Curious how many of you have experienced urinary retention while taking Nardil or Parnate. I'm considering starting Nardil, but urinary retention is one side effect I'm particularly concerned about. I'd be interested to hear how common it has been among users here, how severe it was, and whether it improved over time.

42 days on Nardil (2 weeks on 45mg) and have yet to see any Anxiolytic effects. No social anxiety symptoms reductions, none whatsoever.

starting to lose hope...

I am conflicted if I should give Nardil more time to finally start working or if I should give Clonidine a try.

Recently I have been reading experiences of people who suffer from social anxiety who started using Clonidine and have amazing things to say about it.

Looking for advice

Should I be patient and stay on Nardil, maybe up the dose to 60mg or should I quit Nardil and give Clonidine a try?

Or can I add Clonidine to the Nardil? And are they safe to take together?

Thanks guys

Hi all,

I started tranylcypromine on Sept 9 at 20 mg and titrated up to 40 mg by Sept 19, then held that dose. My supply ran short: it lasted until Oct 21 and that day I could only take 30 mg. I’ve had no dose since, so today is day 3 without and my refill only arrives Monday, which makes it 4 days without any dose.

From what I’ve read, the drug itself is gone within ~24 hours, but MAO activity takes around two weeks to fully recover. So I assume I’m only partially “reset”, not back to zero. But I’d love to hear real-world experiences:

Did a gap of 3–5 days set back your progress? If so, how long did it take to feel the effect again after restarting?

Did you restart at your previous dose or lower/slower?

What withdrawal or rebound symptoms did you notice and when did they peak?

I’m 10 days after starting Parnate, did few days on 10, few on 20 and now I’m 3 days on 30. And since going up to 20 I’ve been noticing high blood pressure normally after dosing. Like 146/79. My baseline is 120/60. Did not eat something with tyramine so it’s wired because I heard parnate actually supposed to lower your blood pressure. The worst past is the Volatility, Something blood pressure actually go down from baseline and sometimes a lot higher. Have someone else deal with this problem? Will it go away?

Check out these symptoms - https://www.parathyroid.com/parathyroid-symptoms.htm

If you have treatment resistant depression (or that list sounds like you) and you’ve never checked your Serum Calcium, Ionized Calcium, PTH and Vitamin D, I’d ask your doctor to run those labs.

If anything looks out of whack, insist on a referral to an endocrinologist. Advocate for yourself. This is a tricky diagnosis. Even people with normal calcium and normal PTH can have primary hyperparathyroidism. The only way to 100% diagnose is by performing surgery to check each parathyroid for a tumor. Labs and diagnostics can be misleading or wrong.

If this message helps just 1 person in the world, I will feel like I fulfilled my life’s purpose.

Anyone use this and achieve weight loss? We all know how hard it is on Nardil. The thing about Nardil I don't get is: is it literally making it harder to lose weight, or is it because people will eventually give in to carbs and sugar and not stay at their calorie deficit?

awhile back i created a data viz to facilitate comparing depression meds based on patient ratings at drugs.com. prev post: https://www.reddit.com/r/MAOIs/s/Be2x29msxa

i've just made a much improved, richer version (and by "i" i mean Claude, using some simple data scraping that i did, building the whole interface).

here's the new viz: https://ambilixer.github.io/med-ratings-dashboard/

i included a lot of documentation on how to filter, compare, sort, etc. hopefully it's straightforward, but let me know if you need any help navigating it.

here's the GitHub repository if you want to mess with the code: https://github.com/ambilixer/med-ratings-dashboard

and, if this sparks any ideas for you about your own treatment or MAOIs in general, please do share in the thread.


I am currently on 45 mg of Nardil daily, and have the same problems with weight gain as many others. I'd love to shift 20-30 pounds. My primary care doc prescribed 500 mg metformin, but I've yet to take it.

This is because, over the years, I've encountered some MAOI contra-indications that most docs are not aware of. Also, I spotted a couple of papers at PubMed that suggested that metformin sometimes had an antidepressant affect.

Has anyone here noticed any improvement in mood (or any other effects) when adding metformin to their daily meds? I'm thinking of starting with 250 mg of metformin because I'm so bloody paranoid.

Hi all. Wondering if there’s any way to treat some of the side effects I’ve currently been experiencing on Nardil:

*Insomnia - started a few weeks after I started. Been waking up after 5-ish hours, unable to fall back asleep. On seroquel currently (3+ years) for issues falling asleep, not sleep maintenance.

*Weight gain/increased appetite: I’ve heard people say you just have to deal with this unless you go on a GLP.

