Psychotropic medication discussion thread

First time mixing booze with this stuff. I had some Ambien, Ativan, and two shots of pear brandy. Honestly, I was terrified I’d get knocked out cold because everyone says Ambien is brutal, especially when you toss it back with alcohol, but I ended up wide awake until 5 AM. Didn't feel sleepy at all. No side effects or anything weird.
Just feeling pretty bummed about how little it takes for me to get "drunk." As soon as I felt that sensation creeping in, I stopped drinking immediately because that feeling—it's basically straight-up derealization for me. Since I love drinking so much, I usually just take my pills to make it stop, so there's really no point in touching alcohol if it's just going to trigger that headspace anyway.

Hey, I’ve got a question for the group here.
How many of you guys actually pair your meds with psychotherapy? If you do, what kind of therapy are we talking about? And if you aren't doing it—why not? Just curious to see how everyone else is playing it.

In my view, medication alone is largely ineffective unless one is dealing with psychosis. For almost everything else, psychotherapy is absolutely essential. Medication should only ever be used as a supporting tool alongside therapy. To put it another way, if you are capable of resolving your issues on your own—whether through your social circle, your faith, or alternative wellness practices—then you shouldn't need medication at all. However, if you find yourself needing them, it's a sign that you need someone to help shake things up, helping you process and implement meaningful changes in your life. Personally, I practice integrative therapy; it’s a bit of a blend of various modalities, and I find it incredibly helpful.

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George Clark19 said:Hey, I’ve got a question for the group here.
How many of you guys actually pair your meds with psychotherapy? If you do, what kind of therapy are we talking about? And if you aren't doing it—why not? Just curious to see how everyone else is playing it.

I don't even know if I can call what I'm doing therapy...

I see this psychiatrist who basically cuts me off the second I start talking, then she just launches into her own monologue about how everything is "all in my head" and how I can handle things on my own. She's super intense, probably trying to "keep me grounded" or whatever, but honestly, I've never felt better after one of her sessions. Like, never. She treats me like I just need a little boost in self-esteem, which is a joke. When I was at my absolute worst—barely able to breathe, walk, or talk, let alone dealing with those intrusive thoughts where I'm terrified I'll hurt someone—I couldn't even get out of bed for days. So yeah, I'm thinking about ditching her. Surely there's someone out there who actually listens and gives a damn... 🤔

George Clark19 said:Hey, I’ve got a question for the group here.
How many of you guys actually pair your meds with psychotherapy? If you do, what kind of therapy are we talking about? And if you aren't doing it—why not? Just curious to see how everyone else is playing it.

I’m doing CBT, and honestly, my therapist is a total lifesaver.🙂

George Clark19 said:Hey, I’ve got a question for the group here.
How many of you guys actually pair your meds with psychotherapy? If you do, what kind of therapy are we talking about? And if you aren't doing it—why not? Just curious to see how everyone else is playing it.

AD plus a psychiatrist plus Gestalt therapy.
It's slow progress, but I've only just started, so I'm not expecting miracles right away.🤔

Brandon Lopez6 said:First time mixing booze with this stuff. I had some Ambien, Ativan, and two shots of pear brandy. Honestly, I was terrified I’d get knocked out cold because everyone says Ambien is brutal, especially when you toss it back with alcohol, but I ended up wide awake until 5 AM. Didn't feel sleepy at all. No side effects or anything weird.
Just feeling pretty bummed about how little it takes for me to get "drunk." As soon as I felt that sensation creeping in, I stopped drinking immediately because that feeling—it's basically straight-up derealization for me. Since I love drinking so much, I usually just take my pills to make it stop, so there's really no point in touching alcohol if it's just going to trigger that headspace anyway.

I went through the same thing during the holidays and New Year's... just one beer for Christmas and maybe two ounces of wine for New Year's Eve... neither of them sat right with me. To echo what you said, it hit me instantly and left me feeling sort of numb and lifeless after just a short while... though I didn't feel sleepy either. In the past, I could handle four beers without breaking a sweat, but it seems like long-term sobriety—or perhaps the medication itself—has completely changed the equation.

