -- Robert Anton Wilson