Happy happy joy joy

[cleolinda]

Well, I feel much better today, for no particular reason. I even made lunch, which is unusual. I haven't started the Lamictal yet--I kind of wanted to wait until the weekend so I could have one calm week--this week--of the other two medications at their usual dosage, since we've been screwing with the numbers so much lately. That, and if I have some kind of adverse reaction (which I can't imagine I would, at 25 mg) to the Lamictal, people will be home this weekend in case something happens. "The weekend" is kind of an arbitrary start date, just to feel like I'm imposing some kind of schedule on things.

While we're here, I feel like I should say something about the way I look at all this. The thing about talking about all of this on a public journal is that people do get very concerned for you and even protective of you, I think, and they end up trying to give you advice that's--well, not "unfounded," necessarily. Maybe more like "preaching to the choir." I don't know.

Here's the thing. I do think pharmaceutical companies encourage doctors to prescribe medications whether they're necessary or not. If you don't think a medication, in general or in particular, is right for you, you shouldn't take it. And you should tell them so. A pill is not the solution to every problem. But the thing is, I do think that a pill can be a solution to some problems. To wit:

I had sort of a phone-consultation appointment with my doctor on Monday, to discuss whether I wanted to change up my meds now that I'd had three weeks to think about it, and I told her some of the things y'all said. ("Where did you talk to these people?" "On... on my journal." "On the internet?" "Yes, but there were a lot of them!") Which is to say, I told her about some of the concerns that had been brought up, many of which she had already mentioned, and that by and far, Lamictal really did seem to work for a number of people, so I didn't feel quite as DO NOT WANT about it after I'd had time to mull it over. If nothing else, I felt better just in the sense that fifty-seven people didn't show up shrieking that Lamictal gave them third arms and green hair. No news is good news and all that.

I also told her about the hypomania ("I don't know if you mentioned this or not, but I did some reading that was totally not on the internet, shhhhh about it..."), and she agreed that it sounded like a component of the depression. She added that she'd gone back through the notes from our initial consultation eight thousand years ago, and signs of hypomania were present even back then. I then told her about this one time I wrote forty-two pages in one sitting--forty-two actual pieces of college-rule paper, in longhand, in pencil. I know, because I remember numbering them very excitedly. And then I told her the punchline: I was nine years old at the time. "What I'm saying is, it's always been like this. It's not something that just showed up when I was a teenager, or when I was in college. I've always been like this, no matter what you end up calling it. And I've always had these periods of inexplicable sadness--I'd go to my mother and say, 'I feel sad, but I don't know why,' and she'd just tell me to count my blessings. Because, you know, you don't expect an eight or nine-year-old or whatever to already have chronic depression. I'm just saying, if that makes a difference, in terms of medication--if it makes a difference that it's always been this way."

"Mm," she said. Which wasn't unusual, but it was a little eerie this time, just hearing a disembodied voice. You can't watch someone react on the phone, after all.

I also told her that I didn't want to medicate the hypomania, which I felt (in contrast to actual mania) to be a positive thing, into complete submission. I want it to hang around, but I accept that if you're going to medicate the deep trenches, you're probably going to take a little off the peaks as well. You have to figure out for yourself what each part is worth to you, what compromise you're willing to accept. And she agreed (I think. "Mm"), and said that she wasn't going to take me off either of the two antidepressants I've been on for several years now; she was just going to reduce the Wellbutrin (yes, I told her that I'd heard about possible seizures) and start me on very, very small increments of Lamictal--again, as previously described. I should be up to 100 mg after four or five weeks, but 100 (or even less) might be plenty, and I might not even need to go on up to 200. So I was glad that I wasn't giving up Zoloft or Wellbutrin, because I've had good experiences with them. When I'm on those two, I don't feel like I'm on drugs. When I was on Adderall, early on in college, I frickin' felt like I was on drugs. My scalp spent most of the day, every day, trying to crawl off my head, my heart would race, and I felt permanently caffeinated. When I'm on the other two, I just feel--I don't even feel "good"; I just feel like me. I feel like this great big wet fisherman's net has been pulled off me, and I don't have to drag it around with me all day. Once I first got that net off in college, as it were, I realized that I wasn't really shy at all--I wasn't Sandra Dee or anything, but I actually liked hanging out with people and doing poetry readings and going out dancing.