Who actually prescribed you guys all this medication?

What’s the deal with your therapists' takes on it?

Personally, I’m big on Gestalt and integrative stuff—CBT just isn't really my vibe.

The reason I’m even asking is because seeing everyone talk about meds makes me look back at my own experience, and man...

When I think back to being 19 or 20, the way doctors were basically shoving pills down my throat was honestly insane. It was constant—cranking up the dosage, swapping one thing for another. One doctor even tried to put me on antipsychotics... and I wasn't even that far gone.

Literally just one doctor actually had the decency to tell me I shouldn't be on that kind of stuff at my age. Back then, finding actual psychotherapy in my hometown was impossible, even if you had the cash to pay for it.

Anyway, I was dealing with panic attacks, depression, and anxiety. I spent a year on Prozac and it did absolutely nothing for me. Eventually, I just said "screw this" and started figuring things out on my own. I guess I just had this stubborn streak where I refused to let those drugs wreck my life.

Later on, I finally got into therapy, which helped me realize I wasn't some "bad" or "crazy" person or whatever.

But looking back at those hospital vibes and the endless cycle of prescriptions... it honestly hurts to see people going through the same thing today.

P.S. Real healing comes from therapy, not just a pill bottle.

George Clark19 said:Who actually prescribed you guys all this medication?

What’s the deal with your therapists' takes on it?

Personally, I’m big on Gestalt and integrative stuff—CBT just isn't really my vibe.

The reason I’m even asking is because seeing everyone talk about meds makes me look back at my own experience, and man...

When I think back to being 19 or 20, the way doctors were basically shoving pills down my throat was honestly insane. It was constant—cranking up the dosage, swapping one thing for another. One doctor even tried to put me on antipsychotics... and I wasn't even that far gone.

Literally just one doctor actually had the decency to tell me I shouldn't be on that kind of stuff at my age. Back then, finding actual psychotherapy in my hometown was impossible, even if you had the cash to pay for it.

Anyway, I was dealing with panic attacks, depression, and anxiety. I spent a year on Prozac and it did absolutely nothing for me. Eventually, I just said "screw this" and started figuring things out on my own. I guess I just had this stubborn streak where I refused to let those drugs wreck my life.

Later on, I finally got into therapy, which helped me realize I wasn't some "bad" or "crazy" person or whatever.

But looking back at those hospital vibes and the endless cycle of prescriptions... it honestly hurts to see people going through the same thing today.

P.S. Real healing comes from therapy, not just a pill bottle.

Shrink Quote

George Clark19 said:Who actually prescribed you guys all this medication?

What’s the deal with your therapists' takes on it?

Personally, I’m big on Gestalt and integrative stuff—CBT just isn't really my vibe.

The reason I’m even asking is because seeing everyone talk about meds makes me look back at my own experience, and man...

When I think back to being 19 or 20, the way doctors were basically shoving pills down my throat was honestly insane. It was constant—cranking up the dosage, swapping one thing for another. One doctor even tried to put me on antipsychotics... and I wasn't even that far gone.

Literally just one doctor actually had the decency to tell me I shouldn't be on that kind of stuff at my age. Back then, finding actual psychotherapy in my hometown was impossible, even if you had the cash to pay for it.

Anyway, I was dealing with panic attacks, depression, and anxiety. I spent a year on Prozac and it did absolutely nothing for me. Eventually, I just said "screw this" and started figuring things out on my own. I guess I just had this stubborn streak where I refused to let those drugs wreck my life.

Later on, I finally got into therapy, which helped me realize I wasn't some "bad" or "crazy" person or whatever.

But looking back at those hospital vibes and the endless cycle of prescriptions... it honestly hurts to see people going through the same thing today.

P.S. Real healing comes from therapy, not just a pill bottle.

It is surprising that no one suggested psychotherapy to me sooner.

