Posted 30 May 2009 - 12:00 PM
And now, over a year later, I'll add to this thread, because in my board lurking, finding it helped reassure me I wasn't the exception.
My pdoc put me on Strattera a few weeks ago, first at 25mg, now at 50mg. I've been on bupropion (Wellbutrin) already for about 3 months, and feeling much better, and slightly helped with the attention issues, but not enough. Hence the Strattera, on the reasoning that if the norepinephrine reuptake inhibition of the Wellbutrin helped a little, the Strattera might help a lot. And, to be honest, I think there may have been some help even at 25mg (I know that's usually too low a dosage in titration to yet experience much help, so I can only say that it may have been in concert with the bupropion. Dunno.)
The one effect that was immediate, within like a day or so, was the impotence. Ironically, with the Wellbutrin, my interest in getting off hasn't diminished; if anything, it's ramped up a bit from what was already a near obsession. And I can kinda get it half up on my own (forget with the boyfriend; he's on Prozac so, in the sack, we're a mess). It's gotten worse in the last week since doubling the dosage, but I'm hoping, over time, it resolves itself. It's not totally dead -- I can get hard, but it doesn't last long enough. Well, enough that I can still crank one out if I'm willing to put in the time, but it's usually back to floppy by the time I unload. I'm willing to give myself a good long while to get used to the Strattera and hope this effect decreases or even just goes away with time (the pdoc said that it likely would, but he may just not want me to jump off this train so soon after getting on it). And frankly, if this stuff helps me otherwise. I suppose I can even go the Viagra route (tried that once or twice in the past couple of weeks or so, but that's an expensive option just for whacking off!), or I may get a vibrator of some kind because I know from experience those can have a big effect on a guy's wood, too. ("Strong enough for a woman, but made for a man...")
At the risk of appearing an even more chronic masturbator perv than I probably already do, I will say there is one strange, even positive effect: when I have gotten it up (the Viagra time, or the 1/2 to 3/4 mast times) and finished myself off, I didn't have a painful orgasm, as some side effect literature warned, I had an extended orgasm. By which I mean, it seemed to take a LOT longer for the orgasm to subside than normally. Like up to 30 seconds or a minute. Maybe for someone else who was super-sensitive, this intense feeling, especially over that long a time, would be considered "painful" -- but given how frequently I was whacking off before I started the Strattera, for me it just feels really intense, not painful, for a longer period of time.
When I told the pdoc about THIS, he kinda laughed and said, "I'm surprised you'd be complaining about that!" I assured him that WASN'T a complaint. And, in fact, may be enough of an advantage to be worth finding a way to work around the actual wood problem. But when Eli Lilly's patent for Strattera is up in 2017, they may want to combine it with a low-dose Cialis, which they also have the patent on, as the prescription recommended for men with ADHD. Just a thought.
