Slackjaw99's take on the Good the Bad and the Ugly from Big Pharma et. al.

[Slackjaw99]

As someone who was "blessed" with DTD, I suffered two devastating impacts- the inability to regulate my emotions and the inability to regulate my autonomic nervous system (ANS). From age 15 for the next 36 years I both self-medicated and gobbled down every class of chemical produced by the profiteers of Big Pharma in an effort to get through each day. I've taken MAOIs, tricyclics, tetracyclics, SSRIs, anti-psychotics, stimulants, depressants, anti-convulsants, opioids, anxiolytics,  supplements, nootropics, eugerics (sp.), placebos, and let's not forget good Ol' Grandad. I probably left a few out, but you can get the idea. The sad part of all this was that some of the most destructive and toxic substances were prescribed by so-called "addiction specialist" psychiatrists rather than those that were self prescribed. I finally got so fed up with Big Pharma and Big Psychiatry that I decided to become my own psycho-pharmacologist and perform a neuroscience deep dive into the psychiatric drug discovery pipeline.

The following are my buckets with explanations to follow in future posts and edits. I hope we can agree to respectfully disagree where appropriate.

The Good (symptom reduction with less adverse impact):
    - off label anti-convulsants for anxiety and SNS control such as pregabalin, gabapentin, or baclofen.
    - off label blood pressure meds such as propranolol, Minipress, or clonidine.
    - some off label first generation anti-histamines (short term use) - promethazine, hydroxyzine
    - some 5th generation anti-depressants in the approval pipeline such as NSI-189
    - some MAOIs
    - plant medicines that must be discussed in another forum section

The Bad (some symptom reduction with more adverse impact):
    - most tricyclics
    - SSRIs, SNRIs - Prozac, Celexa, Effexor - examples of Big Pharma corruption and disinformation to be explained in a dedicated post at some point
    - most insomnia meds - including Ambien, Bellsomra, Lunesta

The Ugly:
    - benzodiazepines - clonazepam, lorazepam, diazepam, or any other 'pam'
    - opioids including Kratom - abuse, addiction
    - anti-psychotics - all "generations" including Seroquel, Geodon, Zyprexa. These are over prescribed, especially to  children for behavior control. They are grossly mis-prescribed to those with DID. They directly cause type 2 diabetes and movement disorders via cumulative destruction of dopamine neurons in the brain's movement center. The latter officially qualifies anti-psychotics as actual poisons or slow acting chemical weapons
    - alcohol - toxic to every type of cell in the human body

[Libby183]

Hi slackjaw.

I have read many of your previous posts with great interest and will be very interested to hear more about this particular subject.

I haven't taken many medications - prozac for over ten years,  low dose amitryptiline for a year and now cymbalta.  So I just have personal experience of your "bad" classification.  I think I agree with you.  I'm really not convinced about their value ; the side effects are unpleasant (less so prozac than the other two). 

I would like to mention analgesics as well.  My cptsd is characterised by a lot of physical pain. I may be wrong but I have never found any evidence that painkillers are effective for this type of pain and yet over the years I have been pushed to try all manner of analgesics by GPs.  To my mind, the only analgesic that ever had any effect for me was pethidine,  given iv for complications after childbirth.

This ties in with my experience as a nurse. I spent hour upon hour doing drug rounds, but most of the time, I couldn't see any positive effects.  Patients slept no better with sleeping tablets, than without.  Only opioid painkillers seemed to really help with patients' pain. But we have all read the dangers of these. Also, I have seen so many examples of drugs causing side effects so doctor prescribes yet another drug and so on and so on! 

I know that another big part of my cptsd is extreme lack of trust,  but I still think that a lot of medication is one huge scam, so look forward to more information from you.

Libby

[Rainagain]

I would agree with amytriptiline being bad news, I was on high dose for years, lost years really as I was basically sedated and not a real person.

I've just gotten off venlafaxine which is effexor I think, negligible benefit and bad side effects, the stuff is also bad news I feel.

Alcohol is the only thing I use now, also not good for me but I don't drink often.

[Boatsetsailrose]

 Very interesting thank u esp re anti convulsants and Maoi's ..
I went back onto citalopram knowing the side effects are hard to bear and in actual fact they feel harder to bear than the other times I've been on it..
I just feel hopeless with the situation and can't see a way out. The psychiatrist put me on trazadone last time even though I said one of the symptoms I find so hard with citalopram is sedation. I insisted trazadone is also sedating but he said not - gee I lasted 2 days and couldn't take it.
I'd be interested to hear in what ways you have found ssri 's not to be good for us ..
Also in what ways the before mentioned drugs are helpful ...
I really need some hope and I def feel like it is down to doing own research and then asking for the medication that looks like it may stand a chance in my body.

The side effects I have at the moment are these :
Sedation
Brain fog
Poor concentration
Memory problems
Dry mouth
No labido
Numbness of emotion
Drug induced anxiety
Racing heart
Headache

Any support/ info I'd really  appreciate

[Boatsetsailrose]

MAOIs look to have a bad side effect profile too
I wonder why thesefair better than ssri 's ?