azurelunatic | Yeah, I've been there.

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Yeah, I've been there.

Something somewhere said reminded me of the meds battle.

So you're depressed, right, and you wind up on meds (for me it's St. John's Wort, for others it can be something else) and you take them and take them and one day you're just living your life and out of the blue you notice hey! you're happy! where did this come from? your life almost feels ... normal!

And you realize, looking back on it, how very much of your personal mental clutter you have worked your way through, that all of those things that bothered you back when you were unmedicated and unhappy, you know how to deal with those now, and things are really not as bad as they were.

So you drop the damn meds (or you taper them, if you're on the hard stuff; I hear brainbuzzes are not funtimes, and if it's the thing where your head zaps like you're turning on an oldschool monitor, then no not at all; I had those in high school) and maybe you convince yourself that you know, you were just going through a hard patch. You don't really need drugs to cope with real life. You were weak, but you can handle it just fine now that you have got all these shiny new skills.

And you sail along without the meds and you're doing just fine. And then either BAM! life hits you out of the fucking blue, and one of those situations comes up and you're down for the count! -- or maybe you're sailing along with each day not much different from the last, and you're living your life and out of the blue you realize that god damn you are MISERABLE -- or even that it's not quite that you're miserable, but you ... just can't seem to remember the last time it was that you were happy.

Maybe this isn't the first time.

And you pick up that bottle again, and you hate yourself a little, but you take them. Day in, day out. And gradually, life starts to sail on again, and the black cloud, or the gray fog, starts to lift. Or there's a way to climb out of the hole. And life is good again, until you realize that hey, perhaps you don't need those meds, since you're doing so well...

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It sounds like you're being really hard on yourself. Depression isn't a character flaw. I'm sure you know it's a chemical imbalance. I doubt you'd get down on yourself if you were a type 1 diabetic and your body had trouble producing insulin. You'd just take the meds you needed to take to correct the situation. It might help to think of it that way.

* hugs *

I am trying to. And then I forget, either because I don't feel bad or because I don't happen to see the bottle. (Easily distracted? Me?) Now that I have it as a reminder in my to-do list, I'm doing a lot better about picking it back up before it becomes an actual problem.

Practice, practice, practice.

The more habit-forming the act of taking it is, the easier it will become, but it won't happen overnight (or even over a year).

Once I am taking it again, it's all good except remembering. It helps to tie it to something; when I was in Arizona with all my allergies I tied it to the antihistamines. I have it parked next to the computer now, to hopefully tie it to sitting down at the computer in the morning.

My ex used to tie it to getting up and peeing in the morning, whenever that first time was (that's a little dependent on how time-sensitive your dosages are, but from what you're saying it doesn't sound very).

Oh, I never stop taking meds. I have had to switch when certain meds stopped working or gave me terrible side effects, but I learned at least 10 years ago that going off meds is a terrible idea for me. I could be fine for 6-12 months, but it's really unpredictable. And being on the meds doesn't hurt me, so I just take them every day like my multivitamin because they improve my life.

I'm still battling with accepting it. I thought I had accepted it some time back, but apparently not, because I still keep occasionally going "Oh, I can probably do without those for a bit" instead of "yes, time to take them".

It helps me to remember that if I'm happy and stable, the meds are doing their job. I think of it as being little different from diabetes. And if the side effects are problematic I talk to the doc and we change them around.

Having just taken my second allergy pill of the day....
You are -so- not alone in this struggle. I think lots of us are taught from a very early age that we should just "suck it up and keep going" which is very helpful if you need to finish that hike out of the canyon before it gets dark, and you are tired and a bit hurt. The attitude itself isn't at all helpful when we are a bit glum, can't think quite straight and so forth.

It has helped me a good deal to have my partners -tell- me when they think I'm not doing well. Somehow it makes it more "real". M is very sweet about it he doesn't say "you look like hell and have no energy" he says "you look very impacted today".

