One in three American women are taking anti-depressants. If it isn't you, it is someone you know. If your doctor tells you need one of the anti-anxiety or anti-depressant drugs, ask lots of questions, do your research and then talk to someone who has taken them AND stopped.
I'm way off topic but I need to share what has been going on. I've been writing much, much less often than I had promised myself and feel like I've let myself and you down. It seems to me like I offer many, many excuses for not being or doing what I had promised or what you, quite possibly, expected. My dad teases me with the line, "excuses, excuses, excuses" when I explain why things didn't go as planned. I feel like I've been making a lot of excuses by way of explanation.
Last month, I had my first appointment with my new physician. She read my list of symptoms and said, "one word: menopause." Oh, yippee! Not like it was a big suprise but it was startling to have my new state of being confirmed so abruptly. I can't take hormones to soften the symptoms so when I was offered an anti-depressant I thought, "why not?"
It took me weeks to adjust to the meds. I won't go into the full side show of symptoms I wandered through. If you were to search on Effexor side effects you'd have a pretty good picture of what I experienced. It occurred to me somewhere in the midst of this symptom odyssey that I hadn't asked the plan to come off medication.
If you don't read Olive Branch Bloggings I suggest you start. Sara has saved my ass more than once. This time, by sharing her own struggles, she pulled my tit out of the wringer. That's an Okie-ism: doing laundry used to be hot, sweaty business so women wore house dresses and little underneath. As the repetitive work of pulling the clothes out of the washer and putting them into the wringer wore on through the day, minds began to drift and if the house dress was pulled with the wet clothes into the wringer, so also the bare breast underneath. Old wringer washers could only be turned off by unplugging them. If you aren't paying attention you might get your tit caught in the wringer. If you get your tit caught in the wringer you are in an embarrassing, painful situation... unless you have a good friend to pull the plug. Sara pulled the plug.
In my teens and early 20's I stopped and started many mind/mood altering chemicals. I would have never believed anyone who claimed that at 48 I would deal with the kind of soul wrenching, debilitating drug effects I have wrestled with recently. I am angry. Really, really pissed. I did not know that by trying to relieve normal symptoms of life change I could traumatize myself and my family in this way.
I have only taken the stuff for a few weeks. My heart breaks for all who were not warned. The only reason I knew to stop, was because Sara threw a flag up. We are medicating our kids for ADD and women for depression. Why? Isn't what we have a cultural problem?
I know Effexor, his little brother XR is an old friend of mine. After taking him for two weeks everyone around me knew I was taking him too, that or they decided I had become anorexic. Two weeks of insomnia, extreme nausea, dizzyness, ringing in my ears, and generally feeling like I was moving in a fog. I lost 10 pounds. You've seen me, take away 15 pounds from me now. You get a gaunt face, protruding cheekbones, ribs showing - not pretty. I don't do "super thin" very well.
ReplyDeleteI didn't give him up, and the side effects went away, at least most of them (I did have a doctor monitering me - one more pound lost and she was yanking me off the meds). I continued to move in somewhat of a fog for the next few years. For me, it was worth it. I was in a bad way, a very bad way, and I had two baby boys to take care of.
I learned something from being on meds - one of which was I didn't want to be on meds! But even though I didn't feel like myself, they gave me what I can only describe as an extra second. It was like I had a choice in how to react to things for the first time in my life. Before, I would react instantly - whether that was with anger or sadness or just plain freaking out, usually expressed in words - I would often regret what I was saying or doing seconds after starting, like I wasn't aware of making a choice to act, I was acting before I knew what I was going to do or say. After, it was as though I had a split second to choose how to react, I could actually choose to think before I spoke or acted. I didn't always choose wisely, but I knew that I had chosen.
I don't know if it was a result of being in a mental haze or if it was a neurotransmitter thing, but it was real. I'm sure it was something that I could have learned to do, but honestly I didn't know there was such a thing as choosing at all. I didn't know the option existed until it was there.
