cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3731915
Over the past 2 decades I’ve been trying various medications to help me w/ my long running major depression & crippling ADHD. And none have seemed to work.
Recently, the doctor I’m working w/ nowadays suggested that she’s practically running out of options to offer me & that I should take a pharmacogenetics test to help her figure out what should she prescribe.
I took the (expensive) test and the results were eye-opening! The results came out a couple of weeks later w/ a detailed list of some few hundreds medications of various sorts (from pain killers to blood pressure control) along w/ their efficacy for my case. The physician’s version also included a list of suggestions and alternatives for each medicine.
In my particular case, it essentially indicated that any medication that I had tried before was supposed to be either useless or to have limited impact on my body. That part is true.
Please note that I’ve only started a new set of prescriptions since a couple of weeks ago and as such can’t really vouch for the accuracy of the suggestions.
I struggled a lot w/ myself to post something this personal. But I thought maybe there are people out there who’ve got no idea such tests exist and it might turn out to be helpful to some.
So what drugs had you tried, and what are you taking now?
Also, how expensive was the test?
For me, adderall helps, but I don’t know how much I should expect from a drug and how much I just have to get better habits. Plus, adderall is short acting, and I’d like to use one of the round-the-clock options if they’d work for me. Obviously, it’s preferable to not spend a long time figuring out which other options might also work for me.
For ADHD in particular, I’ve tried Adderall/Vivance, Ritalin/Concerta, Atomextetin and couple of others whose name I forgot.
Based on the suggestions of the report I have started taking Guanfacine/Intuniv.
Oh and it cost me around $600 which is not covered by insuranoe.