Oh, and HI welcome to the Bay Area!

oh, I hear you. I so hear you. **hand squeezes**

It gets not so bad, as time goes on. This most recent time, I caught it before it actually seriously screwed anything else up.

I wonder whether a journal helps for that kind of thing... so that you can look back and correlate "times I was happy" with "times I was taking my meds" on the one hand, and "times I was miserable" with "times I had gone off them", and put one and one together, and make a considered decision whether to go off them again this time or not.

It would probably help, provided both moods and meds were consistently tracked in a way that could be compared to each other.

Oh, hm, and that gives me yet another user interface idea for the "Post Hawk" bit of vaporware: transparent colored overlays, a la the Council of Counts desk layout flimsies.

It's a heartbreaking and deceptive lure, the thought of wellness when you have a chronic health problem of any kind.

I haven't had this experience with bipolar meds, but bipolar is also not one of those things you really want to do without meds, ever, no matter how stable you feel.

Ugh. I would imagine that one would not want to try it.

I seem to have regular battles with the idea of taking this, never mind that it's a natural remedy and available cheaply over the counter. I imagine it must be a subtly different go-round when it's prescription and not readily available by just picking a plant.

That describes exactly what (my, as opposed to your) JD experiences. He hates being on meds, but he desperately needs them. Add in the recent death of a beloved uncle (who did more to raise him than the actual father-type being), the illness of that uncle's wife, & the current financial insanity. Yeah.... My poor love. At this point, he's considering electro-shock but is worried about the potential memory loss, etc.

Aaaagh. My sympathies.

And mine for you. *hugs*

It's good to hear (read) another perspective on this sometimes. It really helps me know what to say/do when he starts another cycle. I admit that I was pretty clueless at first. I go through my own cycles certainly, and there were absolutely periods where I could've gone suicidal had certain people (notably my mother) not noticed & stepped in to nudge me another direction. But mine have never been as... deep-seated as to need medication. So, initially, my reactions were fairly basic: "You need this. Take it. Stop being an idiot." Now those are tempered with "You know, you seem to consistently feel better when you take this. Perhaps experimentation (under the guidance of somebody qualified!) to find a better cocktail/dosage/whatever would be better than stopping cold-turkey without even informing your doctor?"

So. Thank you for sharing your experiences. You've helped more than you know.

I'm very glad.

I wrote this up because I saw something that made me inclined to think that another party in an undisclosed location might be on a phase of this cycle, and I offered support there, but figured that since this cycle is something I go through, and it seemed that I wasn't the only one who went through it, it might be worth writing up.

I know we don't know each other, but I had a family member go through electro-shock. It was a godsend. He had a little memory loss, generally of the few hours before the procedure. Since it's a procedure that's done repeatedly over time, he quickly learned not to do anything of import over those few hours. Other than that.... it helped a LOT, and he got to be completely off meds for a while, which, for him, was amazing. It's not One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or anything like that at all. Which is not to say it's not a serious procedure, or that it's right for your JD. Just that it's not as scary and awful as a lot of people make it sound.

Good Luck!

Ooo, thank you! May I share this info with him? He's been seriously worried about forgetting major events & such.

Of course you may. Though, of course, I am not a doctor, so YMMV.

They also sedate the patients before the procedure now, so it's no longer such traumatic thing. My relative would go very early in the morning, and then maybe not be able to tell us what he did the night before. Which... y'know, sometimes I don't really know what I did the night before, either ;) (waste it away messing about on the Internet, most likely) Nothing like "gee, I don't remember my best friends or my wedding" or anything like that.

Long-term serious depression is such a bear to treat. I hope you all find the right solution.

Yay for self-awareness?

I guess I'm a minority in the way I feel about medication. I don't mind it at all, and don't have any real desire to get off it. I'm happy to be on it, just because I'm so happy to feel better (and this is some three years into taking it). I mean, it would be cheaper to not take it, but... I take meds for my allergies. I take meds for my thyroid. I'm taking pills every day of my life, whether I'm on anti-depressants or not. Meanwhile, I went 10 years with untreated anxiety and depression. The pills gave me my life back.

