Does this sound like depression? Please help.

So I also have ibs-d along with these other symptoms. Fatigue, extreme tiredness, insomnia, brain fog, increased appetite/weight gain, chest tightness, panic attacks, low motivation, suicidal thoughts, lack of concentration, vision problems, spacious feeling. I'm sure I missed a few.

I originally thought a lot of these symptoms where a result of my ibs but now I'm not to sure anymore. Doctors have convinced me along time ago to go on antidepressants but I don't really feel there helping all that much. I mean my symptoms are not as severe but I think it's only because while on the antidepressants I'm to tired to care.

The anti depressants I have tried are celexa, effexor, lexapro, and prozac. I'm currently on 10 mg of prozac did start at 20 mg but it made me so tired I couldn't even function now its better but I'm still really tired.

Doctors have told me for years they thought I had a depression/anxiety problem and I really didn't believe them because I believed my ibs was causing me to be depressed, and I believed if I found the cause of my digestive distress I could treat it and resolve all the symptoms. But after having every, and I mean every possible cause of ibs ruled out I'm now wondering if perhaps its the other way around maybe my depression is causing my ibs.

Does this sound like Depression? What should I do? Should I see a depression specialist? I'm really tired of feeling like crap all the time. I haven't had a gf in over 5 years because I have no desire or drive to have a relationship but yet I feel like I'm missing out on so much. Is it possible if you don't notice much change from one anti depressant that another one can make a huge difference? I keep reading posts by people that had very little success and then they get the right one and feel amazing is that possible? I'm thinking of trying a new class such as welbutrin or elavil.

Kamikazee,

Do you have any pain along with these symptoms?

Just curious.

Welcome to the forum...

Hugs, Karen...

Yeah I'm sorry about the name I actually used it because I thought it sounded cool then I actually learned what it meant. lol I'm actually a pretty positive happy go lucky guy. People like to hang out with me a lot because I'm easy going and fun when I want to be. But most of the time I just drag and am so tired and have no drive or motivation. And my other symptoms really get me down. That's why I have a hard time believing its depression and not just the ibs but I'm willing to try a different approach if it means feeling better.

I would see a specialist right off the bat but money is tight right now. So as of right now I think I'm going to try welbutrin(Is this a good idea?) because I already have tried a handful of SSRI and they all had the same result make me feel sedated like a zombie, tired, and gain weight. Also they have done nothing for my ibs. So maybe the welbutrin by working on different parts of the brain and chemicals will make me feel a lot better. Possible?

I just have a couple concerns about welbutrin first I did try it once before for about 1 week and I stopped because I got really itchy. Has this happened to anybody else? If so do you know why? Also I believe I have some anxiety problems. Is welbutrin good for this? My last question is for as long as I can remember I've had sleep onset insomnia meaning it just takes me forever to fall asleep. Example is if I get in bed by 10:00 pm on average it will be 1:00-2:00 am before I fall asleep. And yes I have completely cut caffeine out of my diet for at least 2 months and it didn't even phase the sleeping problem. This has been going on since I was a child is it possible that welbutrin will make this worse?

I've done hours of research on welbutrin but yet I'm still hesitant about making the change I guess it would be nice to hear some words of encouragement so I feel I'm not make the wrong decision. I feel that if it at least helps me loose weight and have more energy that would be a positive. Since being on prozac for over a year I've been steadily gaining weight which drives me nuts because I have been skinny all my life and now I'm not lol.

I do not have any body aches of any kind except from what I get from working, which is to be expected considering the type of work I do.

Thank you all very much for the replies, just feels nice to talk to people about these problems.

Hello Kam I hope you are well,

I have the same symptoms, can you elaborate on the vision problems please to see if its similar to me.

I have never been diagnosed with depression and have a phone conversation booked in with someone for the 6th July with someone to tell me if I am or not depressed its a 30 min call.

Regards Jamie

Wellbutrin helps with my anxiety and OCD. I can't speak to how it affects insomnia. I had insomnia before and still do but I don't think it's any worse. Snris work best for me. I made a list about medications and did research before I went to the dr. He sat down with me and we discussed my concerns and mutually agreed on wellbutrin. I hope this helps.

Angelic Victory can you please explain how Wellbutrin has helped your anxiety? And how long it took before you felt it was helping? It was a toss up between Elavil and Wellbutrin. Elavil for the ibs-d, but from what I'm reading I feel Elavil would cause the same side effects I'm having right now while on Prozac, such as excessive sleeping and weight gain. And I really don't want to gain anymore weight, the last time I was on celexa I was up to a whopping 265 lbs which was terrible. After getting off that for about 6-12 months I dropped all the way down to 200-210 lbs. Now I'm back up to 235 lbs and I still over eat all the time so I'm just going to keep gaining. I just really want to make sure I'm making the right decision because at this time in my life with some major job changes going on I can't afford to be unstable and with currently being on Prozac right now I am completely unreliable because all I do is sleep.

Thanks all for the replies so far......

Sorry for the delayed response I have been kind of down and out the past couple of days. You created quite the list so what I'm going to do is select the ones I believe I have experienced in the past. And I will put a small description of my experience next to it.

Removed from body (Depersonalization) - This sensation was very severe when my problems started about 5 years ago, it was to the point that I felt like I was in a constant dream state and like everything was surreal. It seemed like at the time is I just felt sick with a fever and the fever was making me feel detached and nothing seemed real, but yet the fever never went away this sensation went on for a good 6 months before I finally got on some meds and then I felt better. Do I believe the meds fixed the problem no, but I feel they helped and at the time I was so sick I was willing to try anything. But this symptom is no longer as severe as it was though I still feel I have it to an extent. And still have no idea whats causing it.

