Joonyer
15-02-10, 22:38
*edit* - Apparently this turned epic after all... I only wrote like 10% of what I wanted to! So if you're not into listening to people ramble about their experiences, just click "back" and read something else :)
Hi all
Where to start... gona try not to make this into an essay. I wish I'd joined this forum years ago, I think I could have really benefitted but I think I was just convinced that I was so far beyond any help that it was pointless.
So, depression/anxiety run in my family on my dad's side, which my grandad called "The Curse". Fluoxetine at 16-18 for clinical depression, then I got into raves and drugs and things got worse. I know I didn't help myself, but lecturing a young lad on things being his own fault is kind of pointless after he's learned from it.
So, much ecstasy/speed/weed later I was quivering wreck - scared of everyone, everything, everywhere. Build up to going out to a rave (incidentally some of the happiest moments of my life were at raves) I would be petrified all day about the possible outcomes etc, I'm sure you can imagine.
After a while I went to a Doctor and he misconstrued my "voices in the head" conversation as me being a nutter. He put me on Olanzapine (a horrendous anti-psychotic that drains you of any life/personality) which I took myself off after 2 weeks. The "voice" in my head is just my paranoid consciousness arguing with me and playing devil's advocate.
It's not a nice topic so I won't go OTT with it, but any time I thought "don't be silly, you're just being paranoid" the voice would reply "Ah, very likely... but what if you're not just being paranoid?" and it was a constant battle with myself.
Went to my lifelong doctor and just owned up to everything, and he put me on Escitalopram after I broke down and begged him to sort out the paranoia/social anxiety, as the depression wasn't as big a deal by this point.
Went on these just as I was starting uni, and the short version is that I had a couple of severe paranoid/psychotic episodes that I took a number of months to recover from (including the classic "mom is doping my food to keep me housebound" stuff when I visited) and eventually decided to take a gap year before my final year - either that or fail miserably.
Gap year was mostly uneventful - more drugs and a part time job, idiot. Went back for my final year and sorted my head out, and got my 2.1 :) Since then I've moved in with my other half and I have a good job that I love. Things have been going from strength to strength so I agreed with the Dr to come off the meds. I was only on 10mg anyway, but eventually went right down to 5mg per 3 days, ending on friday just gone.
My fear is this: It's been about 5yrs or so, a little more perhaps, and my life has gone literally from 0% to 100% on the enjoyment scale - so now I'm bricking it in case it's just the meds, and I'm gona go back into my shell and be a weedy, cowardly snivelling little gimp, petrified of everything. The Doc says 5mg is more or less a placebo at this point and thinks I'll be fine - I think he's right. Can anyone support this? Am I risking going back to square one? I just don't want to rely on these things forever...
Problem is, we're moving house in 2 weeks and I'm in my busiest 8 weeks of the year at work, so it's one hell of a test... I've had the electric shocks in the brain all day (had them a few times when missing tablets by mistake in the past) and some nasty moodswings. I'm a very friendly happy person these days, I just like to joke and have a laugh but today I've felt like tearing people's heads off.
This thread really is to keep you update over the next couple of weeks as to how things unfold... a bit of an experiment I guess. I hope one day someone else will read it, perhaps where I was 4yrs or so ago, and think "I'm not alone, this is normal, and I will come out of it" - that would have made my time easier I think.
I do feel like I've grown so much better as a person than someone who hasn't experienced it though - whole new levels of self awareness, the ability to judge and "suss" people almost immediately, and I'm more or less impossible to manipulate now (I'm almost strict!) so it's not all doom and gloom - I have a huge appreciation for life now.
I could go on for hours and hours but I'm sure this is far more interesting to me than anyone else (touch of anxiety there perhaps?? "He's writing too much, boring!") - the moral of the story is, rock bottom is just the starting point for the climb out! It's hard, it's VERY hard, and "normal" people can't and won't ever even begin to understand it - no sympathetic looks or "things will get better" type sentiments will ever even slightly come close to people understanding what it's like to be locked away in your own head like so many of us here... kinda nice really, like some sort of elite nut-house full of nice people!
I'll keep you informed if anything interesting happens, but please feel free to share your experiences of coming off this stuff and how it went for you - I'm still a bit of a nervous person deep down so I could do with some positive reinforcement!
