Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | perfectfire's commentslogin

> the android app being horrible to some extend.

Really? Were you using KeePassDroid? I remember that being not so great. I think Keepass2Android is excellent.


I used the K2A app which frequently was unable to enter a password or lost sync of the master database in various ways.

The LP app has been much more pleasant.


Might have cheered Trump? WikiLeaks has an email attachment with Hillary/DNC's strategy on GOP contenders[1] where they state their strategy of "elevating" certain candidates to push "more established candidates to the right". Additionally they want to make it seem that these more "extreme" candidates represent the mainstream of the Republican Party.

"There are two ways to approach the strategies mentioned above. The first is to use the field as a whole to inflict damage on itself similar to what happened to Mitt Romney in 2012. The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more “Pied Piper” candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to: • Ted Cruz • Donald Trump • Ben Carson We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously."

Oops.

[1] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120


It looks like Mutaflor isn't available outside Canada.


Or Europe, in my case (mainly in Germany.. it was actually prescribed to Hitler, so long has it been around). The FDA banned it, I'm reading right now. That sucks.


I tried marijuana legally (Colorado) twice (each time was a couple of months) in a desperate bid to help out my anxiety. I had read good things about it treating PTSD and people in general use marijuana to relax right? So, I thought it had a chance of helping.

For me I found it didn't really help with anxiety and I didn't like the feeling of a slight loss of control. I gave it a good go and then even tried it a second time thinking maybe I just hadn't used the right strains, but it just isn't for me.


I think your issue is this

> I didn't like the feeling of a slight loss of control

Cannabis can help you relax, but you have to be willing and able to relax in the first place. that means being ok with feeling a slight loss of control.


If I was able to relax in the first place I wouldn't need to treat my anxiety.


I went through a period of a few years where my medication was definitely helping a lot with the depression, but at the same time I no motivation or desire to do anything (I remember a few times wishing I had the desire to sit down and watch a TV show; I couldn't even bring myself to sit on the couch and stare at the TV) and I really couldn't feel emotions other than sadness and anger. The medication wasn't at fault because if I wasn't taking it, life was just non-stop intense sadness and still no desire to do anything.

My doctors sucked ass, but at least when I told them about my lack of desire they tried a bunch of different things to try and help. Lithium actually seemed to work quite well for me the first time I was on it (the second time, it didn't seem to have an effect and I can't remember why I stopped taking it the first time). It was me that eventually suggested trying anti-psychotics and I eventually suggested the one that has worked wonders for my depression and complete apathy, but they generally were willing to try anything I thought might work better than my current treatments.

It really felt like the doctors (the clinic I was at went through so many doctors. I think I had 6 in about 4 years) were just prescription writing machines and I was the one in charge of my well-being. It was up to me to do research and find things that might help me out and it kind of makes sense because how much do you think your doctor thinks about you in a month? They probably only think about your situation for the duration of your appointment and maybe a few minutes before the appointment, so maybe 45 minutes each month (if you see the doctor monthly). On the other hand, I'm thinking about my situation almost non-stop. I'm desperate for relief so I was spending multiple hours a day, maybe hundreds of hours each month, researching how I can get better. So it's no wonder that it was me that eventually figured out what medication to try that eventually made me mostly better.


Any chance you could describe your workflow and some of the better resources for self-diagnosis?


Sorry, for the late reply. I didn't really have any workflow and I didn't self diagnose for depression, anxiety and narcolepsy (I did self-diagonose for hypothyroidism, I couldn't believe my doctor was denying it, but then I discovered online that this is a very common problem). I checked out the usual online resources. Wikipedia, Google search, crazymeds (no longer has forums), lots of Wikipedia, going over it again and again. The most useful information is what drugs are used for your condition off-label. Wikipedia might have that info, but it might not or just not be complete. Crazymeds would sometimes have more info. Sometimes you might only find out about an off-label use because some random internet stranger has tried it off-label. For their doctor it's one of those go-to backup meds if the more common ones fail, while your doctor is unaware it is even used off-label for that purpose. Another thing to look for is lists of medications of a certain type. Usually Wikipedia's list will be incomplete, crazymeds adds a few more and you discover even more through other sites via Google searches. And by checking the same sites over and over again I spotted completely new drugs that were listed hardly anywhere (one I tried was better than what I was on except for 2 months straight of watery diarrhea, the other I'm not really sure was better, but it was what I was taking prior to my current medication).

Out of all of the things I researched it ended up being atypical anti-psychotics, something I wanted to try because my mother had to be on them for a time. But we tried one drug, Abilify, (not the one that my mother was on), that I forgot why I stopped using, and then I found the other drug that I'm using now (Latuda) just from ads placed around the doctor's office. I looked the drug up online and I think looked at crazymeds to get more of a user's perspective and it sounded like the best atypical anti-psychotic with the best side-effect profile. So I suggested that and it worked out great. Then I was on an SNRI, Latuda, and Remeron (a tetracyclic anti-depressant I only used for insomnia caused by the SNRI) and I thought "this is a bit much", so with the agreement of my doctor I tried to get off of the Latuda, but after getting down to 20 mgs I felt bad for 3 or so days. So I went back to 40mgs and felt better almost immediately. This time I tried to get of the SNRI and I eventually did and still felt fine. And since I was off of the SNRI I didn't need Remeron to sleep anymore so I stopped that. Usually atypical anti-psychotics can be very powerful for depression as adjunct therapy along with an anti-depressant (Remeron + an AAP is colloquially called California Rocket Fuel). But I found it worked just great as monotherapy. So I didn't find what I'm on now through internet research, but I got the idea from my Mom's situation, the specific medication from ads that I further researched online (looking for technical information as well as anecdotal evidence and user experiences). Then I suggested cutting my medication down to where it is now.