Therapy is absolutely non-negotiable when dealing with anxiety and panic attacks because, unfortunately, there isn't an antidepressant out there that will completely eliminate the anxiety; for the panic specifically, you might need to supplement with Xanax. That said, I am truly glad you are pursuing therapy for all of this. It gives me a sense of courage. Sometimes I find myself thinking, "So what if I lose my mind over something I'm afraid of?" Usually, I don't end up losing it, and even if I did, I know my therapist will be there to pull me back—or prescribe something to steady me if necessary. Having that safety net, knowing there is someone who will step in when the panic becomes overwhelming, is exactly what keeps me grounded.
Give it a shot. Personally, I found Integrative therapy to be excellent, whereas Gestalt just wasn't for me, and CBT homework assignments never quite clicked with my personality. Now, I prefer receiving more direct guidance—essentially, how would my therapist handle things if she saw me spiraling from fear? She’d likely want to avoid any unnecessary escalation. To be honest, I find those "pros and cons" lists or writing down thoughts on paper to be somewhat insulting to my intelligence; my brain tends to outsmart those exercises, racing at a hundred miles an hour regardless of what I put on the page.

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If I'm taking Mirzaten, can I take DayQuil for the flu?

Justin Rogers5 said:If I'm taking Mirzaten, can I take DayQuil for the flu?

You can, don't worry about it.

Skickas fr

Wait, so what even is Mirzaten?? Honestly, back when I was on fluoxetine, my auntie working at the CVS just told me to take some Lupocet instead...

Hi everyone!
Has anyone here tried Welbutren lately? I'm curious to hear if you noticed any actual improvements after starting it.
Thanks!

Hey experienced folks, I could really use some advice here.

Quick recap: I’ve been on Fevarin for about 7 months now to deal with anxiety, which mostly showed up as insomnia. For the first two months, Fevarin didn't quite get me through the whole night, so my therapist added a tiny dose of Mirzaten (just 1/6 of a 15 mg pill). Once we introduced Mirzaten, I was sleeping like a baby for months. Honestly, I felt amazing—never better.

Just so you know, I’m also doing KBT.

About a month ago, I decided to stop taking the Mirzaten for sleep. I’d managed to drift off before even taking it, and I wasn't waking up in the middle of the night anymore. I was sleeping just as well without it, so I quit spontaneously, which I honestly felt was a huge win for me.

But then, a week ago, I started a new job. It’s been a massive shock to the system. Even though I’ve been working for years, I feel like a total rookie here. Everything is brand new, I'm learning from scratch, and I'm having a hard time adjusting to the change and leaving my old coworkers behind—they had actually become real friends.

Ever since I started this new gig, the middle-of-the-night wakeups are back. After maybe four hours of sleep, I’ll snap awake and just... stay awake. It’s this weird mix of half-panic and reliving those awful days when my insomnia was at its worst and I barely slept at all.

For this past week, I've been just trying to scrape by. When I wake up in the night and realize after an hour of tossing and turning that sleep isn't coming, I've been taking half a Xanax. It calms me down enough to sleep until morning.

I get that these wakeups are just my initial reaction to the stress of switching jobs. I talked it over with my therapist during KBT, and she said it’s completely normal.

The thing is, I know how much my therapist dislikes Xanax. So, I wanted to ask you guys: should I just hang in there while I adjust to the new job and keep using the Xanax to patch things up at night? Or should I go back to Mirzaten? Going back feels like such a setback, especially since I felt like I had successfully moved past it.😢

Thanks for any input.🙂

So, I was prescribed some Xanax 0.25, but only as needed, plus half a tablet of Fevarin before bed.
How exactly is this Fevarin supposed to work?
Because honestly, I feel like it’s making everything worse, and I’ve never even taken medication before this. I only managed about four hours of sleep last night. I took it for the first time yesterday, and now my mouth is bone dry all day long. I can't eat a thing—just sipping on tea and calling it a day. The instructions say you shouldn't really be drinking coffee or tea while on Fevarin, either. Anyway, I woke up at 3:30 AM feeling like my heart was going to jump right out of my chest, and I just started sobbing. But it wasn't even normal crying; it was those heavy, painful tears... that feeling where you're literally struggling to pull air into your lungs.

