June 11, 2010
Disclaimer: this is a legitimate use of mirtazapine by prescription without abuse or intent to abuse the drug.
I've been prescribed mirtazapine (Remeron) initially by the Mental Health Centre's shrink, 60 tablets @ 15 mg each for depression. When I first took Remeron, I felt tired (sedated) and fell asleep. The next day it took me two hours to wake up. That was May 12.
Over the next few weeks, I got used to the sedation, and took the dose as described: 15 mg at bedtime, 7.5 mg on rising and 7.5 mg 4-6 hours later.
Currently, with the Remeron regiment of 30 mg a day in 4 divided doses, I am in top mental condition compared to a month ago, 3 months ago and even 6 months ago. With the Remeron came periods of fatigue where it's best not to read a book but just await the passing of tiredness.
However, this drug helped me deal with anxiety, which I tested by facing my fear of heights by crossing a pedestrian bridge without any sign of fear.
Yet most of the day I am inspired to read a lot (first 6, then 5, and now 4 books). Once I got used to the tiredness, my self-motivation increased. This may have been due to both the change in season from spring to summer, but mirtazapine augmented my normally calm exterior and freed me of depression.
It's been 4 weeks or so since I filled my first prescription of 60 15 mg Remeron, of which are 22 pills remaining.
During those four weeks, I went from 106 lbs to 114 lbs. So due to the mirtazapine, my weight has increased by almost 8 percent. At this rate, in a year I would have gained over 100 lbs. (20140126: I now weigh 127 lbs, but stopped mirtazapine in December 2012. Going to bed late may contribute to weight gain. YMMV)
So, a diet plan is in order; in short, I need an energy-burning exercise regime to counteract the weight I am packing on. Since I gain about 1 kg every week, this means I consume about 2000+ calories a day and retain 6-7 percent of those calories as body fat.
Most definitely those carbs need to be dumped for more healthy fats and protein. (20150126: It seems like Remeron might cause OCD.)
Hunger due to anticholinergic effect caused by mirtazapine (Remeron) usually has a psychological basis.
Usually we stuff our mouths because we hunger for companionship. This side effect in essence may mean that antihistamines may worsen feelings of depression and loneliness. However, that hunger could be displaced as increased self esteem and attendant self confidence i.e. 'gives you balls' when feelings of emptiness are counteracted by realization that emptiness is the root of interdependence.
Thus, motivation to moderate hunger may be sought through social networking, mainly off-line. In becoming sociable, one may learn how to control one's eating habits.
But I digress.
Remeron may improve your mind enough to make sense of depression and addiction. Anxiety is indirectly relieved by Remeron; more likely the person's mental habits are more at fault here than the drug. or both anxiety and depression may be affects of the human condition.
As for depression, the almost absolute calm which Remeron brings to the mental health consumer may be mistaken for depression because one may forget that happiness is the product of one's own mind, rather than the result of external circumstances.
Most definitely, this is better than using Remeron recreationally.
Update: November 21, 2012
Everything about mirtazapine and its anti-histamine effects are true. After tasting it for 6 months, IMO it has strong sedative properties which work fine for relieving depression and anxiety, which leads to preventing psychoses.
However, the rest of the description of mirtazapine at Wikipedia is plain horse shit.
Why? Because it's speculative and not based on the horrible but messy testing of rats and other creatures that can't talk.
The mirtazapine related drugs are mainly sedatives of the antihistamine class which do work for mild depression and anxiety mainly by sedation.
The other side effect of anti-histamine drugs is in large doses, the dopamine and noradrenaline effect kick in but without any psychoses because you need lots of insomnia to see things and hear things.
Though you do get a little of the physical effects which is similar to anti-psychotics side effect of akathasia but reversible. Akathasia is the worst case of anxiety with physical symptoms. In my case, when I was anxious, I'd rotate my wrists and twiddle my thumbs. I did that a lot in crowds with my hands in my jacket pockets.
However, I had the experience of listening to a psychiatrist describe SSRI side effects when mirtazapine has no such thing. The serotonin response to an SSRI is anxiety, nervousness, nausea and sometimes even vomiting.
Mirtazapine, however, is used to prevent those symptoms as it is a strong but safe sedative, making it superior to OTC antihistamines. In fact, it is used as a sedative to counteract SSRI side effects.
So forget the Wikipedia description of mirtazapine regarding the speculation of how it works. Its strong antihistamine effect makes whatever it does for the effect on noradrenalin and dopamine seem weak in comparison.
