Thanks for your post. I just started taking Paxil today, 20mg/day.
I was reading about both Paxil and Wellbutrin on Wikipedia.org
It said:
"Bupropion (Wellbutrin) is more effective than SSRIs (Paxil) at improving symptoms of hypersomnia and fatigue in depressed patients. In a comparative meta-analysis, there appeared to be a modest advantage for the SSRIs compared to bupropion in the treatment of depression with high anxiety, while these medications were equivalent for the depression with moderate or low anxiety.
According to several surveys, the augmentation of a prescribed SSRI with bupropion is the preferred strategy among clinicians when the patient does not respond to the SSRI. For example, the combination of bupropion and citalopram (Celexa) was observed to be more effective than switching to another antidepressant. The addition of bupropion to an SSRI (primarily fluoxetine or sertraline) resulted in a significant improvement in 70–80% of patients who had an incomplete response to the first-line antidepressant.Bupropion improved ratings of "energy", which had decreased under the influence of the SSRI; also noted were improvements of mood and motivation, and some improvement of cognitive and sexual functions."
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So, i'm thinking of switching to Wellbutrin.
I sleep a lot, about 10 hours a day. Part of that is sheer boredom; i don't know what to do with myself. I work out a lot too, read, have conversations, pay bills. But i still have time to sleep 10hours a day. Last night i fell asleep at 7pm, woke up at 5am.
I think about going for more university education, but i don't have faith it will result in anything, and i'll be out $50,000. I only want the educational certificate to improve earnings and/or be in an 'interesting' job. On paper, my current job looks good and i know i'd be interested in it if i read about it on a job board. But even my 'interesting' job (which i like in theory, but don't seem to enjoy hour by hour) isn't making me happy. But I put in lots of effort at the job, cuz i don't want to lose it and create more problems.
I was taking Tramadol last year for back pain. But i noticed how much energy and pep i had on it. I started thinking tramadol & tea was a perfect combo. And it was, for about 5 months. Then i started to itch all the time, and i started to sweat when i didn't take it for 36 hours, and i started to realize i was addicted. I decreased as much as possible, but i'd be so unmotivated without tramadol, and energetic with it. But the energy would last about 4 hours, then i'd wind down.
Anyway, it's been about 2 weeks since i've taken any Tramadol, and i tapered off it for 6 weeks before that, getting down to about 20mg/day. Amazingly, that sounds like nothing compared to others i've read here. Other people seem to taper down to 200mg vicodin or hydros, and then go through 5 days of terror, and then they report they are much better. But that didn't happen to me. I've been very slow, unengaged and irritable for the last 3 months.
I'm hoping to get some energy/motivation/happiness back from Paxil. But now that i've got the prescription filled, i learn this info about Wellbutrin. I'll probably switch when my prescription is empty.