Dear All
I am not a parent but I do know something about Dithiopin , a Tricyclic AD.
Many years ago, thank GOD, I had cancer. During that time, I developed acute anxiety, could not sleep for days at a time that, in turn, lead to very severe panic attacks. I was given 75mg of Dithiopin to take every night because it was intended to both help to moderate my mood swings and to act as a sedative so I could get to sleep. I found the frequencies of anxiety attacks and their levels of force increased significantly as I became more exhausted from not sleeping. Therefore, Dithiopin helped in two ways, reduced my violent moods and helped me to sleep.
In order to understand how Dithiopin works, you need to know what our bodies do. Our bodies make their own painkillers in the form of opiates called endorphins, that help to fight pain, fear, depression and anxiety. There are naturally occurring opiates out there in the World, for instance Opium that is refined into Heroine and Diamorphine. Drugs like Heroine and Diamorphine work simply because they mimic our body?s own painkillers. That is all. That is also why it is so difficult to come off substances like Heroine because all the time, our bodies are monitors the level of pain killing opiates in our bloodstreams and stop making their own when we take external opiates because they sense that there is enough in the body as it is. That is also why going cold turkey is such a shock. In most cases, our bodies have stopped making our own painkillers and we have nothing to fight against any of the above conditions. Can our bodies start to make our own painkillers again? Yes but it takes a while.
The real neural system for managing pain is very complicated, not fully known and I wouldn?t want to suggest otherwise but simplistically speaking when we suffer severe anxiety or depression, we are simply feeling the effects of not having enough of our own body?s chemicals, be that painkillers or other things. Dithiopin and other Tricyclic drugs work by acting as catalysts that encourage our bodies to make more of our own painkilling, sedating and mood enhancing chemicals. That is why they are not addictive. They do not replace what our bodies do; they simply increase the rate of our own production. Nevertheless, it took me two years to come off my course of drugs. I first took 75mg, then 50mg, then 25mg and so on. Our bodies, in these incidents have taken a severe blow and our recovery is not instantaneous. I reduced my dose whenever I felt that it was appropriate and not before. One night, two-and-a-half years later, I said to myself ?I don?t need these any more? and stopped. I stopped when I was only taking, I think, 10mg at night, not 75mg. There is a great difference.
Hope this helps?