Update on my Meds

Today I am on my last of 7.5 mg (half of 15 mg tablet) of mirtazapine.

Fifty tablets of mirtazapine are stored with a package of 25 caplets of diphenhydramine in my drawer to be used as sedatives for insomnia only.

Thursday I got a new prescription for gabapentin, which helped bring out the best of me. My meds came from my primary GP, but in retrospect, it would have been less of a hassle to get it from my secondary GP, except that I couldn't get up at 7.30AM to get in to see him.

I got a good result from 200 mg Thursday night, and there was little sedation. The next morning, I took 7.5 mg of mirtazapine and the histamine-related sedation left me with impaired balance and related effects which took me 2 hours to adapt — the gabapentin helped because I took a 100 mg dose about an hour after the sedation hit me.

This morning, gabapentin has sparked a remarkable difference in me. I actually felt friendly and outgoing, and it appears to have reduced the usual shyness I used to have.

Yet much of my behavioral negativities actually has very little to do with the medication, but with being able to try something different.

Although I'd like natural health-food remedies and the like, psychopharmaceuticals are the emergency backup plan. With cognitive behavior therapy, they have worked in my case.

If insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome every time, then sanity is the ability to do something different.

Here is how I am going to do something different: I am open to responses from the anti-psychiatry crowd. Also, will the people who have tried gabapentin please respond?

Any responses demonizing medication will be ignored; such fear-mongering is based on emotional reasoning, which could lead to cognitive distortions.

If any thought pops in your head before you write, then please reread what I wrote and think through your feelings before responding. I'll try to do my best to think, think and think in kind! :)

Update for 20130116: I'm now on cyclobenzaprine 10 g and gabapentin 200 mg at bedtime.