I have had great success with amitriptyline for the past year. I was initially diagnosed with IBS-D, but I think I tend more towards IBS-A - my biggest issue is a few days (anywhere from 2 to 6) of little or no bowel movement followed by a day with terrible cramping and large bowel movements.My dosage of amitriptyline is 50mg at bedtime. They started me off at 10mg, which didn't really do anything. Upping it to 30mg helped a bit, but eventually I went up to 50mg on the suggestion of my psychiatrist - my GI doc told me not to go higher than that or else the anticholinergic effect might be too pronounced.A word of caution: There seemed to be a few days worth of an adjustment period when I started on amitriptyline and then again when I increased the dosage (twice). For a day or two, you might actually feel more anxious and/or lethargic than you did before. My IBS did NOT get worse during those few days, but my anxiety about them did (I'm guessing you a lot of you know what I mean). But once I got to the right dosage and survived the first couple days, it really helped me. I previously had lost close to 30 pounds during the IBS flare-up that led to me taking ami, and I gained almost all of it back by ~6 months after I found the right dosage (and have held steady at that weight ever since).I'm actually about to write a long post describing my experience over the past year. For nearly a full year, I honestly was close to symptom-free. There were maybe 6 days in 11 months where I was having issues. It honestly was a matter of trial and error. Right now I seem to be re-experiencing a flareup (inactive colon for a few days, followed by one day with an explosive colon), but I'm not as freaked out about it as I was when I faced the same issues this time last year - a fact that I attribute partially to the amitriptyline. Lord knows that anxiety and depression feeds and feeds off IBS...