But since then, it's come back for weeks or months at a time. It's been really bad the last few months--probably as bad as it's been since my senior year of college. The fisherman's net may be a good metaphor, because you really do kind of feel cold all the time, in a figurative sense. Cold and wet and sometimes like you're drowning. We tried upping my Zoloft last month for that reason; and it turns out that while I feel kind of bad on 100 mg, I feel really fucking terrible on 200. A hundred and fifty really does seem to be the magic number on that one, and I feel a lot more capable at that level. Not "happy," necessarily; just "functional." Like I'm not drowning, basically.

I am going to have to say here that I do, in fact, think that a pill (or rather three low-dosage pills) is the solution to my problem.

My mother and I were talking about this at the kitchen table yesterday, about why I don't want to go back to therapy: "I spent years in therapy," I said. "I pretty much know what I'm doing wrong. It's just--you know how you'll watch a friend go out with someone who's really bad for her, but telling her that doesn't do any good? It's something she has to realize for herself? I know the things I'm doing to trip myself up--like pathological levels of procrastination, for example--but if I can't bring myself to do anything about it, well, talking's not going to change that. Or talking to someone else isn't, at least. Because there's nothing they can tell me, at this point, about these particular issues, that I don't already know. The thing is, I don't feel like it's fair--it's like going to therapy is setting myself up to fail, because I'm at a point where I'm not in control of a lot of things. I have to make a phone call to a stranger and I feel deep and abiding terror. It's not rational, but I do. That's why I think it's a medication problem. I just want to get to the right level of medication so that I can feel, you know, somewhat anxious about phone calls the way 'normal' people do. But a therapist says, 'I want you to make [whatever unpleasant business phone call] by the time I see you next week,' and if I'm too irrationally terrified to do it, well, now I'm an uncooperative patient or something. Or I'm 'not trying hard enough,' or 'not fully invested in this process.' Or they tell me that getting out and exercising would make me feel better, which would be great except for the fact that I can't even get out of bed. It just feels kind of pointless to set myself up for failure like that. I'm not saying I want medication to make me Supergirl; I'm just saying that I want to have the road repaved so that I can have the same ups and downs as everyone else, instead of hitting a pothole and spinning off into a ditch."

I think that was the metaphor that finally got her to understand what I was saying. That's not exactly how I phrased it, but in person it involved a lot of hand gestures ("I don't want to be up here, it's just that right now I'm down here and everyone else is up here in the middle [wavy up-and-down hands], and I just want to be able to not be down here") that I'm not sure I can reproduce coherently in a text format. Anyhoo, that's what I'm trying to say. I'm not taking medication because I want to put on Ren's happy helmet and not feel anything. I'm just trying to get the deeper trenches filled in so that I can at least have a shot at the same ups and downs as everyone else. Anxiety and irritation instead of soul-chilling fear and completely irrational rage ("CRANIUM? I FUCKING HATE CRANIUM!!"), if you will. I'm not asking for sunshine every day; I just want to be able to get out of bed and look out the window.

Comments

[metonymy.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Yes yes yes yes yes.

My dad is always asking me if I want to be taking "those pills" for "the rest of my life." But the thing is? Without my happy little Lexapro, I feel like I want to lie in bed and cry over the ozone layer depleting and the fact that my hair looks wonky. With it, I'm able to function like a normal human being. I still have bad days. But not every day is a bad day the way it is when I'm not medicated.

So, you know - good luck with your dosage-fiddling. I really hope it works out for you.

sigh. I know that one...

[the-blue-fenix.livejournal.com]

My dad is always asking me if I want to be taking "those pills" for "the rest of my life."

Diabetics and epileptics hardly ever have to deal with that kind of question about _their_ medications.

The brain is an organ of the body, folks. It has chemical properties as well as psychological ones. I wish society would freakin' _cope_ with that fact already.

TBF, and her meds.

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

Therapy is such a different experience for people (daresay because therapists differ so much in their methods). I went without for many years because a)price and b)I felt like I was wasting my time. This time around, though, it seems like it's helping, mainly by giving me some coping skills that I didn't have then.

You're fortunate in that your family and friends seem to be supportive of you. That helps a lot.

I guess I'm saying, see how it goes, but don't write therapy complete off. It's a good resource if you need to fall back on it.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

No, no, I know what you mean. If I had any new issues, I'd go back. But at the moment, it's just the same-old same-old for the last four years.

[theatre-angel.livejournal.com]

Possibly the worst comment ever, but I just wanted to say that I really liked this. And, for what it's worth, I hope everything turns out all right for you in the end.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Nah, worst comment ever was "u suck fag." I still don't quite understand that one. : )

[bigeyedrabbit.livejournal.com]

Anxiety and irritation instead of soul-chilling fear and completely irrational rage ("CRANIUM? I FUCKING HATE CRANIUM!!"), if you will.

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums up what most of us with mental problems would like out of our treatment.

I choose not to go the medication route. I've spent a lot of time having to apologize for that. And so I don't think you should ever, EVER feel the need to justify the fact that you DO choose to go that route. Which is basically to say, if anyone gives you any crap about being on meds, just, I don't know, stomp 'em in the gonads, 'cause it's not their business.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I personally think you shouldn't have to apologize for anything that works for you, whether it's therapy or drugs or St. John's wort or whatever it is. Apparently antidepressants are my personal jar of dirt. I completely understand if they're not someone else's. : )

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

("Where did you talk to these people?" "On... on my journal." "On the internet?" "Yes, but there were a lot of them!")

"No, you don't understand! There were 200 of them!"

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

"I got like 150 replies! That's, like, almost scientific!"

[danisse.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I realize that drug companies are pushing the drugs off on us, but that doesn't mean they don't help.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those people who does get protective/concerned, but I think in my last comment about meds I expressed myself poorly, which is why I deleted it. My experience is not yours, and my inabilty to take meds is not your situation, so I decided I was blathering on about stuff that wasn't my business.

I wish you all the best with finding a therapuetic dose. :)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

No problem. : ) I understood where you were coming from, and I appreciated it--I mean, you don't know whether I'm informed about my options. And since the comment wasn't there to reply to anymore, I thought, well, it might not hurt to lay it out anyway and say, I have thought about a lot of options and tested out a lot of things, and if you're in my position and you haven't thought about these things, you might want to, but I have, so you don't have to worry about me.

[shanisasha.livejournal.com]

Different people have different problems that require different steps to fix.

Good luck with the dosage changes, and with the new drugs. Hopefully you'll start feeling better soon =)

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

do what you have to do, lady. take care of yourself. the world needs you and all that. :)

[ysabel.livejournal.com]

When I was on Adderall, early on in college, I frickin' felt like I was on drugs. My scalp spent most of the day, every day, trying to crawl off my head, my heart would race, and I felt permanently caffeinated.

See, it was a lack of that sort of reaction that made me realize that Adderall worked for me (and made me admit, okay, maybe I am AD(H)D...having all but one of the diagnostic criteria, and even that one arguable, didn't make me admit it). I can take 30mg of Adderall and go take a nap. As my doctor points out, normal people just can't do that.

I'm not on it right now largely because its ability to suppress appetite was keeping me from dealing with some GI issues by just not eating, and I'd dropped down under 145 lbs (I'm six feet tall) and, well, yeah. Now that I'm back to a healthier weight I go back and forth about what to do; the Adderall clearly helps me a lot but it does make it hard to eat enough (my intestine still isn't completely cooperating)...

