Hey man, how are you doin currently? Is the brain readjusting to higher dopamine levels yet?
Iāve started weaning off the buproprion now. Once every 3 days or so. Still doing okay. Libido fluctuates but there for the most part. Mood is lethargic, but pretty good Iād say
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Good to hear.
How are you doing on Wellbutrin? I have an appointment next week to discuss getting on it. Any thoughts or feedback?
I took it for 2 weeks . I noticed random changes in mood. Like two days in a row of random anxiety followed by two days of feeling sedated. It felt very unnatural. But no biggie . Nothing I couldnāt just roll with the punches with. I did not have an adverse reaction to the bupropion. It did not make my PFS worse. But I was trialing it specifically to see if inhibiting dopamineās reuptake could cure or at least help the sexual sides. For me the bupropion did not help the sexual sides and I felt that if the bupropion could have helped the sexual sides for me that I would have at least seen some indication of this within the first two weeks which I did not. So in my case the potential reward of staying on the drug past two weeks did not outweigh the potential risk. This is not to say that I wonāt trial it again for longer and or at a higher dosage. I mayā¦ but right now Iām on a proviron trial
I will update my bupropion trial log
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Maybe it just needs more time to build up baseline. Maybe try it for at least two months. But of course decide for yourself, Iām certainly not a doctor, and with any medication there are risks involved.
āWhen bupropion is used for depression, improvements in sleep, energy, or appetite may be apparent within the first 1-2 weeks. Depressed mood or motivation may take up to 6-8 weeks to fully improve.ā (https://www.drugs.com/tips/bupropion-patient-tips)
Value point but the part that jumps out at me is āseeing improvements in 1-2 weeksā for the specific reason you are taking it for. I seen no viable improvements in the sexual sides during the first 1-2 weeks in spite of the drug clearly having a strong impact on my brain chemistry evidenced by the changes in mood
So if I had seen some improvements during the first 1-2 weeks I would have expected to see more at the 3rd-8th week mark. But I didnāt
Interesting perspective. Also interesting that you felt drowsy because Wellbutrin is a stimulant. That makes me think again of dopamine receptors and maybe itās being down regulated. On days I go running, I will feel tired and agitated at times. I wonder if Wellbutrin will create a similar effect. Only one way to find out!
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Yeah you may see improvements there in the first two weeks, but thereās no guarantee. Those improvements will take full effect in 6-8 weeks, probably because thatās the time it takes for it to reach homeostasis in your body. If youāve been on it for 6-8 weeks and you still canāt see improvements, Iād taper off and quit.
But you know your body best, so if youād say it wouldnāt work, it probably wouldnāt.
Yea like by day three of the trial I was overly stimulated and anxious for two days straight. Then that feeling immediately went away and I felt overly relaxed for two days followed by feeling almost nothing. I think that if I was low in dopamine in the brain and if increasing dopamine in the brain could correct or at least help the sexual sides then I would have seen some improvements as the drug was clearly doing what it was supposed to be doing.
I read that bupropion can actually cause anxiety and sedation as known side effects . So after my two days of anxiety and my two days of sedation when I started feeling nothing I think that my brain reached the closest thing to homeostasis that it could while on the drug and thatās why I more or less felt nothing on it
According to my old psychiatrist, with wellbutrin (and i presume other antidepressants) you might experience some benefits after a couple weeks, but itāll take 6-8 weeks to feel the full effects.
Yea I believe it. Thatās clearly what the experts say about the drug. But they are also saying that in terms of how patients with depression respond to bupropion treatment. Me taking it for PFS is a completely different unstudied beast. So the possible risks of what could possibly happen to me by staying on bupropion for 6-8 weeks while taking it for PFS sexual sides I think outweighs the possible benefits. If I had at least seen some indication over the two week period that it was helping my sides I would have felt differently. Unfortunately self treating an unrecognized condition has risks and I feel I made the right call. These are not easy decisions
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Would definitely agree to go with your gut feeling wtih this, since we have no clue how the medication would interact with our current issues.
Iāll probably try Bupropion within half a year as well, if my side effects donāt lift. So Iāll keep you updated how itāll work for me, not that that necesarily translates to others. But the more data the better.
Itās your decision to make, but what risks exactly are you worried about?
Developing a new drug induced imbalance that wonāt be recognized by prescribing physician
is obviously what Iām worried about
Iām sure someone else with PFS sexual sides will try bupropion and stay on it for 6-8 weeks . Iāll wait for their feedback. Specifically someone who gets no benefits with the sexual sides for the first two weeks and then stays on it
I absolutely do not trust depression drugs. I have tried a lot of things trying to recover from PFS and every time I know I was rolling the dice with my life. Heck since my bupropion trial I already ran a proviron trial. I donāt trust the way the studies are done. Bupropion being proven to be safe and effective āgenerally speakingā does not mean that itās safe for people with PFS or other health conditions for that matter. It just means that most of the carefully selected people who were healthy with no issues trialed the drug and tolerated it well. So for me to roll the dice for 6-8 weeks straight I need to see results as I go that help justify the dice rollin. Nevertheless, majority of the known PFS guys who reported their experience with bupropion did not report getting worse. So this is a good sign. For me though I would want to see more PFS guy bupropion trials before I run a longer trial my self. I did my part so Iāll let a young gunner step in and do theirs
I have tried bupropion this summer, started on 150mg for 2 weeks, then 300mg for 3 months. No benefits whatsoever, only sides. I had serious anorexia and lost about 6kg, while already being athletic. I also woke up 1-2 hours before my alarm and then wasnāt able to fall back to sleep.