Even so, as I said before, social interaction in public relieves most effects of anxiety but subtly motivates one to stop choosing behaviors that lead to depression, including sleeping until afternoon and staying up all night.
YMMV
Originally posted on June 11, 2010 at 0228H PDT
Wikipedia article on mirtazapine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mirtazapine
Showing posts with label Remeron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Remeron. Show all posts
20110208
Flexeril and Its Antidepressant Effects due to Antihistimine Properties
Monday morning I got up early enough to visit my doctor. Due to my insomnia, I had delayed a follow-up visit to him while tapering down to one tablet of mirtazapine when needed i.e. when I need a good sleep before morning.
After 5 minutes of talking to my doctor, he recommended stretching exercises - and I countered with "I practice tai chi". So he suggested cyclobenzaprine (flexeril), a tricyclic antidepressant with strong muscle relaxant properties i.e. another antihistamine chemically different from benadryl and mirtazapine.
This drug has a slow onset of 2-6 hours but lasts for up to 20 hours.
I know because after I got home around 11 PM, it took me about 2 hours before the first effects hit me, but had taken one tablet about 8PM. By 4AM I was off to bed.
It's unknown if dissolving the tablet in my mouth leads to this delayed effect. Then most of Tuesday was spent in bed. I'd only gotten up around 5 PM.
There may be a synergy with alcohol, because I slowly sipped a Colt 45 circa 9.45 PM at a friend's place and was out of there by 10:25 PM.
However, I felt no alcohol buzz; this may have been due to smoking a couple cigarettes for most of the time at my friend's place. In fact, I believe nicotine may have been the protective factor, as it kept me alert and less likely to yield to both alcohol's and flexeril's sedative properties.
When I awoke during the time before 5 PM, I just felt the need for more sleep. This, most likely, was a "hangover" effect due to the combination of alcohol with flexeril and trace amounts of mirtazapine.
Therefore, the mixing of liberal amounts of alcohol and/or other CNS depressants with Flexeril is not recommended. This includes mirtazapine and other psychiatric medication. Also included is gabapentin and other anti-epileptic drugs.
Updated: 20111116.1625
Flexeril is a muscle relaxant which has sedation as one of its side-effects. Currently, I use flexeril 10 mg daily.
Mirtazapine is being marketed as an antidepressant, however, it has antihistamine side effect of sedation in low doses. I used to take this medication at 2 doses of 15 mg daily. Over a year after I first wrote this article, I no longer take mirtazapine.
Gabapentin is used for nerve pain and is used mainly to control seizures in epilepsy in high doses. Currently I use it for its ability to reduce anxiety at 2 doses at 100 mg per capsule.
20121225.0841
Currently I use 10 mg of flexeril and 200 mg of gabapentin at bedtime. The gabapentin helps improve the ability to enter deep sleep and the flexeril helps me to fall to sleep.
After 5 minutes of talking to my doctor, he recommended stretching exercises - and I countered with "I practice tai chi". So he suggested cyclobenzaprine (flexeril), a tricyclic antidepressant with strong muscle relaxant properties i.e. another antihistamine chemically different from benadryl and mirtazapine.
This drug has a slow onset of 2-6 hours but lasts for up to 20 hours.
I know because after I got home around 11 PM, it took me about 2 hours before the first effects hit me, but had taken one tablet about 8PM. By 4AM I was off to bed.
It's unknown if dissolving the tablet in my mouth leads to this delayed effect. Then most of Tuesday was spent in bed. I'd only gotten up around 5 PM.
There may be a synergy with alcohol, because I slowly sipped a Colt 45 circa 9.45 PM at a friend's place and was out of there by 10:25 PM.
However, I felt no alcohol buzz; this may have been due to smoking a couple cigarettes for most of the time at my friend's place. In fact, I believe nicotine may have been the protective factor, as it kept me alert and less likely to yield to both alcohol's and flexeril's sedative properties.
When I awoke during the time before 5 PM, I just felt the need for more sleep. This, most likely, was a "hangover" effect due to the combination of alcohol with flexeril and trace amounts of mirtazapine.
Therefore, the mixing of liberal amounts of alcohol and/or other CNS depressants with Flexeril is not recommended. This includes mirtazapine and other psychiatric medication. Also included is gabapentin and other anti-epileptic drugs.
