As of 3pm I felt much much better. I don’t know if the sleeping again had anything to do with it or if it just allowed me pass the time and experience the change from one state to another instead of gradually suffering.
Thinking it through, the feeling like crap was withdrawal from missing my daily dose of meds. I am kicking myself because when I dissolve down to whimpering, it is usually because I have missed my meds. One of the things that disturbs me is that the timing isn’t right. The pattern is that the withdrawal will hit a day and a half (36 hours) after a missed dose. Meaning that I can miss a day and I have a half day to take the next dose or there is hell to pay. This time it seems that hell arrived when the next dose was due (24 hours). This means that I don’t have any buffer room to get attempt to get back on schedule, I best take my missed dose as soon as I remember. Which would be fine except then I risk missing the next dose because I shouldn’t be taking the meds close together and I have a problem remembering them regularly more than once a day.
Another thing that disturbs me is how easy it was to get things done in my room before I started feeling bad. If the ick is from withdrawal, then the ability to overcome my resistance to being productive might be being impaired by the meds as well.
It is very frustrating how ok I feel now after how bad I felt earlier. Kind of like thinking the world is going to end and then the clouds part and you find out it was only a rain storm. This horrible horrible thing turns out to be easy to clear up. If it turns out the meds are causing my problems with being productive, I will have been fighting something very small for over 2 years. I am sure there were more factors that caused it but maybe this is the thing that is keeping me in it and making it seem like I haven’t gained any ground on this front. It sure would be nice to have it be this easy to solve this problem.
Not that getting off these meds and getting through the withdrawal will be easy. My pych doc left Kaiser without giving me a referral. I have been very disappointed in the two pych docs I have had at the Oakland Kaiser and want to be matched with someone that will work with me in all my specialness. I have had good Kaiser docs before. Maybe if I can’t get a referral out of Oakland, I will through myself into the random pick at a different location. Rationally it doesn’t make sense but there is a chance it is Oakland that is the issue, maybe the way they run the department or something. Once I get a doc, then I get to switch to another med and wean myself off the problem med over weeks maybe a month or two. Then I get to switch to another med to wean me off of the first switched med taking about the same amount of time. And then I get to gradually decrease that one. All with the added fun of what the original med was taking care of showing up again and needing to be dealt with. There are reasons I am not taking the other two meds and am on the problem child.
Well, I have always had to change meds because what used to work stopped doing its job or started causing problems. It seems my body adjusts and changes after awhile and ta-da, things that did work don’t any more. Most people find something that works and then stay on it. A pych doc suggested that I stay on my meds through out the year and I wouldn’t relapse any more. Didn’t work out that way, it just messed up what had been a steady schedule of depressing hitting early Sept until the end of Oct and again in the spring. The spring one was less large so I didn’t have major incidents that were easy to remember when it hit and when it cleared. The fall one ended on Halloween a couple of times so that is easy to remember.
I checked in with my physical self and I feel like crap. But this feeling is I haven’t eaten and I am doing something that requires energy and please stop dragging me through mud. A typical feeling that I understand and will go try and fix now.
This was a lot of sound and fury signifying little but maybe that little is the key to something else big. If that is the case then it is worth it.
“It is very frustrating how ok I feel now after how bad I felt earlier. Kind of like thinking the world is going to end and then the clouds part and you find out it was only a rain storm.”
Ha, I relate to that. I’m not currently on meds, but am extremely mood-swingy. It is frustrating to feel suicidal one moment, then all puppies and rainbows the next….and I know it is very frustrating for my friends as well. I think a lot of that, with me, is the 7 pull-up mechanism, and the fact that I don’t feel it’s “okay” to be down, even though I’ve struggled with depressive/bipolar tendencies all my life.
I’m glad you’re feeling better!
Btw, I didn’t mean this post to contradict what I said in my journal. I just mean that I have always had big mood swings.
I get what you are saying and it is familiar for me too.
The thing that really weirds out my friends is when I look and act like it is all puppy dogs and rainbows (I like that expression, it seems to really fit) and underneath all that it is dark and depressing. It would creep them out when I would admit to the depression with a huge smile on my face. I figure it is like the Joker from Batman.
yeah, when I’ll say something like “oh, I’ve actually been feeling pretty suicidal for a long time” in a normal or even upbeat tone of voice, people seem to not take me seriously. One of my 5 friends has mentioned how weird it is when another one of her 7 buddies says in a perky tone how she’s “really depressed”. I think what’s happening is that there is an element of detachment at work. The 7 knows they are very depressed, but they’re not allowing themselves to access the feeling at that moment, they are just reporting on facts, and wonder why their factual account is questioned.