I have taken medication for my mental health since I was 26 and it became my lifeline after getting my bipolar diagnosis. The process of finding the right mix of medications is not simple or easy. You try the ones your doctor has used to help other patients until you find the ones that are right for you. Each medication takes 2 to 3 weeks to get into your system and start working. Each medication has multiple doses and every time you increase or decrease a medication it also takes 2 to 3 weeks to settle again. Meaning you could be on the right medication but the wrong dose and each increase or decrease require a settling in period. After all that you may find that this medication is not working for you. Which then requires weaning off and trying something else. Sound crappy? Yeah, it sucks. Especially when you’re already in a state and in my experience sleep deprived. It’s one of those situations that gets worse before it gets better.
Then there is the wide range of tough and strange medication side effects that often start off really strong but can get better once your body becomes accustomed to the medication. (Or you know not… then you have to change meds and start over!)
The most common side effects are:
Headaches
Weight gain
Dizziness
Dry mouth
Muscle spasms and cramps
Nausea
Loss of sex drive
Constipation
Sleep changes
Temporarily increase depression or paranoia
Mental Fog and dissociation
Brain zaps
Strange dreams
Intrusive thoughts
Sounds fun right? And those are just the common ones. I’ve had some truly weird side effects on some of my medications. That doesn’t even address the stigma that comes with taking medication for mental health issues. It’s often looked down upon much like having the mental health issue in the first place. This all adds to the difficulty for people struggling to ask for help and get to the right treatment, medications and doses.
If you’re lucky like me in a mere 4 years you will end up on the correct medication and dose, then something else will happen. You will get to the point that you feel so balanced, and start to like yourself again, leading to you to believe that you are “cured” and that your mental health issue has been resolved. And as your medications come with the above “lovely” side effects, you think that it would be better to try coming off them to be your new balanced self but without the awful side effects. You will declare that you are coming off your medications to your loved ones. That you are certain and you make a very convincing case and so you do. You begin to taper off your medications. This takes months, you can’t stop cold turkey or medication withdrawals start. And talking of timings as with starting and increasing medications the same happens when decreasing too. Each lower dose takes 2 to 3 weeks for the body to process and get used to and then the final step to no medication could take even longer. Only for you to find out that once you have weaned off your meds the reason you felt “cured” was because of the medications you were taking.
This is what I’ve been going through over the last 3 months. Through therapy and self-reflection, I was in a really healthy and balanced place. Making good decisions and feeling connected with my mind and body in a way I hadn’t before. But I was so exhausted all the time. It was holding me back from achieving what I wanted. And I wondered if my meds were holding me back. So I discussed it with the appropriate people and we agreed to give coming off my meds a try but with the agreement that if I entered mania or depression and wasn’t sleeping for multiple nights at a time my Husband could make the call to reverse it and I would go back on the meds no questions asked. Because when it’s you, you can’t always see the warning signs. I was happy with this so we gave it ago.
It was going swimmingly I was down to the lowest dose and I felt balanced, motivated and more myself than I had in ages. I was still struggling with some tiredness because of the meds, but I was getting far more hours in a day than I had been at the highest dose or my lowest depressions. Did I stop here at the sweet spot? Of course I bloody didn’t I was cured remember my mental health issues had been fixed through all therapy and work I had done on myself. Duh! I was going to have my cake and eat it. I was going to get rid of the tiredness completely and also have my motivated, balanced self. Why would I stop now? (She asked stubbornly)
I took the next step and came off the meds completely. It took 4 days to leave my system and then it felt like I’d hit a wall. I felt like I hadn’t weaned off at all. If this was the proper way to do this I can’t imagine going cold turkey. I was sick, dizzy, shivery, confused, exhausted but also couldn’t sleep. But it was just for 2 or 3 weeks and then it would be over and I would be back to the old Simone with much more energy. These 2 weeks felt like all my hard work had been undone, my routine gone, my blog unpublished, self-care non-existent. By the end of two weeks, the original symptoms have eased off. But I was right I was returning to the old Simone. By this I mean, my fear of death was back in full force and it plagued me constantly, my anxiety which hadn’t really bothered me in a while was ever-present. If my husband went out I worried about him being in a car accident or I worried our home would be broken into while we slept. And I knew it was implausible and that it was an over reaction but I couldn’t help it. And then the full panic attacks returned and I realised that this was myself without the meds and that I needed to go back on them. This was discussed with Hubby while I was mid panic attack, sobbing and laughing at the same time. He surprisingly didn’t need much convincing after seeing me like that.
So that folks is why I was missing for the last two weeks. I have been back on the lowest doses of my two mental health meds for 4 days and I already feel so much better. And my productivity and outlook have already improved drastically. If you take medications for your mental health do you have a similar story about your journey with them?
Sincerely Simone