Thanks for reading
Matt
Hi all
Where to start... gona try not to make this into an essay. I wish I'd joined this forum years ago, I think I could have really benefitted but I think I was just convinced that I was so far beyond any help that it was pointless.
So, depression/anxiety run in my family on my dad's side, which my grandad called "The Curse". Fluoxetine at 16-18 for clinical depression, then I got into raves and drugs and things got worse. I know I didn't help myself, but lecturing a young lad on things being his own fault is kind of pointless after he's learned from it.
So, much ecstasy/speed/weed later I was quivering wreck - scared of everyone, everything, everywhere. Build up to going out to a rave (incidentally some of the happiest moments of my life were at raves) I would be petrified all day about the possible outcomes etc, I'm sure you can imagine.
After a while I went to a Doctor and he misconstrued my "voices in the head" conversation as me being a nutter. He put me on Olanzapine (a horrendous anti-psychotic that drains you of any life/personality) which I took myself off after 2 weeks. The "voice" in my head is just my paranoid consciousness arguing with me and playing devil's advocate.
It's not a nice topic so I won't go OTT with it, but any time I thought "don't be silly, you're just being paranoid" the voice would reply "Ah, very likely... but what if you're not just being paranoid?" and it was a constant battle with myself.
Went to my lifelong doctor and just owned up to everything, and he put me on Escitalopram after I broke down and begged him to sort out the paranoia/social anxiety, as the depression wasn't as big a deal by this point.
Went on these just as I was starting uni, and the short version is that I had a couple of severe paranoid/psychotic episodes that I took a number of months to recover from (including the classic "mom is doping my food to keep me housebound" stuff when I visited) and eventually decided to take a gap year before my final year - either that or fail miserably.
Gap year was mostly uneventful - more drugs and a part time job, idiot. Went back for my final year and sorted my head out, and got my 2.1 :) Since then I've moved in with my other half and I have a good job that I love. Things have been going from strength to strength so I agreed with the Dr to come off the meds. I was only on 10mg anyway, but eventually went right down to 5mg per 3 days, ending on friday just gone.
My fear is this: It's been about 5yrs or so, a little more perhaps, and my life has gone literally from 0% to 100% on the enjoyment scale - so now I'm bricking it in case it's just the meds, and I'm gona go back into my shell and be a weedy, cowardly snivelling little gimp, petrified of everything. The Doc says 5mg is more or less a placebo at this point and thinks I'll be fine - I think he's right. Can anyone support this? Am I risking going back to square one? I just don't want to rely on these things forever...
Problem is, we're moving house in 2 weeks and I'm in my busiest 8 weeks of the year at work, so it's one hell of a test... I've had the electric shocks in the brain all day (had them a few times when missing tablets by mistake in the past) and some nasty moodswings. I'm a very friendly happy person these days, I just like to joke and have a laugh but today I've felt like tearing people's heads off.
This thread really is to keep you update over the next couple of weeks as to how things unfold... a bit of an experiment I guess. I hope one day someone else will read it, perhaps where I was 4yrs or so ago, and think "I'm not alone, this is normal, and I will come out of it" - that would have made my time easier I think.
I do feel like I've grown so much better as a person than someone who hasn't experienced it though - whole new levels of self awareness, the ability to judge and "suss" people almost immediately, and I'm more or less impossible to manipulate now (I'm almost strict!) so it's not all doom and gloom - I have a huge appreciation for life now.
I could go on for hours and hours but I'm sure this is far more interesting to me than anyone else (touch of anxiety there perhaps?? "He's writing too much, boring!") - the moral of the story is, rock bottom is just the starting point for the climb out! It's hard, it's VERY hard, and "normal" people can't and won't ever even begin to understand it - no sympathetic looks or "things will get better" type sentiments will ever even slightly come close to people understanding what it's like to be locked away in your own head like so many of us here... kinda nice really, like some sort of elite nut-house full of nice people!
I'll keep you informed if anything interesting happens, but please feel free to share your experiences of coming off this stuff and how it went for you - I'm still a bit of a nervous person deep down so I could do with some positive reinforcement!
Thanks for reading
Matt