Today I felt both energetic and utterly depressed—the kind of “want to quit my job and go home and get under the covers and never come out again” kind of depressed. But in a very calculating ADHD way. I don’t know. I don’t feel like writing much about it.
I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight.
This past weekend I went on a trip to visit my mom.
Up until about a year ago, she lived with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and debilitating depression that were the hallmarks of my childhood. I grew up handing her fistfuls of pain killers, hugging her desperately as she cried for hours on end for no reason at all, and mopping up her urine when she’d fall into a stupor and forget to make it to the toilet. She would self-medicate with Oxycontin, trying desperately to make herself feel normal, when all she probably ever needed was a doctor who understood mental illness. The horrible things she said and did because of the depression and bipolar disorder will never leave me, but at least I have learned a lot from them.
Thankfully, my mom is now doing a lot better. She was officially diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, and was put on medications that actually help her. In fact, for the first time in my memory, she acts like a normal mom. She wants to talk about planning my wedding, funny things she saw on TV, and celebrity gossip. She’s engaged to a wonderful man, and unlike her relationship with my late father, and it seems like they actually love each other in a genuine, non-destructive way. When she laughs, it’s never a manic laugh anymore. She hugs me and tells me she loves me, and I know that she means it.
My mom is the perfect affirmation for why I need to be on Zoloft. I’ve complained a lot about the side effects of getting back on it (which are still persisting!), but when I think of my mother, I know that this is 100% the right thing to do.
Anonymous asked: i can't stand to be in lessons, i feel the sudden need to get out and go somewhere else and i cant concentrate, ive done some stupid things and i dont know why, and i just dont know why, until i saw symptoms of GAD and a lot of it sounds like what ive been experiencing but i dont know? what do you think?
P.S. You will get beyond this with help. I know that it’s possible because am in the process of doing it right now.
Thanks for reading this blog. I promise to keep updating it.
Anonymous asked: hi, i noticed that a lot of your tags were for GAD and just wondered that if you had it, you would be able to help me? i've always been a worrier and the last few years i've worried constantly about not being good enough and about so many other things to the point where sometimes i cant do anything, just sit and worry, im even less keen to go dancing and that is what i love so much, but the last few weeks, its got so bad i constantly worry about things i dont even know and it hurts aswell,
First, you’re not alone. This definitely sounds like a mixture of anxiety and depression, two demons that I unfortunately know too well. I’ve dealt with both since childhood. For me, GAD is a constant sense of dread, sometimes over things I can name and sometimes over something that I can’t put my finger on. It’s a cringing feeling like the whole world is about to crash down around me. There’s an ever present pit in my stomach, sometimes a lump in my throat, and my heart begins racing when I think about anything even mildly unpleasant. It’s basically the inability to cope with LIFE because of the worry and fear and general badness that is always hanging around inside your head.
I think that you should definitely seek a doctor’s help on this. I promise you that it GETS BETTER. So far most of my posts have been about the unpleasant side effects of my particular anti-anxiety/antidepressant medication, Zoloft. Medication is definitely not a cure all, but I honestly often feel that I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t gone on it in college. It quite literally saved my life. Just imagine feeling NORMAL again without all of the worry and panic and stress. Therapy and a good medication under a doctor’s guidance can give you this. I’m so glad that you reached out to me, and I can tell that you that as someone living with GAD, you and I understand one another. Let me know if I can ever help you with anything. I mean it.
That absurd energy is back. My eyes are wide, I keep catching myself holding my breath, and I am itching to do something.
I have to remind myself to eat. Both yesterday and today were a challenge—it’s like I don’t feel hungry in the same way I did only last week. Now I have a pit inside my stomach at all times, even after a meal, and I’m beginning to get used to it.
My mouth is still like cotton.
My anxiety is ever present, but this energy makes me a little happier, at least. This feels important.
I’ve slowed, and I have the worst cotton mouth of my life. No amount of water helps, and the postnasal drip is still there, driving me mad.
My reflexes are not very good either. Driving is almost challenging. Normally, I’m a pretty competent driver, but stop-and-go traffic during rush hour was a gigantic maze I just couldn’t figure out how to function in today.
I just feel quiet inside.
I know that Zoloft helps me once the side effects wear off (those that ever do, I mean), but when my mouth feels like this and I’m feeling so far away, a little voice in my head begins to rebel. This has happened so quickly—I’m only 4 days in this time—but already there’s the devil in my mind, whispering, “What was so wrong with reality?”
Today was a bad day, at least relative to the past two. That phantom energy I had yesterday vanished and I felt so angry to have to wake up this morning. My eyes have been dry—scratchy—and my throat has a thick nasal drip running down it. As ever, perhaps this has nothing to do with the Zoloft. I don’t know. I feel like it does.
My clients at work annoyed me; they’re annoying generally, but I usually have a much higher threshold for exasperation. My fiance annoyed me; he was antsy as we waited in line for a movie screening, but he didn’t do anything wrong. I was impatient and a little rude. Food annoyed me; I ate half a muffin, drank half a cup of tea, and then ate an entire cheeseburger in fitful bursts for dinner.
I can’t get over the dryness in my eyes. They feel like there’s never been any moisture in them. This is nothing but sand.
Maybe it was my compulsive marathon napping yesterday, but I was hit hard with insomnia last night. No matter how hard I tried to focus my thoughts and relax, my train of thought just kept leaping from one insane subject to the next. It felt like the gentlest marijuana high imaginable, or perhaps a really average unmedicated ADD day. Surreal. Regardless, I fell into a sleep in which I dreamed vivdly and woke up before my alarm feeling incredibly energetic and refreshed.
This feeling of energy persisted until about 4pm, when I left work and realized I had neglected to eat anything all day aside from two cups of hot tea. Instead of a hunger headache, I just felt squirmy and my brain was transfixed on mathematical calculations involving calories, my BMR, and fat loss. They weren’t the type of thoughts like, “I should starve myself more often to lose weight!” They were just compulsive numbers running through my head, mental math that I usually hate, decimal points and commas and hypotheticals.
The feeling of energy still hasn’t left me. My thoughts have quieted a little, but I feel like I just woke up still (in a good way). Maybe all of this is made up, just a placebo effect from a tiny barely there dosage of a totally non-psychadelic drug, but perhaps it’s real. Either way it’s all in my head.
Today marks my return to Zoloft for the first time in two years. The prescription was given to me by a doctor I’ve never seen before. She walked in, asked me what I needed to review with her, nodded when I told her about my previous experience with Zoloft in college, and wrote me a prescription for 25mg/daily to start, no questions asked. The simplicity of it stunned me. I’ll go back in 6 weeks to have the dosage upped, I guess.
After taking that first little green pill this afternoon, I called off work for a sick day and went home to nap. I remember that the last time I started Zoloft, I wanted to sleep a lot, half from fatigue and half because of the lucid dreams that begin immediately. I like the dreams when they aren’t nightmares; at this point, they’re as familiar as friends. It was the same today—sleep felt immediately right, and the dream was strange and wonderful, though I don’t remember the details this time.
I realize the drug takes 4 to 6 weeks to start “working,” but just the knowledge that I’m going back to it soon is already relieving my stress. It’s the promise of a happy numb, and tomorrow will be more bearable with this on the horizon.