I still don't have anything to treat anxiety, but I got a recommendation here on hacker news to maybe try Emsam and my doctor (who is way better than any of my previous doctors) had already mentioned trying an MAOI and Emsam is the only MAOI approved in the US that won't kill you if you eat cheese or other very common foods, so I was planning on trying that, but decided I didn't want to risk going down on the Latuda. Life has finally been good after a long time and I'd rather just deal with the anxiety than take a risk of feeling that bad again even for just a week or 2. Maybe I'll give it a try when work lightens up (probably never). There is one MAOI that is even better at not killing you for eating food and it's uses sound absolutely perfect for what I need, but it turns out to not be approved in the US. I have considered getting it online and self-medicating, but I don't feel that desperate right now. Maybe if I start to feel extremely panicked again I'll be motivated to self-medicate without doctor approval, but for now I'm finally okay.

Actually, I was talking to my sister-in-law and one of the drugs that their daughter takes is used for anxiety (Intuniv), but my doctor (after looking it up) said that that class of drugs helps anxiety more by helping with the secondary symptoms that are caused by anxiety rather than helping with anxiety itself (or something like that). And just last week I remembered that some anti-histamines are used for anxiety and so I'm going to mention that at my next appointment. I'm also going to see what users of Intuniv think of it, because if it worked for some people, then it's worth a try if I'm out of options and I hardly think it could make anything worse.


I'm just one person, but it really doesn't seem like that to me. There was no awful situation or experience that brought on my depression or continues to make me depressed. I call that situational depression. You aren't clinically depressed. You're just feeling really crappy because your situation is really crappy. Remove the crappy situation or improve it in some meaningful way and the depression goes away too. With clinical depression there is no trigger or "something" that makes you depressed. You could be in a great situation with nothing bad happening and you're still depressed.

Right now I'm in a situation that really weighs heavily on me. Yet I'm not depressed.


I respectfully disagree. I would agree that someone-that-isn't-your-doctor shouldn't tell people what they should do, but hearing the personal experiences of numerous people that have taken certain medications or had certain therapies is invaluable. This is quite different than "regular" diseases and maladies. The drugs and therapies for psychological diseases aren't well understood and are very hit-and-miss. Like you said people respond differently, so hearing the experiences of multiple people can be just as, or much more valuable than your doctor's recommendation which may be based solely on a datasheet they read and maybe tried on a few patients. You may hear experiences of drugs that your doctor has never prescribed before or has never even heard of before. It's not uncommon for a psychiatrist to have certain go-to medications that they use almost exclusively. If those don't work for you, then getting advice from other patients can be a lifesaver.

The medication that helped me the most by far was not recommended to me by my doctor. I recommended it. And I found the medication through an ad in the lobby of the doctor's office plus I was considering that class of medication based on the experience of my mother. People rail on prescription medication advertising, but I might not be alive today if not for that ad. And that ad could have easily been a recommendation by a handful of random internet strangers (in fact I would trust the internet strangers more because it's less likely they have an agenda whereas the ad definitely has an agenda).


"...but hearing the personal experiences of numerous people that have taken certain medications or had certain therapies is invaluable..."

...in roughly the same way that the personal experiences of numerous people of psychic phenomena, UFOs, and the supernatural are invaluable. Or personal experiences of the safety of commercial aviation. Or that the sky is blue.

Anecdotes aren't data, data isn't always applicable, other people are frequently more concerned with themselves than helping you, and your mileage will vary.


> of numerous people of psychic phenomena, UFOs, and the supernatural are invaluable.

No, not at all. How would that be valuable? If psychic phenomena, UFOs and the supernatural were definitely real things that could help your difficult to solve problems, just not well understood and could vary in effect from person to person then they would be valuable. But they are not any of those things.

> Anecdotes aren't data

They definitely are.

> data isn't always applicable

Oh, certainly. 5 internet peoples say Drug Q helped with craziness syndrome even though that's an off-label use doesn't mean it will totally definitely work for you. But if you've tried everything else, 5 anecdotal experiences is far better than the 0 anecdotal experiences and zero studies of the zero other options you have.

> other people are frequently more concerned with themselves than helping you

How is this at all relevant? Maybe because a doctor gets kickbacks for prescribing a drug and so prescribes that drug despite it not being likely to help much? But that's just a good reason not to rely solely on your doctor. Nobody is more concerned about you than you. Doctors can have ulterior motives and can be working with out of date information especially when it comes to off-label uses of drugs. Common off-label uses became common because of anecdotes. And sometimes those anecdotes spurred the company making the drug to get it approved for that use. This isn't at all like UFOs.

> your mileage will vary

I am well aware of that. But some people are getting mileage out of it and the worst that could happen is I get no mileage just like am getting now (not right now, but before I found the right meds).


I'm pretty sure he meant HN as a just an example. You could easily replace HN with reddit or HuffPo or CNN or [name of some political blog].


I'm assuming you don't want to tell us where you live, so please update us on whether it showed up on the map or not.


They didn't lose USB. As I understand it, Thunderbolt 3 is completely compatible with USB 3.1 Type C and backwards compatible with adapters with all previous versions of USB.

Also, bam[1]! Problem solved.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Type-C-Smartphones-Tablets-SD...


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: