Saturday, June 13, 2009

.my point of balance was askew.

It's Saturday and thus, about three days into my return to meds. Awhile back, I had made a decision that I could not continue on medication. I hated the side effects when I had them and hated not feeling any difference at all when I didn't. I had a hard time remembering to take them and a harder time coming up with what to say about how I was doing on them, because I didn't really know. I was glad to be normal again – feel what I felt and know it had nothing to do with chemicals. If I wanted an altered state, I'd get drunk – another thing that being on psych meds would not allow me to do.

But I have had a rough several months. There were no particular reasons for them to be especially so, but I have been plagued with constant worry and anxiety (over everything from money, finding a new second job, relationship concerns and my health to whether or not I was doing enough, if I would ever achieve anything in the literary world, why I feel consistently tired and unmotivated or, most morbidly, how numbered my days were) and occasional (though, it seemed, more occasional than usual) depression accompanied by crying jags, feelings of complete worthlessness and hopelessness and just about the most richly layered self-pity you could probably imagine. It wasn't productive...it's not productive. I had to do something about it.

My therapist was as shocked as I was by my decision to go back on medication. He kept asking, “Are you sure?” because I have been so adamantly against the idea. I would say they wouldn't do any good, they killed my libido, I wasn't fun anymore, I couldn't drink, I could never tell a difference in my anxiety (which, for me, is the worst part – the depression doesn't seem to come as often without the anxiety, but the anxiety is always there; it manifests itself in so many ways, in so many situations – social or ordinary or in cleaning, organizing and rituals that take up little pieces of my day, day in and day out). He was concerned and reasonably so. But I assured him that I didn't think I'd given medication a real chance before and that this time I was going to try. After all, something had to give. I have too many things to lose.

So my therapist referred me to a psychiatrist who I saw this past Thursday. He decided to put me on Cymbalta. 30 mg the first two weeks, 60 the next. I see him again in a month to discuss results.

The results so far? I have woken up each morning, shaky and restless, at odd hours: 5am, 6:35am. I have dizzy spells throughout the day. I get nausea and a touch of headache just before breakfast and I go from feeling completely without an appetite (more often)to feeling voracious (rarer). I'm a little more spacey than usual – even for me. I feel, in turns, tired and very, very awake. In other words, it's awful so far. But it's not so unbearable that I can't put up with it. It's something I want to give a chance, so I will. Maybe soon I will feel myself becoming slightly calmer. Maybe soon everything will fall into place and I can breathe again.