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Comment by pogue | Hacker News Reader

That's quite interesting. In my experience, I've suffered from severe anxiety and depression my entire adult life. I spent years working with a psychiatrist trying every SSRI on the market. None of them seemed to help in the slightest, until I asked to try Eldepryl (selegiline), an MAO-B. It helps greatly with depression, but hasn't helped with anxiety. An MAO-B has the advantage of not having any issue with tyramine (the cheese effect) that you're referring to.

I've never heard of Nardil, but I'll have to look into it.

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I am always cautious about offering any kind of medical suggestions online. Please take this with a grain of salt:

I struggled with anxiety and depression, treated with anti-depressants and such

After years of that, a doctor suggested I test for ADHD and I got medicated for that after the test was positive

After being medicated for ADHD, I had much less anxiety and basically no depression. Turns out that both Anxiety and Depression are potentially comorbid with unmedicated ADHD

It might be worth asking about. It could be that you need stimulants, not antidepressants

I hear this often and am curious about it, as someone with an ADHD-PI diagnosis who has taken nearly every med, ranging from Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse, Dexedrine, to Strattera and possibly others I can't recall over the past 20 years. I've never felt like any of them had any lasting effect on my anxiety or depression. They all give a temporary relief of some of these symptoms while the drug is in my system, but I always return to baseline, which results in a roller coaster effect. Strattera may have been the exception because its not a stimulant like the others but ultimately it didn't address issues with motivation so I stopped it. I would love something that successfully addressed ADHD+anxiety+depression. And yes, I exercise, get 8 hours of sleep on average, eat pretty good, and don't live a stressful live.

> They all give a temporary relief of some of these symptoms while the drug is in my system, but I always return to baseline, which results in a roller coaster effect

I'm sorry, I'm not any kind of medical expert so I can't really say anything useful here

If I did have to guess, I would say that Anxiety, Depression, or all sorts of other things can stand on their own, or be a comorbid symptom caused by something else

In my case it seems like my Anxiety and Depression were at least somewhat caused by my underlying ADHD. Treating ADHD helped me with the anxiety and depression at the same time

But just because it can be this way doesn't mean it has to be. It could be there is something else underlying your other symptoms. Or they just aren't comorbid and need separate treatment

I don't know. I'm sorry to hear you still have some trouble with things though. I hope you keep going and figure them out

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