Medications the reference.

Abilify is the drug I add to an antidepressant when the antidepressant is doing maybe

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Acamprosate (Campral) helps you stay sober after detox, not get you there. Non-addictive, renally cleared,

Adderall is amphetamine.

Strattera, Qelbree, Intuniv, Kapvay, Wellbutrin, Modafinil. What each one does, who it fits, and why

Ambien gets handed out like Tic Tacs. Primary care hands it out, urgent care hands

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Anti-anxiety medication only makes sense after you name the kind of anxiety you are treating.

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Armodafinil is one of those drugs that lives in two different stories at once. In

Atypical antipsychotics can be exactly right for psychosis, bipolar disorder, and depression augmentation. They are

Auvelity is a once-daily pill that combines dextromethorphan, the cough syrup ingredient, with bupropion, which

The Z-Pack became famous for conditions it cannot treat. Here is what azithromycin actually does

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Belsomra (suvorexant) blocks the brain's wake signal instead of forcing sedation. Best for staying asleep,

Benzodiazepines work fast, which is exactly why they need a narrow lane, a clear exit

Buprenorphine is best known as an addiction medication, particularly for opioid use disorder, but a

Buspar is the anti-anxiety drug I wish more people had heard of, mostly because it’s

Caplyta is the antipsychotic that came out in 2019 and made a bunch of psychiatrists

Caplyta (lumateperone) is one of the newer atypical antipsychotics, FDA-approved for schizophrenia and bipolar depression,

Celexa is the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the standard first-line antidepressant class that boosts

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Clonidine is a blood pressure medication from the 1970s that turned out to be useful

For about five years, compounded ketamine troches and lozenges (small dissolving tablets made by specialty

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Cymbalta is the drug I reach for when the depression has a physical component...

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Disulfiram (Antabuse) doesn't kill cravings, it makes drinking miserable on purpose. Who the alcohol deterrent

Doxepin is a tricyclic antidepressant from the 1960s that turned out, at very low doses,

One cheap old antibiotic covers acne, a couple of STDs, and the tick bite you

Effexor is the SNRI (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, the antidepressant class that hits both serotonin and

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Finasteride (Propecia, Proscar): how it holds onto your hair, the sexual side effects, the contested

Fluvoxamine is the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the Zoloft/Lexapro/Prozac class) nobody thinks of first,

Gabapentin is the drug American psychiatry is in a quiet relationship with that nobody really

People are fat because they eat too much, eat the wrong stuff, and don't move

Guanfacine is one of those drugs that quietly does a lot of work and almost

Hydroxyzine has been sitting in the pharmacy for sixty years doing useful work, and most

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The pitch for Klonopin, the one I hear from prescribers and from the guys who've

Lamictal is one of those medications I actually like prescribing, which is not a sentence

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Lexapro is the SSRI I start with most of the time, and the reason is

Lithium is the best mood stabilizer we have for bipolar I, and we don't use

Lofexidine is one of those medications that makes more sense the more honestly you describe

Ativan has a reputation, and half my new patients walk in with strong feelings about

Lunesta is the Z-drug you reach for when Ambien isn't holding the night together. Same

Lurasidone is the drug you reach for when somebody walks in with bipolar depression and

MAOIs are old antidepressants with real power, real food and drug interaction rules, and a

Melatonin is one of the most misunderstood things sold in a drugstore, and the misunderstanding

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Minoxidil (Rogaine): what it does, who it works for, topical foam versus low-dose oral minoxidil,

Modafinil has a reputation that runs way ahead of what the drug actually does.

Lithium, lamotrigine, valproate, carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine. What each one does, what it does not, and why

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Naltrexone is the medication that gets prescribed more than any other for alcohol use disorder

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Olanzapine is one of the most effective oral antipsychotics we’ve got, and that’s the first

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The GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic and Wegovy and Mounjaro and the rest, a class of medications

Paxil is the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the standard first-line antidepressant class) I almost

Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Stendra, Trimix. What each one does, when it fits, and why the

Perseris is basically a more modern delivery system attached to a very familiar drug, and

Phenelzine is the antidepressant people start talking about only after they have already admitted that

For a certain kind of trauma, the worst part of the day is the night.

Pregabalin is gabapentin's better-looking, more expensive cousin.

What Most People Don't Get ToldIf you have ever walked out of a fifteen minute

Pristiq is what happens when you take Effexor, skip a metabolic step, and sell it

Propranolol is a cardiology drug that wandered into psychiatry by accident and stayed because it

Prozac came out in 1987. Almost forty years later it's still on the short list

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Quviviq (daridorexant) is a newer orexin-blocker for insomnia with a shorter half-life than Belsomra, so

Ramelteon is the sleep medication people often want to be more dramatic than it is.

Remeron is the antidepressant nobody picks first and a lot of guys end up grateful

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Risperidone is one of the workhorse antipsychotics. It isn’t fashionable, it isn’t subtle, and it

Methylphenidate has been around since 1944 and is still, in 2026, one of the most

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The drug is real. The results in the trials are real. And if you’ve spent

Seroquel is the antipsychotic that gets prescribed for everything other than what it's actually approved

Most guys who need this prescription have already been sitting on the problem for way

Sleep medications can be useful short-term tools, but insomnia is rarely solved by pretending sedation

Trazodone, Silenor, Belsomra, Ambien-class, mirtazapine, Seroquel. What actually helps, what borrows time you pay back

SNRIs are SSRIs with a norepinephrine kick. Effexor, Cymbalta, Pristiq, Savella. When the lane fits,

Spravato is FDA-approved esketamine, given as a nasal spray under direct supervision in a certified

SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and the name basically describes the trick.

Statins are cholesterol-lowering medications. More specifically, they lower LDL cholesterol by blocking HMG-CoA reductase, a

Stimulants can be life-changing for ADHD and narcolepsy, but the Schedule II, diversion, sleep, blood

Stimulants are the most effective class of medication in modern psychiatry, and they're also the

Strattera is the non-stimulant ADHD medication that most adults don’t think about until they have

Suboxone is the closest thing we have to a miracle drug in psychiatry, and most

Tadalafil is the one erectile dysfunction medication that doesn’t care what time you took it.

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Where I refer for detox and methadone I do not run detox here. Do not

The hardest part of starting an SSRI is the lag. Side effects can show up

If you're reading this, you're probably somewhere between week eight and week twelve on an

Ozempic and Wegovy got famous first, which is the main reason tirzepatide is still playing

Topiramate has a nickname that does most of the explaining: Dopamax.

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Trazodone is the most prescribed sleep medication in the United States that was never actually

The sleep medication landscape in 2026 is in a weird place. Trazodone is still the

Tricyclics are older antidepressants that can still help depression, pain, migraine, and sleep, but overdose

Trintellix is the antidepressant pharma reps spent a decade trying to make happen.

Typical antipsychotics are older dopamine-blocking drugs that can still be useful, especially in acute psychosis

Valproate (Depakote) is a heavy mood stabilizer for acute mania, not ordinary moodiness. The real

Vivitrol is naltrexone in a syringe, given once a month in your butt. That's the

Vraylar (cariprazine) is an atypical antipsychotic that got an FDA add-on indication for major depression

Vyvanse is Adderall with a seatbelt.

Wellbutrin is the weird cousin in the antidepressant family.

People come in wanting a pill that fixes their life. They don't say it that

I prescribe Xanax rarely, and when I do I usually regret it within six months.

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Zoloft is the drug I prescribe more than anything else, and the one patients ask