So, yeah, I completely understand the 'struggling to find something right' and just wanting something less impossible to deal with.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

See, exactly. That's how you know--on the right drug, you feel *normal.*

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

Interesting with you and your meds and the non-Adderall sentiment. Adderall is one of those few drugs that makes me survive. Mine's not the whole "I feel like I'm drowning" (well, unless I get so behind on my schoolwork), but moreso, "I feel like I'm the last person to cross the finish line and I already started out as one of the last runners." People think Adderall is some super-drug cure-all that makes me the top of everything, but if that was the case, then why does it only equalize me to my peers, so I'm not the last person to learn anything?

Basically, yeah, though it's different drugs and different conditions, I definitely understand the whole "being dragged down for various whatever reason."

[lezopez.livejournal.com]

("CRANIUM? I FUCKING HATE CRANIUM!!")

NOT, as a babysitter, that I've ever HAD that conversation, but I may be in the ballpark as far as knowing what you mean there.

I'm glad to see this entry - it's very optimistic, which makes me happy. (Well, I don't know if optimistic is the right word as much.. self assured maybe? Would that be applicable?)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh. No, I know what you mean--I think I've gotten out from under the net today.

(My friends are going to jump all over me the moment they read this entry.)

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

And I've always had these periods of inexplicable sadness--I'd go to my mother and say, 'I feel sad, but I don't know why,' and she'd just tell me to count my blessings. Because, you know, you don't expect an eight or nine-year-old or whatever to already have chronic depression.

Word fucking UP. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those long spontaneous-confession comments where you end up all "Who is this chick and why is she telling me all this?", but I have to say that these few little words totally hit home. It took me years of retrospect to realise that I had chronic depression at age eight. Up until then, I simply assumed that my family's stated theory--"she's just doing it for attention"--was correct. This of course drove me to even deeper fits of depression as I wracked my little eight or nine-year-old brain wondering why I just couldn't be a good girl who didn't need attention; why I couldn't just not be sad all the time. It was only much later on when I was in my early teens and late twenties, not doing it for attention at all but still unable to stop, that I thought long enough on the problem to realise that I wasn't doing it for the attention, I wasn't doing it just to get out of tasks I didn't like: I felt miserable. I would not be inflicting this sort of anguish on myself if I could help it. What was worse, of course, is that as an adult, depression does not serve you any purpose at all; it interrupts the flow of your entire life. You have deadlines to meet, uncompromising work schedules, and the price for "getting out" of them, even for a day, can mean unpaid rent, empty kitchens, and cars repossessed with remorse. At that point, I had to get over the engrained idea that it was something I was doing to myself; I had to go out and find some help. At the same time, I had to deal with feeling overwhelmingly, frustratingly cheated--everybody else gets sad when their dog dies or when a friend moves out of state, but they can still function. Simple events like that were enough to keep me locked in the house, unable to even go out for a deck of smokes because I didn't feel I could tolerate other people that day. It didn't seem fair that other people had it so easy.

And yeah, there is no magic pill. If there was a magic pill, I would shamelessly be on it by now. So, I expect, would you. And so would everyone.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I totally empathise with that part of your current situation, and I hope the meds work for you, and I hope you get back on the same road everyone else gets to drive.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Sub out "she's just doing it for attention" with "she's just a shy loser" and you pretty much have the script we were reading from when I was a kid. It took me years to realize that I wasn't feeling bad because of something I was or something I did, but because of chemistry.

[koritsimou.livejournal.com]

Has someone been giving you crap about your choice to medicate? If I may be eloquent, fuck that. They can work it out with therapy if they want, maybe that works for them. But you can have the damn meds if you want. It's not their body, it's yours.

That steams me.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

No, no, someone telling me that I needed to make sure I did what was right for me--like I ended up saying to her, that was fine; she had no way of knowing if I was informed of all my options, and wanted to make sure that I was. So I figured, I'll kind of lay out how I got to this point for folks, so they'll know.

[fennin.livejournal.com]

i have not been medicated for years for bipolar, and i know that half the battle is in my conscious mind, and the other half is gettin' those chemicals in order. so it solves the whole problem, not just half. :D and you're doing all you need to do.

good luck!!

