Cocktail
Lately, I float between rapid ups and downs.
I’ve had three appointments with my doctor, and I tried to explain that there’s been a mild depression that still lingers even after taking a new antidepressant that we thought was working effectively. It started smooth–I felt some relief–like I had a sense of balance return back into my life. The past month, however, has been incredibly tough. The medication now seems ineffective at times. I definitely feel it working though working is difficult to define. With my mood stabilizers, it’s difficult to tell whether they are working because I don’t have side effects. With the antidepressants, there’s definitely a small click that occurs shortly after I take them that tells me they’re in my system. There’s a certain calmness that generally follows after I take an antidepressant, and for the most part, I find it pleasing, but I always slip sudden depression or just erratic thoughts and behaviors.
During my last session, I told my doctor that I wanted to get off my new anti-depressant because it seemed ineffective. He advised against it. He tried to explain that having a mild depression was better than I was doing prior, which actually isn’t entirely wrong. I’m not falling into huge dips where I’m losing control. But it’s been tough. The mild depression feels like it’s slowly eating at me rather than eating at me rapidly. I feel stretched so thin, and I find myself floating between believing that I have all the potential in the world to accomplish my dreams and shifting quickly into moments of despair, loneliness, and emptiness.
My doctor and I had something of an argument during my last visit. I reluctantly decided to stay on my antidepressants despite telling him that I wanted to be off it. I think the thought of switching to a new anti-depressant one has started to scare me. I’ve been on two now, and while they worked at first, they’ve became ineffective later on. After my last visit, I still felt that sense of despair creep up again. I settled into continuing my treatment of antidepressants.
About four days ago, he called again after contemplating our last session. After examining what I had told him during our prior session, he thought maybe it’d be better that I begin to wean off my antidepressant because it might be triggering episodes of rapid cycling.
I don’t really want to be on antidepressants anymore, but depression is such an exhausting factor in my life. I’m hoping maybe we can just stay on different mood stabilizers and maybe that will be more effective than how things are currently going.