I went off the meds myself about 3 years later - weaning myself off slowly, the way I had gone on them, and I've never been on them again. Sometimes I think maybe I should go back, but I don't like the idea of being in that fog... I still have that extra second, and I'm grateful for that. All in all though, I learned more from my reading up on depression. Knowing your enemy and all.
I have heard kids talk about how the ADD drugs make them feel, and the fog seems normal. Some are like I was - the side effects are worth the result, but they would jump at the chance not to need them at all. One of the reasons I homeschooled my boys was because I was pretty sure my youngest would have been on the "medicate immediately!" list. He's fine now - he didn't need drugs he just needed to mature a little! I think our doctors, and we ourselves, are too quick to medicate. We want quick fixes. We don't want to have to deal with our own feelings, or with over wiggly kids. And insurance usually covers drugs, while it may not cover therapy.
I'm so glad that you had a friend to help you, we should all be grateful for people like that in our lives. I'm sorry to have rambled so long in your combox. I dont' even think I have a point, other than offering an "I understand." I just started typing and this is what came out. I was excited to see you have a new post in my reader, and I hope you will have more, but I also understand the difficulty in that too.
Jackie
There are absolutely valid reasons to take anti anxiety or depressant meds. Unfortunately, the prescribing docs don't always give us the full plan of treatment or, more importantly, the exit plan. I've spent a lot of time in the fog of life. I hate it and pray for clarity. I also fear clarity. Recently, I was so overwhelmed by my circustances that I took a drug, that I did not want to take, and prayed that would be the thing that made me a better woman, better mother, better. It didn't. While it may work for some, it almost killed me. And yet it was prescibed as if it were a vitamin. Hormones are physically dangerous for me but I can take anti-depressants? I think we need to take a good long hard look at ourselves as a culture. Why is it better for our women and boys to be drugged into conformity than to deal with the disfunction of our school and work systems?
ReplyDeleteWell said!
ReplyDeleteJust yesterday a friend called me and was telling me all about her trip to DisneyWorld. Along the way she was telling me about how the week started out miserable because she couldn't sleep and couldn't taste! She said, "I don't know what was wrong with me, I had just started taking Welbutrin (another lovely antidepressant) and that was the only thing I could think of that was different and so I quit taking it and it seemed to get better." This woman is a nurse! And yet she had no idea that these were indeed symptoms of antidepressants, especially in the beginning of taking them!!!
My friend is having some health issues and has a stressful life in general. Another friend told her that she was taking this drug and it was wonderful, so my friend thought, "fabulous, I'll try it." No supervision by a doctor, no reading up on it, just give me a pill and make it better!!!
I couldn't believe that she was so naive. You would think being a nurse would give her a heads up. Doctors pass this stuff out like candy. I was very lucky to have one who was hands on. I'm also a complete and total geek and read every label and every package insert that comes with medication (along with reading about it in the library, or these days the internet). I have this innate distrust of doctors and medicine, and feel like I have to know as much as they do when I walk into the room, or they will give me something I don't want or need. I'm cynical, I can't help it!
I do find it very interesting that our culture is one of running from pain. Every kind of pain, even potential pain. We try to anesthetize ourselves - we don't want to be inconvenienced by our feelings or by trials. Give us the easy road! But that road doesn't really exist! And we keep finding ourselves in pain, and so we ask for more pills, more ways to avoid. This is one reason I think that Catholicism is so shocking. They have a theology of suffering! It's redemptive even. Very hard to grasp for us, I think. At least it is for me. I'm learning and trying.
Poor baby! How awful what you went through. I have been on Paxil for 15 years and will be for the rest of my life. The reason why is because I waited years and years before getting help with my depression.. Thought that it was just situational and tried to brave it on my own. Paxil had many side effects for 3 weeks. And then one day while I was driving, I felt like I had just passed through a wall of smog and entered pristine mountain air. Clarity had returned. By waiting so long to get help, I actually damaged my brain chemistry -- permanently. If you don't do well on one medication, you can try others. Usually when an antidepressant finally kicks in, you don't really have any side effects. You just feel better, calmer, and more even-minded.
ReplyDeleteHang in there.
Karen