Off the anti-depressants.

[Carnatic]

I came off anti-depressants the other week.

 

I was on them for far too long really... six years, but I became so passive in the last few years that I only ever brought it up when my GP asked to see me, one year we halved the dosage, a couple of years later, we halved it again... and finally the other week I said it was time to come off... and I did.

 

Sadly my life has been fairly dull over the last four or five years since I moved back to the small-town I was brought up in and back in with my parents. It's a fairly dull place to live, previously I lived in a large city; I've moved back here to find all my old friends have moved away, I see them occasionally, as do I occasionally see friends from the city. I run my own business, it's a competitive industry and building up a network takes time, but the work is enjoyable and previously I had just been moving between jobs that were low-paid, part-time, temporary, lacked job-security and lacked progression opportunities, so I was never going to get to a point where I could afford to rent my own place in regular employment. Self-employement seemed to me a way to take charge of my own destiny, and if nothing else being poor in a job you enjoy beats being poor in a job you hate.

 

Now though I feel that familiar profound emptiness of being... as if nothing I've ever done has been for any purpose and nothing will ever change. Hope to fight through because getting to where I want to be in life (I don't ask for much, just to afford the rent on a place of my own and have friends, preferably back in the city) will take some character, so I can't afford to lose what little of that I have.

 

That's all for now, thanks for listening.

[sentiententity]

That can be difficult, going off ADs. I hope your small busines works out well!

[Carnatic]

That can be difficult, going off ADs. I hope your small busines works out well!

 

Thanks. It's just feeling things I haven't felt for a while that made me wonder if it was coming off the ADs. I've felt depressed and bored at times in the past six years, but can't remember the last time I felt that, as I termed it 'profound emptiness of being'... and haven't felt any physical symptoms in ages, but I feel a little nauseated now. I was prone to dark days before I was on the ADs and I felt fine for most of yesterday, so I could well (hopefully) feel fine tomorrow... I feel slightly less bad right now than I did when I made the post.

[Willywagtail]

It can take time for the effect of the melds to wear off, even if you've been slowly decreasing the dosage. You might get little after effects as your body and brain chemistry adjusts to being med free.

 

Being active will help to allay the empty feeling. Get out into the sun and into nature. Connect with your friends and family and do things. You don't want to focus on what you don't have but on what you do have.

 

Good luck with the business!

[sentiententity]

You seem to be doing pretty good. I've been on ADs for about 10 years now. Being totally without would be pretty difficult.

[TattyK]

I know it can be tough when you come off, especially when you have been on them for so long. I don't know how old you were when you started taking them, but if you are like me you might require some basic therapy to help you gain coping skills to deal with some of these "new emotions" that you are feeling the full effects of. When I took myself off of AD's, I was sort of manic for a couple of months. I was placed on them at around 14 and came off of them at around 20, so I missed some important emotional development at that time because rather then teach me coping skills I was given medication to deal with emotions. Something good would happen and I would feel so giddy and excited that I wasn't too sure how to channel that, which sounds weird unless you know what its like to have "filtered emotions" via medication. When something bad happened, I wasn't too sure how to handle all these intense feelings because before when I felt bad there was a pill for that. Take pill, emotional crisis averted, never learned how to deal with emotional crisis's without them.

Hopefully what you are experiencing is some residual effects of coming off of the medication and in time it rights itself for you, but if not I would hope you would be open to the idea of exploring some therapy to gain some coping skills. It really helped me a lot and made my life 100% livable again without the medication.

 

Good luck to you!

[catfeeder]

Anyone battling chronic depression should be monitored by a therapist, not a GP. This doesn't mean you need to pay the cost of a psychiatrist, but a PhD, PsyD or even an MSW can work WITH an MD to monitor the effectiveness and the side effects of meds.

 

Just jumping off of meds without this support is not wise. I'd seek an assessment and discuss your med history, and ask for a referral to a partnering MD should the therapist determine a need to rebalance your chemistry.

 

Keep the therapeutic relationship in tact as a safety net. Even after you reach a level of functioning optimally, checking in once a month is a good idea, because the time to attempt to FORM this relationship is NOT when you hit a low.

 

I once reached a pit so deep that it was impossible for me to hunt for a therapist. Don't wait to see if you reach that point, assuming that you can just run back to your GP for the old meds to do the trick. They may not, and frankly, couldn't you use the professional support at this time, anyway?

[Carnatic]

Thanks... I'll make it a priority to make enquiries about returning to therapy. It's definitely been very much ups and downs over the last week, which was the first time I noticed any effects at all, and the effects feel very physiological (or perhaps I'm just somatising) as well as psychological. It doesn't help that I have so little to take my mind off things. When I'm down I almost feel like if only I could stop work for a while to recover... I can hardly work when I'm low anyway. I can do the scheduled work alright no matter what my mental state is, because I've prepared in advance for it, on the day it's just a case of turning up and doing what I said I'd do... also the act of working makes me happy... it's more the sitting at home planning my next move that takes a hit. When I'm up, everything seems fine though.