Updated: 20111116.1625
Flexeril is a muscle relaxant which has sedation as one of its side-effects. Currently, I use flexeril 10 mg daily.
Mirtazapine is being marketed as an antidepressant, however, it has antihistamine side effect of sedation in low doses. I used to take this medication at 2 doses of 15 mg daily. Over a year after I first wrote this article, I no longer take mirtazapine.
Gabapentin is used for nerve pain and is used mainly to control seizures in epilepsy in high doses. Currently I use it for its ability to reduce anxiety at 2 doses at 100 mg per capsule.
20121225.0841
Currently I use 10 mg of flexeril and 200 mg of gabapentin at bedtime. The gabapentin helps improve the ability to enter deep sleep and the flexeril helps me to fall to sleep.
20100625
Client-Centred Therapy and Depression
In my case, I am certain that client-centred therapy plays a role in my recovery from depression, along with cues from the season.
Once I went to my first interview with the psychiatrist (shrink), I gave the 18 yr old diagnosis of borderline personality disorder whilst trying to present most of the sequelae of it.
In response I got the medication (meds) I wanted: mirtazapine.
After that, I decided to stabilize while recovering from shingles, which arose due to stress probably not related to mirtazapine.
After doing research on mirtazapine, the shrink realized with my help that I would be better letting my GP handle my meds after talking with the psychologist.
Currently, therapy is going well, and so's my life.
Yet the main reason is probably because it's summertime, tho it is because I acted to resolve family issues especially social rejection.
Recovery from mental illness does require a lot of work on the client.
What is helpful is not the medication roulette; it's being able to choose the medication and the course of therapy.
This would not have been possible 18 years ago.
The reason why I waited until now was because I felt after my initial years of therapy in the early 1980's, that I wasn't ready for talk therapy and mirtazapine was introduced in 1996.
I do not regret not going in for therapy earlier.
My only wish is that Remeron be more closely examined to be a safer anti-depressant for people whose moods are stabilized and are willing to be compliant with psychotherapy i.e. the older adult patients exhibiting depression without psychoses.
YMMV
Once I went to my first interview with the psychiatrist (shrink), I gave the 18 yr old diagnosis of borderline personality disorder whilst trying to present most of the sequelae of it.
In response I got the medication (meds) I wanted: mirtazapine.
After that, I decided to stabilize while recovering from shingles, which arose due to stress probably not related to mirtazapine.
After doing research on mirtazapine, the shrink realized with my help that I would be better letting my GP handle my meds after talking with the psychologist.
Currently, therapy is going well, and so's my life.
Yet the main reason is probably because it's summertime, tho it is because I acted to resolve family issues especially social rejection.
Recovery from mental illness does require a lot of work on the client.
What is helpful is not the medication roulette; it's being able to choose the medication and the course of therapy.
This would not have been possible 18 years ago.
The reason why I waited until now was because I felt after my initial years of therapy in the early 1980's, that I wasn't ready for talk therapy and mirtazapine was introduced in 1996.
I do not regret not going in for therapy earlier.
My only wish is that Remeron be more closely examined to be a safer anti-depressant for people whose moods are stabilized and are willing to be compliant with psychotherapy i.e. the older adult patients exhibiting depression without psychoses.
YMMV
20100603
Why Psychosis Sucks: the Hidden Agenda for Early Detection
"When sleep deprivation becomes great enough, the effects mimic those of psychosis." -- Stanley Coren, Ph.D., "Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency"
Early detection of psychosis in today's youth may indicate a hidden agenda by the State to manufacture mental health consumers amongst susceptible young adults aged 18-24.
Once this targeted group of consumer normalize mental illness and recover from sleep deprivation, they may do everything to avoid a relapse including moderating behavior leading to sleep deprivation via naps and mainly calling it a night earlier than they used to do.
Although any youth who is not compliant might be a walking time bomb, it is useful for mental health professionals to overlook use of the life-or-death scenario to facilitate compliance but to order a blood test to show the side effects of burning the candle at both ends.
IMHO the stress from short sleep periods will impact the body such that even a basic non-fasting blood test would reveal warning signs such as low white blood cell (WBC) counts and associated changes in the kinds of white blood cells.
My opinion is based on three blood tests done over the past decade. My recent blood test shows everything normal with no low WBC counts, while the test from two years shows low WBC and neutrophil counts and the test from circa 2004 shows at least four low counts.
