Considering Taking A Walk On The Other Side..

Jan 11, 2007 at 5:49 PM
9 comments

A few weeks back I wrote a post about psychiatric medications, and how I felt about them at the time...

You can go and read it HERE. Basically the jist of it was that I was against psychiatric medications unless you had been PROPERLY diagnosed and had fully researched them.

I was PROPERLY diagnosed with Major Depression and Social Anxiety, as well as Panic Disorder less than a year ago. I think that my depression is more along the lines of the Bipolar type but the swings are too fast, and frequent (meaning I can be manic for a couple of hours and then crash into the depressive for several hours several times in a day)and I spend much more time on the low end than the high end. So the Psych doesn't want to label me as that without more "watchful waiting".

Recent events have made me begin to consider taking a walk on the other side of the road from where I previously stood on the whole medication issue.

The swings have become much more frequent and severe....and it is seriously affecting my relationships with my family members...

I feel it is time for a "leveling off" if that is in fact what medication can give me...

I went off all of my medications two months ago because I found that I couldn't feel anything anymore either good or bad...

Now I feel EVERYTHING....almost like my skin is missing and everything is touching raw flesh...does that make any sense?

Someone could walk by me in the store and snicker about something and in my head I would automatically think they had laughed at me for some reason and I would come home and cry in the shower for an hour....

OR- I could see someone with a beard and instantly think of my dad...and then I would cry like he had just dropped dead yesterday...

How about those highs?

Yesterday I found 5 dollars in the laundry...you would think I had won the lottery...I was damn near giddy with excitement and went on Amazon and spent 200 dollars on shit I don't need..(That's where I get myself into trouble the most is with the whole money thing..I always overspend and buy shit I don't need when I'm manic)

I can't think straight...Hell I do well to finish a sentence in a blog...let alone stay on ONE topic..

I am making a call to my shrink tommorrow to tell him I am reconsidering my plan to come off the meds...but this time I want a whole new evaluation..a LOT has changed since my last one...Maybe I would be more open this time to trying new stuff...

So yeah....I'm kinda screwed up in the head...but it's ok with me....it's what makes me who I am...

And if medication can help me feel better than I have been lately...without taking away my sense of humor, wit, sex drive, and making me gain a hundred pounds...then why not?

9 comments

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Hiya Cat, nice to meet you!

Thank you for your kind words regarding my rant. LOL.

I understand what your going through with the whole medication dilemma. I went from age 16-24 on various medications for clinical depression, and panic disorder. The illnesses alone are far from fun, let alone the life of medications and side effects. I'm off them now due to health problems, and I've been lucky I haven't had many problems with my depression lately. If you ever wanna rant or talk, jus message me :)

Hey, Cat,..I now of what you speak and will forward more thoughts later...peace.

oh...i love you more every day. we are both some crazy bitches. who love to shoot but can't aim worth a damn. i am also going through the same thing with the meds issue. well, i feel better - i don't need them. go off. ooh, bad, I need to get back on. and back again.

we will figure it out and it will all be good. i just know it.

i'm bipolar, as you know, and what you're experiencing is called Rapid Cycling. having Mixed Episodes. that's the type i suffer from/live with. i'm on excellent meds now, but it still happens. i'll be on meds for the rest of my life most likely in some form or other. i want to have children, but i don't know if i'll be able to ever get off my meds long enough to bear my own. i could rapid cycle minute to minute. and i have a whole shit load of material possessions that i don't need from when i went on buying sprees. thank god i didn't do anything else overly stupid while i was manic. good luck with everything. it takes some experimenting to get the right medications, cause everyone's bodies are different. zoloft combined with depakote didn't work for me, i might as well have been unmedicated. topomax makes me feel like a zombie with things crawling under my skin. lexapro made me so manic that i never slept and never ate more than a few mixed nuts a day. it was terrible. but now i'm on geodon, trileptal, wellbutrin, and lamictal, and that combo works for me for the most part. especially the geodon. when he put me on that i felt like my eyes were open and i was awake in my life again, instead of walking around in this cloud of paranoia and delusions. i'm sure eventually they will find something useful for you. oh yeah, and my sex life is great, the weight i gained is explainable by the fact that i haven't exercised in 2 years (depakote made me gain 80 pounds, beware), and i'm still as funny and sharp as ever. and i feel actual joy in my life. have a great day!

marque replied to spooktastic’s comment:
Jan 11, 2007
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I am a rapid cycler too and think i found the right meds. I did have three healthy children on my meds, though. I had horrible experiences with zoloft.

