I tried Prozac but it didn't help a lot and I found my gf so I didn't want the sexual side effects, then after a lot of anxiety tried Lyrica and it worked decently for a bit less than a year but I think that now it doesn't help that much (either because my circumstances are more anxiety inducing in general or because of tolerance).
There aren't that many CBT therapists in my country either let alone ERP specialists (most are talk therapists or psychoanalysts). I'm not sure how much it would help anyways because I mainly have mental obsessions which might are more difficult to prevent.
What did you do in a similar position? Did you manage to find some semblance of inner peace? Thanks for your time
Gabapentinoids like Lyrica have been my only real saviors, but the tolerance climbs way too fast to be useful long term, and the withdrawal is the literal worst withdrawal I've ever been through. Avoid phenibut with a 100 foot pole for this exact reason. Some people report good long term success with benzos, but they don't do shit for me so ymmv.
Hot take, I really like anti-psychotics. Most of them suck, but risperidone treats me fucking great emotion wise and helps me keep from focusing in on physical discomfort. Different strokes for different folks tho.
This also may be a hot take, but kinda fuck CBT. It's cool for like a month, but then after that it just made me spiral even harder. I don't need help recognizing the thoughts, I don't need to pick my brain any harder than I already do. Therapy all depends on the therapist though, find a person that works for you. Therapy is good, but bad therapy can be worse than not going at all.
I haven't looked into psychopharmacology relating to OCD but if gabapentinoids work then you might consider trying out memantine/amantadine. Obviously they work on different receptors however memantine/amantadine might hit a similar note that a gabapentinoid does. Both memantine and amantadine have pretty minimal side effect profiles in comparison to psychiatric meds like antidepressants.
I am interested in memantine, just worried about ever going through withdrawal again. NMDA action (cough syrup, ketamine, memantine ect.) have all treated me pretty well when I've done them. DXM as a short term SSRI actually works alright imo.
How does memantine make you feel?
I haven't tried memantine before but it's very similar to amantadine, which I do take.
I've heard one anecdotal report that memantine's effect is stronger than amantadine but idk the truth of that.
Amantadine is an anticholinergic but it's very mild in this respect compared to the anticholinergic effects that you get from antipsychotics.
I take amantadine to hit a few different birds with one stone: I have ADHD and I'm really sensitive to the side effects of norepinephrinergic meds (think Adderall, Vyvanse) and amantadine increases dopamine release and blocks reuptake so it works well as an adjunct ADHD med for me. I suffer from pretty crippling depression and the NMDA antagonist effect is definitely welcome. Last of all there's the obvious anxiety that goes along with the depression and the sensitivity to norepinephrinergic meds and amantadine works well to mitigate these two related factors.
It's a little bit hard to determine what memantine would feel like for a non-ADHDer but I would say that it's anxiolytic effects would still be the major effect, so if it works it should feel reduce your anxiety noticeably.
(I've only ever had temazepam during serious mental health crises so I can't really compare the effect to benzodiazepines anecdotally, unfortunately.)
I tried to lower my Lyrica dosage from 2 x 50mg to 2 x 25mg but my sleep was worse for a month with no signs for improving, so I started it again, I dread what would happen if I completely stopped taking it.
Yeah, I also do that and its the compulsion that has tormented me the most. The depression stuff like forcing positive thoughts didn't work either for me, I don't know if I did it wrong or CBT was conceived for the NT brain or sth
Oof, your doctor is being kinda irresponsible with Lyrica if they recommended that drop. 25mg is the most you should drop at a time, but that's still harsher than I'd recommend. You're right at the line (100mg a day) where the withdrawal should still be manageable, but you're also at the point where you have to do tiny long term drops in order to make it bearable. If you want off, you essentially have to do a slow taper to zero or you will literally be dealing with the withdrawal for years. I didn't want to deal with the full taper so I did a fast one to get off, and it is literally the biggest regret I've had my entire life because of how bad the withdrawal fried me afterwards. The nerve damage and PAWS depression from it make my time quitting benzos and fentanyl at the same time feel like fucking child's play. Medical professionals usually don't understand how bad the withdrawal is or that there even is a withdrawal, so unless your psych is particularly smart, they will give bad advice on this subject.
They didn't recommend it. Sometimes I feel that while my doctor is much better than the psychiatrist horror stories I have heard, they wait too long to react to certain side effects I am having, or they aren't very good at extracting that information out of me. I tried to reduce it because it made me extra sluggish this summer (every summer I become depressed and fatigued for whatever reason), and I couldn't take it anymore so I reduced it on my own. They didn't object to the decrease though, so that's on them