Paxil turned bad?
 

Hi everyone. I'm new here and this is my first thread. I've struggled with OCD like symptoms since I can remember, and they've intensified thoroughly in the past few months. I don't have compulsions, only very intense irrational fears/obsessions. Two years ago I had a bad bout of obessional thoughts and went on 12.5 mg of paxil cr. It was wonderful. I went off of it a year later thinking I was fine. A few months ago it happened again. The obsessions came back with a vengence. My doctor thought I should up the dosage from last time, and I'm now on 20mg of regular paxil every day. I also complement paxil with klonopin which really really helps with my anxiety attacks. Here is my problem: I've been on the med for less than a month. The first two weeks were psychologically hellish. They was the worst depression/obsessional episodes I'd ever experienced. After the intial first few weeks its been up and down. Some days I'm on cloud nine. Other days I'm obsessed and depressed to the point of severe anxiety. What should I do? I'm starting to think that my general practioner can only do so much and I should maybe see a psychiatrist. Does paxil take a long time to kick in? Why did it work so well last time and not this time? Would a psychatrist be better able to handle my situation? I'm convinced that I have an anxiety disorder or maybe pure O. Any info would be greatly helpful. Thanks so much.

Hello jmoney, and welcome to NeuroTalk.

I wish I could offer you some advice, but I was here just recently asking for advice myself! I was prescribed a different AD to Paxil, but I did get a great reply from another member who does take Paxil, and it seems that they did well on that one. I'm hoping they or another who's been on it, will give you their thoughts on that particular medication.

Anyway, I just dropped in to say hi, and suggest that maybe you might like to post this in the Depression Forum, where hopefully some-one will come by to give you the answers that you need.

Here's the link to the Depression Forum incase you haven't found it yet. http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum37.html

Paxil has a very spotty
 

record. In fact in Britain, GSK was sued for misrepresenting it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4443697.stm

There is a Paxil forum out there, you can Google it.
But in brief there are records to show that it is not very effective and was marketed under shadowy conditions.
Of all the SSRIs it is basically the worst.

GSK deliberately withheld data that showed that Paxil did not work in children...and marketed it anyway to doctors claiming it was very effective. A suit in this country led to GSK being forced to publically reveal those studies--and their website has them.(or had them at one time).

There are other ways to handle obsessions. One of them is inositol. I am leaving today for long vacation, and cannot go into detail..but if you Google inositol OCD you will find many sites explaining it.

Take care.