Hi Community,
As the title suggests, I feel like I am craving insane amounts of dopamine and looking for some sort of a human connection.
A bit of context, I have never lived by myself for most of my life: My school days were spent in hostel, further during my bacholers days I was always surrounded by my friends and we used to go out almost all days of the week. The first time I ever sort of lived by myself was during my first job, during which I started observing similar kind of feeling (I wasn’t diagnosed then) and to subside this feeling I used to smoke weed, it made me calm.
Fast forward to now, I have realised weed is a bad cope up mechanism (don’t smoke weed now) but I am going insane and unable to function at my best. I kind of get hyperfixated on my dating app matches, or go insane if my friends don’t pick up my call etc.
I am trying to distract myself with things I like such as movies, or finding new novelty, trying to meditate etc. I do weekly therapy as well. But despite all the efforts, I feel like I am going insane and thus reaching out to the community for any help.
Edit: I take Ritalin LA - 30mg, used to take SSRI (Lexapro) and stopped it few days back as I feel very dud when I take those.
Edit 2: Added information about smoking weed: I dont smoke weed now.
Thanks in advance.
I take Ritalin LA-30mg, the highest recommended dose for my genetics (Indian) is about 40mg. I used to take Lexapro, started observing that SSRI’s make me feel very dud and have stopped taking it in the past few days
You can try switching to Adderall, or one of the non-stimulant drugs like strattera. Also, i highly recommend shrooms. Doing it once every few months keeps my mind in a much much better place
I am finding it so difficult to deal with psychiatrist’s in Australia (moved from India to Australia), as there are insane wait times and only they are authorised to change my meds and I dont have a prescription for strattera.
Sorry to hear that. I have no idea about Australian health care, but are you sure your primary care doctor can’t prescribe those meds for you? They might be more willing to prescribe the non-stimulant meds. It’s worth asking them if you aren’t 100% sure they won’t.
Also, i definitely strongly suggest researching psilocybin mushrooms. Of course do some research first and see if there are any reasons for you personally not to do them. But yeah, they make a huge improvement in many people’s lives
As part of my prescription recommendations, I am due for a medical test soon. I dont want to mess that up, but will discuss with my doctors once regarding mushrooms.
Further, primary care doctor cannot recommend strattera in Australia (NSW)
Possibly bupropion might be what you want. Its a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Not sure about Australia but in the US it is approved for treating depression and nicotine addiction but has found off label use as an ADD treatment.
Sure, I will discuss with my doctors. Thanks
Psychedelics can have bad interactions with SSRIs. So wait a few weeks after stopping before trying.
I think (think) ssri’s just change the dosings in unpredictable ways, so in that situation you would start with a lowish dose of mushrooms to see how hard it hits you and then increase the attempted dose on subsequent attempts separated out by a bunch of days.
I’m not a doctor or an expert in any way, just speaking from the experiences of other people i know about
Did you taper off the Lexapro? If not that could explain some of what you are feeling now.
What happened with Lexapro is, firstly my gut got worse, second (my theory) I feel like stimulants make me active but Lexapro makes me go insanely lazy: a lot of times, I would be insanely hungry but I wouldn’t want to eat or walk till hallway to put food in my mouth and this is what I mean by it made me feel dud.