Or anything remotely like it, but my neuro and I have found an adjunct drug that I believe has great promise to do ONE THING, that is, provide us PWP enough of a brief respite from the disease to GET THINGS DONE. This means necessary things, like getting ready for a doctors (or any other ) appointment, or getting out of the house to do something that we pretty well MUST do.
Up until this point, I have accepted that I just couldn't do much of anything. Since I have no caretaker or anything or anyone to help me do the things in life that require great strength and endurance at times, i asked my neuro if we could find a stimulant to get me going, when i absolutely need to. over the last few months, we have been experimenting with different drugs to see if we could find one that works, and the right dose and use.
I had tried several, without great success. Then my neuro gave me Dextroamphetamine, 5mg normal release. I tried to vary the dosage and the timing an dhad some success, but it was clearly not optimal. THen he gave me Dextroamphetamine 15mg controlled release. MY first capsule woke me up from this bad dream like rumpelstiltskin !!!. My wife had been trying to get me to get rid of a lot of the things that I had accumulated in life before we divorce, or i pass on. One sure can accumulate a lot of "stuff" in life and she didn't want to be burdened with having to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I was always so drained of energy that i just let stuff molder in the basement.
That first capsule gave me so much energy that I immediately felt physically as good as I did 10 years ago. I could not believe it, I put in a sustained 8 hours of intensive bull work, before i crashed. Believe me mates, my wife told me that i was "faking" having PD !!!
Of course, this is a "Cinderella drug" and everything goes back to pumpkins and mice at midnight, but it bloody well worked !!!
I am being very careful not to take it every day because it is yet another addicting drug, and is not without side effects. I tried many different doses and settled on 20mg/day taken as 2, 10mg capsules in the morning, if I need to be totally functional for a brief period, or , I can take 10mg in the morning and 10mg at noon, if I want to skip my usual "sundowner" nap at the beginning of evening, and still be acceptably on all day.
I have found that i can now go out without fear of going off suddenly. I am guessing that what is happening is that Dexedrine is acting as a Dopamine reuptake inhibitor, as well as adding an extra "oomph" from being acted upon by the various hydroxylases in the brain to give catecholamine or adrenaline like metabolites.
I haven't moved like this in years. I am sore all over from using muscles i forgot were there. i will procede cautiously and let you know what happens. In the meantime, why don't some of you of you "lab rats" convince your doc to give it a try. IF your blood presure is good and you have never had any problems with your heart, chances are thatyour neuro will go along with this experiment. This could be the start of something good for SOME of us, and another FDA approved use for amphetamines, which are currently only approved for use in narcolepsy and ADD.