Since appetite and feeling tired are my only forms of ādesireā (to eat, to sleep) left and I noticed no benefits, I quit.
A professor in neuropsychiatry I visited offered to start and uptitrate pramipexol, a potent dopamine agonist. If my current cycling of 200mg proviron + low dose hCG is not bringing me anything in a few months, thatāll be my next step.
It seems the majority of our symptoms are related to the dopaminergic (and noradrenergic) system, and those have a synergistic relation with the HPTA axis.
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Sorry to hear about your experience
At what point did the negative side effects of the bupropion start ? Like how long into your bupropion trust did they start
What is the doctors logic behind trying a more potent way to increase dopamine using the potent dopamine agonist?
How long have you been cycling 200 MGās of proviron? I trialed it at 100 MGās for seven days . It was making my sexual sides a little worse so I stopped. Proviron is an aromatase inhibitor ā¦ I missed this before i trialed it . Inhibiting estrogen makes me worse
Have you ever trialed andractim ? I feel like this should be my next trial as I read that the
andractim will convert to 3b-diol which I tested low in plasma in twice over last 8 years. And 3b-Diol agonizes the estrogen receptorsā¦so I feel like there is logic here seeing that inhibiting estrogen even slightly with proviron makes me worse. Obviously guessing but educated guessing. Estrogen is needed for proper sexual function.
I am pretty sure Proviron is not an aromatase inhibitor. Proviron is DHT with a methyl group added.
While this change makes Proviron have less of an affinity for the AR, I donāt see how it would make it able to interact with the aromatase enzyme.
How Proviron works is that it bind to SHBG, and knock the already bound inactive sex steroids off.
Basically what it means is that youāll have an increase in free E2, T and DHT circulating in the blood. After a while your own T production might fall off and your total T will be slightly lower and then E2 will follow.
But since DHT is the major steroid bound to SHBG and androgen oppose estrogens. You might feel like your E2 is low, but in serum it shouldnāt change much.
With that said I also feel worse when I inhibit estrogen. Did you ever get yours tested? My E2 is on the low side.
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@5-alpha-victim
I copied your post to make things easier.
Sorry to hear about your experience
At what point did the negative side effects of the bupropion start ? Like how long into your bupropion trust did they start
I can not remember exactly but almost immediately to within a few days.
What is the doctors logic behind trying a more potent way to increase dopamine using the potent dopamine agonist?
The bupropion was prescribed by another psychiatrist. The professor in neuropsychiatry stated how we do not actually know how bupropion exactly works and how itās relatively mild. When I told about my symptoms of not feeling depressed but just feeling no motivation in a general sense, flat emotions in combination with the loss of libido, thatās when the neuropsychiatrist suggested using pramipexol. The neuropsychiatrist also has a lot of experience prescribing the pramipexol for Parkinson patients and told me how some patients develop addiction or obsessive behaviour like gambling or porn addiction when on pramipexol.
I can not even imagine being addicted to anything with PFS as I am not looking forward or feel desire to do anything.
How long have you been cycling 200 MGās of proviron? I trialed it at 100 MGās for seven days . It was making my sexual sides a little worse so I stopped. Proviron is an aromatase inhibitor ā¦ I missed this before i trialed it . Inhibiting estrogen makes me worse
After stopping low dose hCG in July I felt horrible energy wise. I noticed how using low dose hCG to bring my testosteron (11 nmol/L PFS state) to a more normal level for my age group (Ā±20-30 nmol/L) gave me more energy, but I mean pure energy, it didnāt do anything to all the other symptoms. So the hCG gave me no motivation/desire/libido/emotions whatsoever, just energy. So after my bupropion trial I restarted low dose hCG and thought of combining hCG and mesterolone (proviron) as my next trial, since I noticed how some recovery stories had both hCG and mesterolone as an element. I just started the mesterolone for a few days now. Apart from feeling a dull bearable headache I havenāt noticed anything yet.
Have you ever trialed andractim ? I feel like this should be my next trial as I read that the
andractim will convert to 3b-diol which I tested low in plasma in twice over last 8 years. And 3b-Diol agonizes the estrogen receptorsā¦so I feel like there is logic here seeing that inhibiting estrogen even slightly with proviron makes me worse. Obviously guessing but educated guessing. Estrogen is needed for proper sexual function.
No I havenāt. If the proviron/hCG and pramipexol trial is not helping anything I would probably look into the mifepristone option, as there seems to be some interesting logic behind it too. But I still need to dive into that
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Yeah on forums people claim that, this is a quote from Provirons Wikipedia page (the source is a book).
"Mesterolone! (Proviron) is not a substrate for aromatase, and so cannot be converted into an estrogen. As such, it has no propensity for producing estrogenic side effects such as gynecomastia and fluid retention. It also has no progestogenic activity.
But if you free up a lot of DHT from SHBG, itās going to suppress estrogens, so to speak.
Proviron would also have a metabolite that is 1-methyl 3b-diol. But I have no idea how it stands up to 3b-diol.
Yeah my E2 is borderline low last time I checked at 22 pg/mL. I wonder if raising it would help me.
Would you mind sharing your E2 result?