Mark Fox96 said:So, I was prescribed some Xanax 0.25, but only as needed, plus half a tablet of Fevarin before bed.
How exactly is this Fevarin supposed to work?
Because honestly, I feel like it’s making everything worse, and I’ve never even taken medication before this. I only managed about four hours of sleep last night. I took it for the first time yesterday, and now my mouth is bone dry all day long. I can't eat a thing—just sipping on tea and calling it a day. The instructions say you shouldn't really be drinking coffee or tea while on Fevarin, either. Anyway, I woke up at 3:30 AM feeling like my heart was going to jump right out of my chest, and I just started sobbing. But it wasn't even normal crying; it was those heavy, painful tears... that feeling where you're literally struggling to pull air into your lungs.

Fevarin is an antidepressant, meant to stabilize things for you in the long run. I don't know what you're dealing with—anxiety, depression, OCD, whatever—but the goal is to get you back to baseline.
What you’re describing sounds like side effects, and yeah, they can stick around for a while. It might even feel worse at first, and sometimes the initial issue—like the anxiety or depression—can actually flare up.
Look, if the Fevarin ends up being right for you, the benefits should eventually outweigh the side effects, and the bad stuff usually tapers off over time. But if these side effects drag on past a month or two without any real progress, your doctor will probably switch you to a different antidepressant.

The Xanax was likely prescribed as "rescue" medication, which is super common when you're first starting an antidepressant. As the side effects die down, the usage of Xanax should decrease too, until you either stop it entirely or just keep it around as a safety net.
My advice? Try to push through without the Xanax as much as you can. It’s easy to get hooked—not just on the pill itself, but on that sense of security it gives you when you take it.

Michael Hill2 said:Hey experienced folks, I could really use some advice here.

Quick recap: I’ve been on Fevarin for about 7 months now to deal with anxiety, which mostly showed up as insomnia. For the first two months, Fevarin didn't quite get me through the whole night, so my therapist added a tiny dose of Mirzaten (just 1/6 of a 15 mg pill). Once we introduced Mirzaten, I was sleeping like a baby for months. Honestly, I felt amazing—never better.

Just so you know, I’m also doing KBT.

About a month ago, I decided to stop taking the Mirzaten for sleep. I’d managed to drift off before even taking it, and I wasn't waking up in the middle of the night anymore. I was sleeping just as well without it, so I quit spontaneously, which I honestly felt was a huge win for me.

But then, a week ago, I started a new job. It’s been a massive shock to the system. Even though I’ve been working for years, I feel like a total rookie here. Everything is brand new, I'm learning from scratch, and I'm having a hard time adjusting to the change and leaving my old coworkers behind—they had actually become real friends.

Ever since I started this new gig, the middle-of-the-night wakeups are back. After maybe four hours of sleep, I’ll snap awake and just... stay awake. It’s this weird mix of half-panic and reliving those awful days when my insomnia was at its worst and I barely slept at all.

For this past week, I've been just trying to scrape by. When I wake up in the night and realize after an hour of tossing and turning that sleep isn't coming, I've been taking half a Xanax. It calms me down enough to sleep until morning.

I get that these wakeups are just my initial reaction to the stress of switching jobs. I talked it over with my therapist during KBT, and she said it’s completely normal.

The thing is, I know how much my therapist dislikes Xanax. So, I wanted to ask you guys: should I just hang in there while I adjust to the new job and keep using the Xanax to patch things up at night? Or should I go back to Mirzaten? Going back feels like such a setback, especially since I felt like I had successfully moved past it.😢

Thanks for any input.🙂

Look, it’s almost poetic timing: just as you managed to step away from the Mirzaten, you landed this new job and experienced a setback in your stability due to the stress. You know as well as I do that our psychiatrist—since we share the same one—insists that insomnia is the primary warning sign that something is wrong. In your case, it has triggered a relapse.

If I were in your shoes, I would return to the Mirzaten immediately. Maintaining steady sleep is non-negotiable; you can't function effectively at work if you're sleep-deprived, and the downward spiral will only accelerate.
Stopping medication isn't some grand triumph, nor is it a failure. Saying you've "won" because you stopped taking a pill is like saying someone beat tachycardia just because they stopped taking beta-blockers. No matter how much we try to frame these issues as purely "mental," we have to acknowledge they are organic conditions occurring in the brain. And the brain is a physical organ; the nervous system is part of that biology.

