I have suffered from depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and ADD for roughly 5 years now, but was only diagnosed about a year ago

The drugs I have been on are Zoloft(6 mo), Paxil(3 weeks) , Luvox(3 weeks), Effexor(2 weeks) and Welbutrin( 2 weeks).

The SSRI class of antidepressants really helped me with my anxiety, but did nothing for my lack of motivation and killed my sex drive therefore leading to a deeper state of depression.

Effexor simply didn't work and the insomnia I experienced outweighed any minor benefits.

Welbutrin seemed to help with my depression at first, but did nothing for my anxiety, and when I tried to self-medicate myself by mixing it with zoloft, I felt very suicidal and isolated. Welbutrin also made me more argumentative and irritable. I stopped taking it after 10 days.

I recently took an unprescribed 30 mg Adderall XR pill given to me by a friend to help study for finals.
I know this drug is dangerous but I was able to focus more than I ever have in my life. I felt great, I was motivated, friendly, less irritable and overall simply felt normal.

I decided to see if this was just a fluke so I took it again with Zoloft to combat the anxiety experience from adderall.

Once again I was confident, attentive, friendly, happy, sexual and for the first time in months went the whole day without having suicidal thoughts.


I'm seeing a psychiatrist this week and I'm not sure if I should tell her about my self-medicated attempt to feel normal.

Does anyone else have any experience with this stimulant drug for depression when other methods have failed? Please I would love your thoughts.

-Dave.

This post has been edited by PRT: Jun 29 2009, 03:06 PM

Adderall could help the depression since it will help get you more motavated to do and stay on tasks. That alone probably won't fix everyting though as far as the depression/aniexty. Adderall has a chance of making anixiety worse since your more alert and focused.

If you look at some of the ohter post in this forum most users take an antidepressant with the stimulant ,and ohters an aniexty med.

Casper012,
I certainly hope that you will see a doctor about this before taking more. Best to be cautious, especially since you're on other medications.
Iowa

I am prescribed both zoloft and adderall. I don't take the XR though. As far as depression I would say it keeps you from thinking about things that make you depressed because your constantly doing something, but that feeling goes away a bit when you take it regularly, in the afternoon after my second dose wears of my anxiety gets horrible. (Winding down has always been hard for me)

Think long and hard before you ask your Doctor to even put you on Adderall. Go read about it.

Be careful with adderall. I wouldn't recommend anyone take it for long periods of time.

Dave-

My first and strongest advice is DO NOT SELF MEDICATE WITH UNPRESCRIBED MEDICATION. You should only take Adderall if it is properly prescribed for a specific pshychiatric condition, and you are properly supervised!

As for whether or not you should share this with your pdoc, my advice is absolutely YES! How are you being pro-active, partnering, and self advocating if you are not being honest with your doc? You need to make it your personal responsibility to foster honesty if you expect to get honesty out of your relationship with your doc. It's not that I'm saying that you should expect dishonesty from your doc, but if you are not being honest with him, how can he "honestly" know your needs? If you don't think it's significant to share this information, then you are going to likely percieve it to be even less significant that you share whatever OTC meds you might be taking. At least give your doc the opportunity to assess you for ADHD, OCD, or whatever DXs for which it might be appropriate to use this medication.

Be honest with your doc. Be honest with yourself.

Best wishes!

Deepster

This post has been edited by ChrystalR: Oct 15 2009, 07:33 PM

huh? since when? link to research backing that please....