I've heard of it helping with anxiety, but in a flattening-of-affect, apathetic, don't-give-a-damn-if-I-die way rather than a I-feel-calm-and-relaxed way. It helps OTHER PEOPLE with your anxiety more than it helps you.
IMO, the best treatments for social anxiety are benzodiazepines (sedating and habit-forming, but at least I feel chill while they're active) and exposure. I've had the best luck with "do it scared."
My favorite treatment, though, is to learn to enjoy doing things that don't involve socializing. A bustling social life is not necessary, no matter how much subtle and overt pressure an extroverted society puts on the rest of us to believe we're lesser without it.
I took a drug in the same class (risperidone) for months and months and months. Other people (people who didn't have to see me struggling to remember how to make ramen, dragging myself to the bathroom, and being unable to find the grocery store half a mile away) thought it helped because I could no longer verbalize depression or anxiety (or much of anything). I felt just as bad, if not worse, on the inside.
I HAVE heard of people being helped by it. I just am not one of those people, nor do I know any of those people.
I can't blame the aripiprazole specifically, because she was also taking massive doses of Zyprexa (another atypical antipsychotic). I can tell you that my cousin (not ASD, suspected ADHD) became not only nonfunctionally lethargic but also psychotic as a direct result of the medication.
I DO NOT believe that atypical antipsychotics should be peddled as antidepressants. They ARE NOT; shortly, we're going to be seeing 1800BAD-DRUG lawsuits over peddling them to treat unipolar depression. They are dopamine antagonists (block the action of dopamine), which is why people become both restless (brain senses the deficiency and tells the body to move to make more) and lethargic (not enough of the neurotransmitter to transmit neurologic information). In a less-known piece of information, they are also serotonin antagonists (therefore having the OPPOSITE mechanism of action as most antidepressants).
If they're dopamine antagonists, you can just about bet they're norepinephrine antagonists too.
I'm not saying not to try it. You might have the opposite reaction. People do.
I am saying to be very leery. If you get bad results and the doctor won't listen, he or she gets too much information from drug reps and not enough from actual medical research, and you need a different doctor at least where your mental health is concerned.
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
21 Jul 2015, 7:37 am
