There's an awful lot in there. Because you've taken a lot of antidepressants that didn't work, it's more unlikely the citalopram was placebo -- if you were the type to get placebo effects by taking what your doc recommended, it would have happened with others, too, probably. Medication is very weird, and individuals have very different experiences. In your case, and I can only guess, anyone can only guess, the citalopram was your drug but it pooped out. The only caveat to this is the sense of euphoria -- I'm not sure anyone gets that feeling from an antidepressant unless it's pushing them into a manic state, something they can do to some people. Now, you don't say you were suddenly running around accomplishing record amounts of stuff, not needing sleep, or running around naked so it might have pushed you to a slightly manic state, not a psychotic level. For most of us, antidepressants take some time to start working and they don't work nearly as well as yours did, but you are the only you and this is what happened to you. The other meds you took didn't work, so again, you don't respond to just anything. But some clarity is needed here -- there is no real withdrawal from marijuana. Yeah, you might miss it, you might find it hard to enjoy things as much as you did, but weed really doesn't have withdrawal effects in the same way that addictive drugs and antidepressants do. What can and often does happen to us anxiety sufferers is that our first anxiety attacks are brought out when we're stoned because pot focuses us inward so intensely. It happened to me, it's happened to many on this forum. As for the theory of chemical imbalance, it's a myth largely that was spread by Eli Lilly when they came out with Prozac many years ago. If there is a chemical imbalance nobody has found out what it is yet. Most anxiety research today is on the amygdyla in the primitive brain, and it's very hard to isolate how that part of the brain works with the more complex parts of the brain. There are a very very few people who can't make serotonin out of tryptophan, B6 and vitamin c and have a shortage, but they aren't necessarily anxious and there aren't but a handful of such people. These drugs don't make more serotonin -- they take what you have and alter the way the brain uses it. Now, 5-HTP is a metabolite of tryptophan that crosses the blood/brain barrier and, in combination with B6 and Vitamin C and other cofactors is how the brain manufactures serotonin, which then manufactures melatonin. Most serotonin isn't in the brain -- most of it is in the digestive system and in other parts of the body. What we know is that if we alter serotonin with ssris some people feel better as long as it keeps working, but it doesn't address the cause of the problem. We don't know the biological cause. As for the 5-HTP, if you started it soon after stopping an antidepressant that targeted serotonin it can make things worse -- your brain needs some time to re-learn how to operate normally again. But when it works, your body decides it does need more serotonin and makes more; if your body decides you don't need more, it evacuates it out of your system, the process that the drugs prevent from happening that makes them work. Many people are helped by HTP, and many aren't -- but it takes time to know if it will help, what dosage you need, and whether you need more than that to have it work. Most natural medicine uses multiple remedies, not just one, and will also use therapy, exercise, meditation, dietary and lifestyle changes in a holistic attempt to fix the imbalance whatever it is. In the anxiety case, that would probably involve also using natural substances that affect GABA, which is what benzos do to an extent. As for the DLPA, that is used for depression, not anxiety. It can be very stimulating and cause anxiety -- many antidepressants are intentionally stimulating, such as the Effexor you were on, because depression is a downer disorder so to speak whereas anxiety is an upper disorder. If anxiety is your main problem, you don't want to take DLPA, as it's like adrenaline, and in anxiety sufferers, adrenaline is part of our problem. If your anxiety is caused by depression, it might help. I'd also look into the ingredients of those protein shakes, and I'd also ask why you take two a day -- that's a lot of protein from a non-food source. Are you a bodybuilder? It might very well contain tons of sugar and also energy boosters, which anxiety sufferers don't want -- it's that adrenaline thing again. I wish I could tell you what is going on and how to help you, but I can't, but I hope I've helped you to see you need to do some more homework and calm down some on the cause of all this -- you may never figure this out. I also second AnxiousNoMore on a need for a good psychologist who specializes in anxiety treatment no matter what you do next with medication. But it is not true that meds have ever been a "cure." None are. You can't cure what you don't know the cause of. You can make the symptoms less, but the only "cure" we know of so far is through therapy and the lucky ones who just have it go away the way it came and those who find a spiritual fix to it -- in other words, some way to change the anxious thinking that brings this on. None of these methods works a high percentage of the time, but because there is so much to try, if you keep trying you might find the right one for you.
"i felt a shift in my brain (no placebo or exaggeration no lies) after about 3 hours!! I went to bed and the next day i just felt normal"
You probably didn't feel there was a placebo effect, but either your mental approach to your problem changed by coincidence so you came out of your anxiety when you started the Celexa or else it was a placebo effect, because Celexa can't possibly provide relief in 3 hours.
Anxiety and depression go hand in hand, working in a vicious circle escalating the problem so it is sometimes hard to tell if you have an anxiety issue or is it depression caused, especially when it gets to a high level of mental discomfort. So don't rule out depression unless you can be sure, and the best thing to do at this point would be to see a therapist to help you figure it out
Different studies have provided conflicting results about the power of the meds to help, with at least one study saying it is really the skill of those who work with the anxious person that provided the cure, not the med. Unfortunately we live in the stone age of figuring solutions to anxiety, so the poor sufferer is left to trial and error in his search for relief.
Anxiety isn't a simple problem for some people because it can have many complicated causes, so it is best to work with a therapist to try to see if there are any tools you can get to help deal with it. Anxiety can hit anyone at any time so just going to the gym and eating protein and some vitamins aren't always enough.