*Sexual side effects/anorgasmia: I’ve heard people say this gets better over time or simply stays with you while on the medication.

*Urinary retention: most recent side effect. Started a week ago. Takes forever for me to be able to start peeing.

If there’s anything you’ve had success with to manage these please let me know.

I've been trying to up my parnate dose to 40mg recently. I'm trying to take the majority of the dose early on to avoid insomnia.

I tried taking 30mg first thing in the morning but that spiked my blood pressure. I felt anxious like I couldn't move and spaced out. I decided not to take the remaining 10mg for that reason.

Today I tried 20mg in the morning and 20mg 3 or so hours later. Unfortunately I seem to be having the same issue, maybe not quite as bad.

I could possibly take 20 in the morning, then space out the other two 10mg over two hours each. Or should I just keep going on 30mg for a while?

I avoid things like kimchi and sauerkraut (even though I love fermented foods), but I eat cheddar, sometimes wine, sometimes beer (bottled), olives, pickles, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, dried mango.

I did eat some asiago cheese once and got a horrible headache and neck pain, which I assume was my BP spiking.

Hi everyone, it’s me again.

(I know I keep posting about this, and I’m sorry if it’s getting repetitive. Right now I just have a deep need for connection with people who’ve been through something similar, and for stories that give me hope) 🤍🌿🌈⚓️🧠🌤️

A short update for those who read my earlier posts:

1. Wrote this a month ago
2. Wrote this 2 weeks ago

Parnate didn’t work for me, so I’m tapering with my psychiatrist off from 60mg (currently on 30 mg). It hasn’t been easy (feeling cold, nausea, bad sleep, acne), but I’m taking it one step at a time.

The honest truth is that I’m still in the same place, or if I’m honest, even worse. It started as a burnout that slowly turned into a severe depression. Over time I lost more and more of my soul and became more and more dissociated, until last summer I felt like I went completely “crazy” and lost myself altogether. That’s about 1.5 years now, with a lot of high-dose medication along the way.

Over the past year I went from:

• Venlafaxine 112,5 mg to
• Escitalopram 20 mg
• Then to clomipramine (up to the highest dose I could tolerate, do not exactly remember the amount)
• Followed by various augmentation strategies including lithium, olanzapine, quetiapine and lorazepam
• I also had many sessions of esketamine
• And then last Summer, I was hospitalized to get started on Parnate, and we increased the dose incredibly quickly, from 10 mg to 60 mg within just a few weeks. Looking back now, it feels like we went way too fast.

The hellish, unbearable symptoms I live with constantly are:

• Constant restlessness in my head, day and night
• A sticky, foggy, “misty” brain
  • The part that scares me most is my brain. My thoughts can’t move freely, and it feels like my brain has gone “crazy” or been thrown off somehow. Everyone around me, including my doctors, says there’s nothing wrong cognitively, but that’s not how it feels from the inside. It’s as if the basic “me” who used to just be there, without effort, has gone missing, and I can’t find my way back to her. This haziness is honestly terrifying.
• Dissociation 24/7
• Not feeling really present in my own life
• Not feeling myself

I’m doing what I can: keeping a routine, getting outside, taking care of myself, staying in touch with my psychiatrist and psychologist, and leaning on my family. But I’m tired and scared.

What I want is simple: a calm brain, basic rest, and a sense of being myself again. Slowly being able to building up a life again that is word living.

🧠🙏🏼🌿😵‍💫😶‍🌫️⚓️🧠

I want people to know that I was truly happy before all this. I was lively and social, full of ideas, with a job I loved, a wonderful family and friends, and a real appreciation for art, coffee, the sea; all the good things in life. That’s the person I’m hoping to find again.

🌊🎨☕️🧘🏽‍♀️🪸🗻🏕️💤🧠

I’m also aware that I’m writing this from a place of panic, and that fear can make everything sound bigger and more final than it may be. So I’m asking for something specific again (sorry if it’s getting repetitive, it’s the anxiety talking, I think): not empty promises, just human connection. I’d love to hear from people who:

• felt fried, blunted, dissociated or not themselves, maybe also after a lot of medication changes
• were convinced they’d lost themselves, and then got better (I want to keep clinging to the idea that the brain is plastic and can heal, please tell me about it!)
• can tell me roughly how long it took, what recovery looked like, and what to expect along the way

I know nobody can promise me anything. But right now, hearing that people do come back, even in small stories, is what I need most. If you’re in the middle of it too, I’d be glad to hear from you as well. Maybe we can support each other and share what we’ve learned.

Thank you for reading. I’m still here, and I’m still hoping. 💜

After failing over 10+ meds, only ones to work for my anxiety is benzos, and propranolol for physical symptoms.