[eponine-b.livejournal.com]

I've been through a similar thing myself recently with my HRT so I know what you mean. Unless you've been through something similar you can't really understand it but you describe it really well.

Best of luck with the dosage tweaking. Hopefully you'll notice changes for the better pretty soon.

[nilo.livejournal.com]

Mm.







Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I've been reading you for a very long time now, but don't often comment. But I read your with interest and care. And I agree with you -I do happen to think there is a magic cocktail out for a lot of this. And yes, it's going to require tweaking over the years.

I hope this works.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. : )

[nixve.livejournal.com]

I was so reassured to read this post because a) it's such a great explanation on medicine/therapy/options and b) OMG!! someone else other than me is terrified of phone calls!

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Lamictal hit me and stole my lunch money.

Wait. No. That was Chuck in the 6th grade. Never mind.

[koritsimou.livejournal.com]

This comment is awesome.

[justjayj.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this, Cleo. It's actually quite inspirational and--at this moment in my life--thought-provoking. I'm in therapy again after nearly a decade out. I'm resistant to the idea of meds for me because the ones I have been on have been so. Frickin'. AWFUL. But at the same time, your comments about "always been this way" and evening out the highs and lows could've come out of my own mouth.

At my last session, the therapist told me, "You have to 'feel the fear and do it anyway.'" It took me most of the rest of the hour to explain to her that that's how I live every day, with every phone call, every meeting, every interaction with people, every challenge that comes across my desk; that I'd been hearing that particular advice for almost two decades, and I'd like to move on from "feel the fear" to "not feeling the fear anymore." Maybe that means it's time to talk chemistry.

So--now that I've gone and babbled "ME ME ME ME ME!"--what I'm trying to say is: (a) thanks for sharing; (b) you've given me a lot to think about; and (c) I really admire the way you're taking charge of the situation--probably the hardest thing in the world for depressives to do.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

Sing it, sister. ^_^ Your body, your brain, your decision in the end no matter how many of us put our tuppence in the pot.

Good luck. I'll be thinking of you!

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

I've never really had to deal with depression, which is why I don't comment, but you've described exactly how I've heard other people talk about it. The medication isn't to make you happy, it's to make you undepressed, so you can make yourself happy.
I consider myself pretty normal in terms of emotions (actually, among my friends I'm known as the emotionally stable one), and I'm not happy all the time. Nobody really is. It's just that I can usually still see the sun when I fall down into my hole of depression, and the incline on the peaks of happiness isn't all that steep, so it's easy for me to climb.

[newsong.livejournal.com]

I am very glad to hear that you're probably going to find something that works for you to find the balance you need.

If only the diabetic metaphor would work on my Mom (she's very likely bi-polar but won't even go to the doctor for chest pains...)

Also, my icon is VERY appropriate I think.

[bluinkalchemist.livejournal.com]

Oooo. Indeed. I love Pilz-E.

May I use it? Pretty please? With sugar and souls on top?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Word. I had entirely positive experience with Prozac. I was in therapy, and I pretty much understood what my issues were, and yet I was still lying in bed crying for hours because of this terrible sorrow that I understood was completely irrational, and yet I still felt it. After two weeks of Prozac, I woke up one morning and that sorrow was gone-- enabling me both to be happy, and to react with normal anger and sorrow to actual bad events, rather than having, for instance the grief I might feel over a death be drowned out in the blaring background noise of the sourceless grief I always felt.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

See, exactly. Even on Zoloft--even on Zoloft AND Wellbutrin together--I have never entirely been undepressed as it is. But on medication, I seem to have a fighting chance (and sometimes not even then, as this last episode suggests). I spent the last two days in and out of bed, unable to do anything even if I sat down and tried to work, so it was amazing to just suddenly feel better today, get up, swim, and stay up the whole day. And I don't even know why it was better. That kind of unpredictability is what I'd like to get rid of.

[qwertytigger.livejournal.com]

zoloft = better living through chemistry

*hugs*