So, my advice is to get back on the medication and start supplementing with B vitamins, magnesium, and Omega-3.
There will always be a day when you can successfully taper off the Mirzaten again, but right now, while you are navigating the turbulence of a new career, you need the support of your medication.😉

redranger2 said:Look, it’s almost poetic timing: just as you managed to step away from the Mirzaten, you landed this new job and experienced a setback in your stability due to the stress. You know as well as I do that our psychiatrist—since we share the same one—insists that insomnia is the primary warning sign that something is wrong. In your case, it has triggered a relapse.

If I were in your shoes, I would return to the Mirzaten immediately. Maintaining steady sleep is non-negotiable; you can't function effectively at work if you're sleep-deprived, and the downward spiral will only accelerate.
Stopping medication isn't some grand triumph, nor is it a failure. Saying you've "won" because you stopped taking a pill is like saying someone beat tachycardia just because they stopped taking beta-blockers. No matter how much we try to frame these issues as purely "mental," we have to acknowledge they are organic conditions occurring in the brain. And the brain is a physical organ; the nervous system is part of that biology.

So, my advice is to get back on the medication and start supplementing with B vitamins, magnesium, and Omega-3.
There will always be a day when you can successfully taper off the Mirzaten again, but right now, while you are navigating the turbulence of a new career, you need the support of your medication.😉

Thanks, redranger2. I really needed to hear that kind of support right now. 🙂

I know I can't function without sleep. Honestly, it feels like a win to have this career opportunity pop up, even if it happened during such a vulnerable time for me. But life happens; sometimes it deals you a hand before you've even had a chance to ask. 😉

If I end up going back to Quincy, I know mixing it with Xanax is just a losing game...

Thanks again for the kind words. 🙂

Michael Hill2 said:Hey experienced folks, I could really use some advice here.

Quick recap: I’ve been on Fevarin for about 7 months now to deal with anxiety, which mostly showed up as insomnia. For the first two months, Fevarin didn't quite get me through the whole night, so my therapist added a tiny dose of Mirzaten (just 1/6 of a 15 mg pill). Once we introduced Mirzaten, I was sleeping like a baby for months. Honestly, I felt amazing—never better.

Just so you know, I’m also doing KBT.

About a month ago, I decided to stop taking the Mirzaten for sleep. I’d managed to drift off before even taking it, and I wasn't waking up in the middle of the night anymore. I was sleeping just as well without it, so I quit spontaneously, which I honestly felt was a huge win for me.

But then, a week ago, I started a new job. It’s been a massive shock to the system. Even though I’ve been working for years, I feel like a total rookie here. Everything is brand new, I'm learning from scratch, and I'm having a hard time adjusting to the change and leaving my old coworkers behind—they had actually become real friends.

Ever since I started this new gig, the middle-of-the-night wakeups are back. After maybe four hours of sleep, I’ll snap awake and just... stay awake. It’s this weird mix of half-panic and reliving those awful days when my insomnia was at its worst and I barely slept at all.

For this past week, I've been just trying to scrape by. When I wake up in the night and realize after an hour of tossing and turning that sleep isn't coming, I've been taking half a Xanax. It calms me down enough to sleep until morning.

I get that these wakeups are just my initial reaction to the stress of switching jobs. I talked it over with my therapist during KBT, and she said it’s completely normal.

The thing is, I know how much my therapist dislikes Xanax. So, I wanted to ask you guys: should I just hang in there while I adjust to the new job and keep using the Xanax to patch things up at night? Or should I go back to Mirzaten? Going back feels like such a setback, especially since I felt like I had successfully moved past it.😢

Thanks for any input.🙂

Since you were only taking 1/6th of a 15 mg dose of Miller, which is practically nothing in my book, yet it was enough to send you to sleep, I say go ahead and return to it. Personally, I take half of a 15 mg pill, and my own mind tells me that isn't even a real dose... so there is no harm in continuing with it. Honestly, alongside that 7.5 mg, I sometimes find myself needing a glass of wine just to finally drift off.