Glad you found a combination good for you. That is great!

i've said it before on vox..so I guess i'll be broing and say it again, but any time I take it my head to skip EVEN ONE DAY of my meds is a bad idea. Bad. Idea.

I hope you find the right med for you...don't give up

country_cinderella replied to spooktastic’s comment:
Jan 13, 2007
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Hi spooktastic (like the nick), I had never heard of rapid cycle before, I am glad I read your post. Both myself and one of my very good friends suffer from clinical depression, anxiety, and sometimes panic attacks. We also have the rapid mood swings that are too short for the definition that we know of for bipolar. We both have had it suggested to us that we are borderline personality disorder (separate doctors and before we knew about each others problems). Is BPD the same as rapid cycle bipolar?

Recently my friend was put on some of the same meds that you mention. I think it was the geodon that she most recently started taking and has had the same positive results as you have. I remember having a heightened sense of panic on topomax. I also made the mistake one time of missing way too many doses of my Paxil which ended up giving me muscles spasms, tremors, of course anxiety, and messed with how well my Wellbutrin was able to work on my depression.

I am glad that you have found the combination of meds that help you. My current combinations seem to be right for me but I try to maintain a vigil on how well they work because I have had to have meds changed when my system became desensitized to what I was taking. I also make sure to continue to see my counselor on a regular basis because I have found that for me I need the combination of medication and cognitive therapy.

I know how you feel about the whole medication situation Cat. I watched my Grandmother suffer depression all my life, and I know she was suffering with it before I ever came along. Unfortunately she lived in a time when depression treatment was next to nothing or suffers were ridiculed for not being able to pull themselves together. When she was given medications they just plain, um excuse me, sucked at helping. Later as treatment options started becoming more available and less ridiculed she was treated like an 'old' person. In other words she was still not being treated properly. The only thing she found to help her was her love of family and of God, but still that was not always enough.

Okay to get back to the point, I learned that Grandma would have faired much better if she had been diagnosed sooner, treated better, prescribed the right meds, and had proper counseling. I did not learn this until I went through my first major depression episode, where I was strongly considering suicide. Thank goodness I already knew of a nice counselor that I had seen for couples therapy and my sister knew her too. I called my sister for help and we both called my counselor. The rest is history, LOL.

I did go thru a period of time where both myself and my doctor were willing to try to take me off of meds. Unfortunately it was only temporary. I have since learned that the closest I will come to being off of meds is the times when the doctor will be able to decrease the dosages. Other than that I think I will definitely want to stay on my meds, I do not like how I get when I am off of them for too long.

[this is good]

Here is what I know about coming off meds. I had to put down the wine glass et al first. Like most who are being treated for depression, I self medicate. I need that wine, I need that occassional joint....but when its regular and you're on meds regular it all works together, either for the good or bad. In my case its for the good...I was on a really good mix, for the first time I wasn't depressed...so on it went for five years...until recently I wanted to get off the meds...figured I didn't need them anymore, heck everything was going so well.....so I began to taper off and was okay for about a day when--WHAM-- the fog rolled back in an I started to spiral downwards like a plane shot out of the air.....I re-upped my meds and within a few days I was back where I was comfortable....

So, after thinking it through I decided to put down the wine glass etc and see where I was.....after a few weeks of not drinking (really sucks) I'm starting to feel brave enough to try weaning down the meds again.

According to my shrink the reason this happens is that we are all just big, unique bags of chemicals and getting the right balance is what's all about and the booze and pot are chemicals too, with pretty bad long term effects too, so how they all mix together is what makes the difference....Stay well, make sure you are comfortable with what you are doing my friend.

Considering Taking A Walk On The Other Side..

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