But I see a lot of people saying, "I know I feel crappy, but I don't want to rely on some pill," with enormous contempt, like they're going to become addicted to narcotics. Or, else, the much less angry, "I'm feeling so much better, I think I'll stop taking these pills." I just... I don't feel any desire to give them up, especially. But I think most folks don't agree with me.

myself, i got really tired of changing meds all the time, b/c every prescription antidepressant i went on had side effects that really made them not worth the compensation (ie: needing to sleep 11 hours a day (celexa), having no sex drive (prozac), being high strung and unable to fall asleep (zoloft)) so now i'm on a more natural/supplement style mood booster, and it is amazing the difference it makes. it's really easy to remember to take a pill when you don't have to dread the side effects. also yes, taking four other supplements a day helps, lol. i just put it in that little daily pill case and it's just another vitamin. XD

Here, it's sort of a "I feel *normal*, it doesn't seem like it's doing anything", really. I'm also fighting years of my father's opinions. He was vocally very scornful of anything smacking of psychiatry or brain medication. (He was later diagnosed with depression and put on a variety of medications for same over the years, and I'm no little bitter about that; it would have been very helpful to have had him diagnosed much sooner and me treated when it popped up in adolescence.)

I feel the same way. I had years of untreated depression before I finally "came out" about it and got on meds, and the difference in my life is radical. I have zero interest in going back to that, and I have no illusions that my state now is due to anything else than the meds.

Part of it could be that I don't think of the meds as changing who I am, but as bringing me up to normal -- I really do think of it like it were a lifelong physical-health drug. I wouldn't stop taking my insulin if I were diabetic and felt better. I am of the opinion that I get depressed primarily because of a neurochemical imbalance, not because of anything I do or think (though those certainly can affect it). So medication only makes sense.

i was in a relationship for two years with someone who went through that cycle over and over again-- and she was on meds for stuff way worse than just depression, so when she stopped taking them (somehow always without mentioning she was doing so) things would get really, really bad. so now in my own medicinal life (i take sam-E for mood stuff, thinking about adding st. john's to it) i find it's good to have that to look back on, to remind myself that i take them for a reason. >.>;;;

Oh my. That's not good.

yeaaaaahh tell me about it. took me a long time to realize that it was just never going to end no matter how long i stayed with her and tried to help her get help, but thankfully i did finally realize. >.>;;; but it has definitely helped me not fall into the trap myself-- which i would definitely be prone to otherwise.

Story of my life! Only I haven't gone back on the meds in a few years because I've found that using a lamp which creates natural lighting helps more - and has less horribe side-effects.

Very good you've found something that works.

I'm, frankly, really cynical about medication for myself, partly because Prozac FUCKED ME UP, partly because I don't see how taking a happy pill is going to make me not hate myself and want to die.

For me it's less a happy pill and more that when I'm on something I'm able to retain feelings of happiness from good stuff longer, and have my default be a neutral/calm rather than a down, and come back up from the bad stuff. The bad stuff still hits, and still takes me down, but instead of clinging to it and replaying it so it ruins the whole day or whole week, I'm able to not obsess over it and let the bad feelings die out and I return to neutral, and good things can take me up for more than just a little bit at a time.

Someone of my acquaintance once wound up on a higher-than-effective for her dose of St. John's Wort, and reported that while she was on that dose, she was doing things that were clearly problematic, and people were having problems with them, and it had tweaked her brain chemistry enough that it didn't make a dent and she was able to sail on by thinking "Well, I can't possibly have done anything wrong; it must be THEIR problem that they are taking out on me". So that's the "happy" side of it, and that's an overdose.

I'm immensely lucky to have got something that works for me without noticeable side effects on the first try. My father tried St. John's Wort and got horrible, horrible sun sensitivity.

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Yeah, I've been there.

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