I can affirm that my sleep pattern in 2008 was not the greatest (about 5-7 hours a night), and it was probably much worse in 2004 (4-6 hours), but it's been averaging 8-9 hours a night.
Also when I am tired from 1 to 3 PM, refraining from reading or doing any heavy physical acitivity usually tides me over until the fatigue passes.
Currently, with the Remeron regiment of 30 mg a day in 4 divided doses, I am in top mental condition compared to a month ago, 3 months ago and even 6 months ago.
Reference:
Stanley Coren, Ph.D., "Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency" http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/54471?pageNumber=2
Early detection of psychosis in today's youth may indicate a hidden agenda by the State to manufacture mental health consumers amongst susceptible young adults aged 18-24.
Once this targeted group of consumer normalize mental illness and recover from sleep deprivation, they may do everything to avoid a relapse including moderating behavior leading to sleep deprivation via naps and mainly calling it a night earlier than they used to do.
Although any youth who is not compliant might be a walking time bomb, it is useful for mental health professionals to overlook use of the life-or-death scenario to facilitate compliance but to order a blood test to show the side effects of burning the candle at both ends.
IMHO the stress from short sleep periods will impact the body such that even a basic non-fasting blood test would reveal warning signs such as low white blood cell (WBC) counts and associated changes in the kinds of white blood cells.
My opinion is based on three blood tests done over the past decade. My recent blood test shows everything normal with no low WBC counts, while the test from two years shows low WBC and neutrophil counts and the test from circa 2004 shows at least four low counts.
I can affirm that my sleep pattern in 2008 was not the greatest (about 5-7 hours a night), and it was probably much worse in 2004 (4-6 hours), but it's been averaging 8-9 hours a night.
Also when I am tired from 1 to 3 PM, refraining from reading or doing any heavy physical acitivity usually tides me over until the fatigue passes.
Currently, with the Remeron regiment of 30 mg a day in 4 divided doses, I am in top mental condition compared to a month ago, 3 months ago and even 6 months ago.
Reference:
Stanley Coren, Ph.D., "Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency" http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/54471?pageNumber=2
20070417
A pleasant hallucinogen
Now available at your doctor is Remeron, which brings on visual hallucinations, and good vibes.
Take for example this bloke, who discovered a novel hallucinogen in an antidepressant. Oh, and Remeron might ruin your libido and cause Zoloft-induced priapism.
A few months back I had seen my doctor about general anxiety. I was having a great deal of unwanted and unwarranted stress. Everyone goes through this from time to time, and I decided to give modern pharmacology a try. I'm impatient so I didn't want to work through it.
My doctor prescribed a generous amount of Xanax to deal with my immediate stress and Remeron as a longer lasting agent. I didn't want to take an anti-depressant, but he assured me that it would work well after it had gotten into my system. I was to take it before bed every night for at least two weeks. I felt the effect on the very first night.
I took my dose an hour before bed and it kicked in after only 30 minutes. The power LED on my air purifier turned from green to red and started to create wisps of red smoke. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. It was still there. By this time, everything was extremely vivid and flowing, if not constant.
The smoke now resembled a flowing red cape, like Spawn's. It enveloped my entire field of vision. I wanted to stay awake but it did make me a little drowsy. Despite the intensity of the hallucinations, I felt pretty good about them. This drug is definitely weird stuff. These persistent hallucinations weren't perceptual oddities, they were fully constructed and very long lasting.
These 'visions' persisted each and every time I took a dose. I rather enjoyed the visuals, so I began taking it earlier so I could stay awake and enjoy the experience. The scary thing about the stuff was how complacent it made me while it fried my brain. I decided to stop, since the 'side effects' were becoming more pronounced (think opposite of male enhancement).
After a week of not taking this stuff, I left on vacation to visit friends. I brought the Remeron with me, even though I wasn't using it. Having quite a few left, I passed them around like M&M's, curious if the effects would be the same. Sure enough, the reports were glowing. Everyone, five in all, that took one had intense visual hallucinations and a sense of well being.
I fully support drugs that create pleasant side effects. The problem with this one was the lack of warning. In my humble opinion, Remeron might just be a milder and faster acting alternative to harder hallucinogens.
The complete heads-up on Remeron is here at Wikipedia.
Please note that if you are unprepared for the hallucinations, and visit Emergency, they might conclude psychosis and convince you to go on an anti-psychotic.
So don't mention the visions, just the pleasant well-being and the 12 hours of delicious sleep. 15 mg is all you really need.
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