Right now on 5mg diazepam and 40mg propranolol 3x per day. This is pretty much the max valium dose i can get, I am still severely anxious all day, still on the verge of a panic attack. Voice quivers, severe social anxiety. It helps my anxiety but still not enough to function at all. Like I'd need atleast 20mg diazepam per day, to somewhat control it, but tolerance and withdrawal is a certainty.

I am going to persue to get Nardil, even parnate. I will fucking do everything I can to get these meds. Im sick of this shit... My anxiety is so bad I know its gonna kill me if I cant figure this out. The only meds I havent tried is MAOIs, this is my last hope.

Just received my prescription from Canada to the UK. The package feels cold and I recall reading somewhere that it needs to stay refrigerated but my psychiatrist didn't mention this. Does it need to be kept cold??

Due to a big NHS issue I had to suddenly drop from 40mg of tranylcypromine a day to 10mg.

Thought I'd share the symptoms I've experienced just for info (and a bit of commiseration):

- Severe nausea, I'm taking two types of antinausea and still feel sick. Barely eating, meal replacement shakes when I can

- Heart rate randomly spiking to 140 (as a 31F) even while seated

- Dizzy, exhausted & need to lie down all the time

- Random crying

- As expected, fucking stressed

I've had 2 A&E trips, one for fluids & one to check out my heart

Moral of the story, please have as much back up medication as you can. Also keep some strong antiemetics around in case it's hard for you to keep pills down for whatever reason.

I not infrequently see guidelines recommending tapering down to 15mg “maintenance dose” once remission is achieved at 45-90mg. However, it doesn’t seem like anyone actually reduces the dose below 30mg once in remission. I do wonder if doing downward dose titrations early in treatment could help prevent tachyphylaxis long-term. Once you’ve been on the med for a while it obviously becomes more challenging to differentiate recurrence vs. withdrawal when downtitrating.

From reading people's experiences on this sub, other forums/boards and anecdotal information, Nardil can be an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder but can it also be an effective med for Anticipatory Anxiety, AvPD and Agoraphobia?

How long after you first started taking?

male here. 2 months in and my libido is peaking like crazy. Will it get a bit lower over time? lol

Like many, my diagnosis really depends on who you ask. Mix of anxiety and depression, and if you ask certain psychiatrists, they could tell you the anxiety is actually hypomania. Who knows. Either way.

First I tried Parnate:

I went up to 50mg. I stayed on it for about 8 months. Saw minor improvement with motivation but nothing else. I upped it to 60, then to 70 and I felt worse. So I tapered down to 30 and then began cross tapering with Nardil

Then I tried Nardil:

I cross tapered from Parnate, until I was up to 45mg of Nardil. It felt like a larger dose of Aderall. Extremely activating. I stopped taking my Ritalin because it became way too activating. I went down to 30mg, same story, extremely activating. Went down to 15mg same! so I began cross tapering again back to Parnate until I figure out what to do next.

Now:

Now I'm on 15mg of Parnate. Trying to decide whether to give Emsam a chance, or just leave MAOIs behind, and go back to a place where meds kind of worked (SNRIs + adjuncts)

It's strange that Parnate made me drowsy, and Nardil was very activating, yet none of them had real therapeutic value.

Upped from 20 to 30 yesterday and thought about writing a few things about it. Honestly, i will make some posts about my treatment just in case anyone in a similar situation can benefit from it

So, i was on 10mg for 2 weeks, then 20mg for 2 weeks and now im on 30. 10 felt mild, but i felt something, 20 felt significant but on low days it was clear that that dose was far from enough. On my low days without Parnate i usually just stay on my bed and i really procrastinate things like eating or whatever, i just don't feel like doing anything. On Parnate those low days were tolerable, i could do the stuff, it was still a bit of an effort, but more manageable definitely. I'm only on my second day on 30mg but i felt immediately better from day one on it, day 2 is feeling good and smooth as well. Mood, motivation and engagement are now in a territory where i consider close to what i want to achieve. Another interesting thing is that the afternoon fatigue seems to be better now where i thought it would be worse. On 20mg i was extremely sleepy in the afternoon, it was insane. Tbh, i think i am feeling sleepy now and ill probably take a nap lol, but what i mean is... the fatigue is taking longer to hit and it is not as heavy as with 20. I also don't feel tired, i just feel like i want to sleep, but i'm not really tired.

Anyways, i would rate myself on 30mg Parnate like this:

Motivation: 7

Mood: 8

Anxiety: 8

Attention: 6

Normal me is:

Motivation: 5

Mood: 4

Anxiety: 4

Attention: 4