Intrusive Thoughts - Not quite sure what you meant by this but I noticed you have lack of concentration under it so I decided I would add it to the list. I have a really hard time concentrating and understanding certain situations, especially when somebody is talking to me face to face and asking me questions it really hard to comprehend what is being asked and said. Or when I'm looking over a project details for work or reading stuff every now and then it gets to be a real choir understanding what I'm reading.

Memory Loss - This I believe is more a problem with short term memory and might be a side effects from prozac, but I often find myself forgetting what I was talking about in mid sentence, or forgetting where I set an item down like 10 mins ago, also forgetting that I even moved it in the first place. Like one thing that always gets me in trouble is I have a hard time remembering if I took my daily dosage of prozac, like an hour after I took it.

Severe Insomnia - I've had this problem for most of my life and it only seems like its getting worse or at least more annoying. My problem is sleep onset insomnia which means it takes me forever to fall asleep. Usually like 2-3 hours. Regardless of when I go to bed or how tired I am or if I have had any caffeine nothing seems to make a difference.

Loss of sensation - This I defiantly noticed, it was really severe in the beginning of my symptoms such my fingers felt somewhat numb and my body just didn't seem like there was much sensation to it. It might have been because I was having so much discomfort from other things such as nausea and achy muscles at the time that everything else seemed dull. I don't really have those problems anymore but what I do notice as of know is a lack of taste, smell, sound or heat and cold sensation or feeling the breeze. Things just don't seem as vivid as what they used to.

Light Sensitivity - Yes this is terrible though I think it might just be how my eyes are but if I'm driving and it's bright out it really hurts my eyes and I have a hard time keeping them open. I end up holding my eyes closed for 2-3 seconds at a time to try and give them a break. Along with a lot of squinting.

Astigmatism Myopia - This one I'm not sure about because I don't really feel I have double vision but rather just a hard time focusing my eyes. And it's really annoying because it makes it hard to see but like if I'm looking at something in the distance I feel like I'm not really looking at it and like my eyes are in a daze. And some times it seems like the object is moving even though its not. Very hard to describe, maybe it could be called a spacious feeling? I'm not sure.

Floaters - Had these really bad at the beginning don't really have them now.

Flashing Lights / Light Blobs- Also had these bad at the beginning but not really now.

Visual Snow - Still have this now makes it really hard to see at night like almost like a light show going on in my eyes at night time.

Sound sensitivity - Still have this loud noise annoy me especially when I used to have severe headaches which I don't have know but I still find that loud things bother me. Like when somebody drops something or is banging stuff around I find it very annoying and bothersome.

Parathesia - Had this at the beginning don't really have it now used to have weird pin stabbing sensations in my extremities a long with like a burning sensation I guess you could call it. Kind of like when your arm feels a sleep and then it comes back I used to have those sensations periodically when all this crap started along with very achy muscles. But these symptoms have gone away.

hurst85 I hope this has helped you some what if your wondering what I did to remedy or help my problems I don't really have an answer for you. Because as of right now even though a lot of the symptoms listed above have eased up I have developed many new ones that are just as troubling. After opening up to a good friend last night about all these problems she has convinced me at there is something going on that doctors just haven't found yet and therefore convinced me to put all efforts into going to the mayo clinic. Because after talking to her she, told me that she also experience a lot of the same symptoms and it ended up she was severely anemic because she had tumors in her uterus walls the size of softballs. If she didn't go in when she did she would have died because she was slowly bleeding out and she put it off for 10 years before she finally decided to see the doctor. She said they had to put 3 bags of blood in her... But she was having a lot of the symptoms I've been having except the ibs but including the ones listed below.

Some of my new symptoms I have been experiencing that have been causing me a lot of anxiety lately have been chest tightness, chest pain, shortness of breath, extreme fatigue/sleepiness I have always had these problems since the original symptoms started 5 years ago but they have gotten much worse in the last year.

Lisa I'm sorry to hear that, when you say you have the same symptoms, in which symptoms in particular are you referring to? And are you taking any medication? Such as anti depressants? I ask because even though I feel that the anti depressants I was on didn't completely resolve the problem they dulled the symptoms and made life tolerable. I've talked to numerous people about it and thats a characteristic of some anti depressants is they kind of numb you to a certain extent and help you feel better. And thats why doctors tend to over prescribe them because they sometimes create the illusion that the patient is feeling better for a certain illness like ibs, when thats not really the case its just making there problems not so obvious.

But in your case you might want to consider them because it might give you the extra pickup to look further and find more of a solution to your problems then a band aid approach. I still think there's an underlying cause to everything it just a matter of finding it. And anti depressants aren't that expensive they have prozac at walmart for $3.00 per month. Though if you decided to go that route I would maybe look into other options then ssri because for me they have help calm me down but the side effects I feel where not worth it such as sex dysfunction, weight gain, and extreme tiredness. That's why I'm going to try Wellbutrin XL and hope that it gives me enough energy to get through the day instead of wanting to sleep 24/7.

Also they are hitting some amazing breakthroughs with crohns I saw some videos on youtube about a doctor that developed a new vaccine for it and it completely cured a guy and his crohns for like over 3 years and counting. And he supposedly had the most severe form. I still wonder if I have micro crohns and they just missed it because the doctor who did my colonoscopy was a complete idiot so I often wonder if he overlooked something. Thats why I really want to go to Mayo because I believe the way they go about things is how the medical industry should learn from. Instead of laying out a bunch of straws on a table and randomly grasping each one hoping they find something wrong they pick through each one by one until they find the problem. And if I just went there in the first place I probably would have saved my self $30,000. Because thats how much I spent on medical bills in the last 5 years and they still don't know whats wrong with me and why I feel so crappy all the time.

Lisa just be happy you have the support of your family, and there is a way to get from here to there. It's usually not an easy route but it is possible.