Medication Sensitivity: It’s In Your Genes

In October I had genetic testing to evaluate medication sensitivities. This sort of testing only looks at a few specific parts of your DNA, the bits known to affect the way you metabolize a lot of medications, including most psychoactive drugs. It’s usually covered by insurance when prescribed – even for MediCare, as a matter of fact. There are a number of different testing providers and test structures; I had a full panel test against several classes of drugs.

I had hoped to get this testing since I heard about it. I’m fed up with constantly experimenting with drugs at the cost of my stability and productivity.

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The Real Deal Versus Generics in Psychoactive Meds

Recently the FDA announced that Teva’s generic version of Wellbutrin XL (budeprion) was not in fact an equivalent medication, pulling it from the market. This is sort of a landmark thing; all kinds of authorities of various sorts (doctors, pharmacists, regulators, hobos) will insist that generics and brand name medications are the “same.” They are not. They are the same in some respects, but can be meaningfully different in other respects. I’m not going to go into those details at the moment, however, because I’ll go off on a rant and I do have another point to make.

A Pictorial History of My Bipolar Meds

Medications are a major part of managing many mental illnesses, but something the general population has a hard time understanding. I’m not even talking about the issues of stigma, accepting “meds for life”, or side effects. I’m just talking about the process of finding the right cocktail to function as normally as possible. It’s hard to grasp without a good example, so here’s the history of my meds over the last two years (keeping in mind that I’ve been on psych meds for over 20 years!)