Methylphenidate help anyone with depression?

[Harbs4580]

As a sufferer from moderate depression for most of my adult life.  All conventional anti-anxiety and depression prescription medications have been unsuccessful.  Alongside the depression I had little to no energy and commonly feel exhausted on a daily basis.  As a result of being tired I recently began methylphenidate and extremely quickly I found that it not only helped me have more energy, but greatly improved my chronic depression.  So much so that it’s truly been life changing for me. After some research I read that methylphenidate can significantly help some people who do not respond to conventional antidepressants. In fact methylphenidate works rapidly and is thus effective for the treatment of depression where the patient needs immediate relief.  Has anyone else had success like this or heard of this being possible as well?

 

[TommyAC]

@Harbs4580 Stimulants are very effective antidepressants, arguably they were the first ones, but they do have a couple of issues. Probably the main one is addiction, you have to be very careful, treat the medication as an antidepressant, meaning the dosage stays the same. You may feel tempted to take an extra pill sometimes, but since the purpose of the drug is as an antidepressant, it should be as constant as possible. Also, extended release preparations are preferable. With methylphen1date in particular the short half-life can be problematic, specially if you have bipolar depression or any condition with mood swings, the risk of rebound depression is significant.

Methylphen1date in partcular is very useful in elderly patients, when you're older depression often comes with cognitive issues and clearing that mental fog is very important. One piece of advice I have for your situation, do not counter stimulation with downers, that combo is very addictive in healthy people, if you're depressed it's very easy to start taking more. At one point there were these upper+downer pills in the market like dexamyl (dex@mphetamine + am0barbital) and desbutal (Meth@mphetamine + nembut@al), I'm sure they worked but they were more common in parties than doctor's offices.

Personally I can really empathize with what you're sharing because I take Vyv@nse for my ADHD, but it has a great influence in my mood. It lasts the entire day which is great, but it's different from an antidepressant. My effexor gives me a constant effect, I don't feel it ''kick in'' at any point and also there's no comedown, that's to me the key difference you have to take into account. Because stimulants are incompatible with sleep, you simply can't take an upper that will work 24 hours, meaning comedown is more or less inevitable. It can be very mild, but still it's something to take into account. If you need to take a downer to sleep, then the effect of the drug is already too long-lasting. As for specifics, personally I find vyv@nse to work the best, other @mphetamines like addy and dex can work well in extended release formulations. For methylph3nidate, long formulations like C0ncerta and R1talin LA are probably great, the patch might work very well too. That said there is a new medication called Azstarys that contains dexmethylph3nidate and a new pro-drug called serdexmethylph3nidate which is very similar to Vyv@nse but for methylph3nidate instead of dex and for what I've read, Azstarys sounds like it could be a very solid antidepressant.

PS: I forgot what I was writing about maybe 2 lines in so I hope this makes some sort of sense