so i haven’t been depressed in over a month i haven’t even been counting, i’ve Been doing really well. Maybe longer than a month i have no idea..
i decided to stop taking my antidepressant/anti-anxiety (combo) medication because it makes me lethargic and tired, and i didn’t feel i needed it anymore. And i had mastered my panic attacks with meditation, i know my triggers and how to deal with them etc. And i had very few this year.
Which compared to how i was doing when i started the meds three years ago, it’s a 180 to say the least mental health wise. Does that mean i’ll Stop improving and working to do so, no.
But yeah, i went off the meds for a month. And almost on the mark, after one month of not taking it the panic attacks returned after a trigger. I had virtually no depression except in brief moments when i was just overly tired and needed rest (without rest people prone to depression can accidentally get into a bad head space, the lack of energy mimicks the feeling of depression and perhaps i haven’t learned to distinguish the difference between just regular exhaustion and like disordered mental, clinical depression lol) but yeah the anxiety returned, and it just couldn’t be beat.
After spending three days of suffering with it nonstop, i caved and took the medication again, kind of willing to do anything to make it stop.
and so after that point i was a little dissapointed having to go back on the med, but the anxiety was so bad that it is unbearable and you cannot function. It’snot Just like a little bit of anxiety, it’s pretty bad so.
I tried to meditate, take calming like showers/hot baths, lit candles. I tried so hard to control my mind, distract myself, I had to have calming music playing in the background for three days straight. I couldn’t go anywhere.
I tried to go for a walk to my pool to go swimming? And I literally just stared at the water like, losing my shit internally and then started walking very fast back into my apartment. Sat down on the couch and just like had my head in my hands and my eyes shut just trying to get my mind to be quiet. The physiological and mental symptoms of panic attacks are so difficult to surmount or to even get through.
My mind goes to a dark place when I can’t make it stop with my normal means and I’m at the end of my rope. When no coping mechanisms work, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, etc. I began to feel helpless and more willing to take extreme measures.
And I almost relapsed, I have addiction issues with benzos and opiates but I was willing to go to that length and ignore all of that sober talk for the sake of making my head shut up. Convincing myself, it would just be “one time” and I wouldn’t “fully relapse” it was just so I could have a break from this insanity.
But yeah then I decided well, it’s better to take the medication I’m prescribed, then go see a doctor, get the prescription benzo I wanted whatever, maybe a non-benzo alternative and then try that. Because I’m weary of buying it off the street, these days I really don’t know who I can trust or what the fuck is in those things.
And I thought about how sad my parents and my dogs would be if I died from taking a stupid fucking drug so, yeah I decided to wait and at least do it the smart and safe way.
But I was really on the cusp of making a bad choice like I was on the fence, I was already talking to multiple people I know could provide me with something, despite “having decided to wait” you know...
But yeah the medication I took, in combination with Benadryl and melatonin (I was trying to knock myself out) did knock me out. It does make me very tired. So luckily I literally fell asleep before I could go do something I might regret and woke up feeling slightly better, not entirely though. Continued avoiding caffeine for quite a while, while I built the drug back up in my system.
Eventually the anxiety went away but it took another three days or so to even start feeling close to normal.
With all of this being said, it’s led me to wonder about talking to a psychiatrist about understanding my anxiety better. All we ever did was treat the panic attacks with coping mechanisms but we’ve never talked about it much otherwise. I was so focused on the depression and now that I’ve learned to manage that and made it very small, and gotten strong enough to manage that- now I realized I never really addressed the anxiety.
A psychiatrist suggested I was a tad dissociative, then the therapist in tandem with him tested me for it and it came up fairly negative so it’s likely i just experience dissociation as a symptom but not as a disorder?, and then that same therapist suggested i was potentially OCD, Another- diagnosed me ADD, another, ADHD.
These terms have been floating around in my head the last few weeks, while I’ve procrastinated making a psychiatrist appointment to discuss arranging a better medication plan for me. One that is less lethargy inducing, lighter you know- and just for the anxiety I don’t need the anti-depressant aspect.
I’ve been trying to figure out though is, what is the cause my anxiety, where did it begin and why. Where is it rooted. Perhaps it’s purely just chemical, genetic, you know, neuropsychological. Perhaps it was triggered from the poor health I was throughout my childhood, teen and young adult years (significantly underweight, deficient in everything, adrenal/cortisol was shot, anemic) and that set off something you know, caused a chain reaction of events leading up to a serotonin imbalance which leads to anxiety disorders such as mine? Or is it just purely related to c-ptsd, which I was also treated for...
I couldn’t figure out where it really began. I looked back on my behavior as a child and saw congruency with OCD but, since I never saw any sort of therapist or psychologist then it was likely missed. (My dad has OCD, ADHD and anxiety- go figure. So yeah, I know what OCD really looks like- and I definitely see parallels).
It would explain some things I did that I always kept in the dark because I’m ashamed of them. But I did have OCD behaviors growing up. With a lot of things, but specifically you know cleaning organizing as well as with food... I even have it with my own handwriting I get bothered by it not looking perfect enough and I will rewrite the entire page of notes just so it looks right. I’m always organizing things too and I didn’t realize how out of proportion it was until I started watching youtubers vlogs and I realized I wasn’t hardly living my life some days because, instead of like going outside and having fun I was hyperfocusing on like organizing my closet. And weird stuff like that (and I still do this).
And I realized you know, looking back on how my behavior is off the meds, and how my thoughts and behaviors, especially with how it is when I’m having anxiety and panic attacks- are very OCD-like in that they are intrusive and non-stop. Like I can’t control my thoughts and I’ve heard that’s a symptom of OCD.
And I’m wondering you know, if the cause of my self isolation, my anxiety, the panic attacks- it may actually be OCD all along. The same panic that would cause me not to eat when I was young, for fear of food, is the same panic that comes with getting repetitive intrusive thoughts. The nature of the thoughts too are alarming on purpose, it’s like, everything you fear, your brain wants to show you all at once and it can’t stop seeing it. It’s from surface level things like- when I look at a pool I immediately think of drowning children- to, very deep seated emotional fears like bringing me back to my struggle with suicide, and putting my mind in a place dark enough to actually *desire* suicide again- *even thought I don’t want to die*. It’s destructive and evil. It’s not just surface level fear, it knows you inside and out and knows exactly what buttons to press to just send you over the edge.
And you know that could of been where my addiction came from because I was always seeking things that could chill me out and make me like relaxed, I often am tense and on edge like to the point *i can’t* relax and i’ve Spent years working on this now after going in therapy but first starting out, I genuinely *didn’t know how* to relax and *couldn’t*. I attributed this symptom to c-ptsd.
But perhaps there was something underlying it like OCD. I dunno. I was always white knuckling in life and being like overly type-a you know and i think i burnt myself out doing that and was part of what led to an eventual meltdown which led me to getting help so it worked out for the better but.
Yeah like in class and just going to restaraunts, anything was an excuse to take a benzo, take an opiate whatever I could get. Social setting? I’d be popping pills or smoking weed. Just to like take myself down a few notches and relax and be calm. It was to the point where I was too anxious to just sit down calmly and have a long conversation with someone face to face. I had to take a pill to do that. I couldn’t eat either, had to take a pill to do that.
