a funny thing happened to me october last year. I'd been ill for 3.5 years, had tried citalopram, then lithium (OMG), then venflaxine (eventually up to 225mg) and then venflaxine supplemented with mirtazapine (45mg). I'd given up on the mirtazapine and come off that due to weight issues, so for most of 2012 i'd been on just the venflaxine.
the funny thing was that i woke up with a realisation that this was my life and i wanted to be back in control of it again. I felt that the past 3 years had just slipped past with me in a daze, i'd missed the opportunity to volunteer for london 2012, i was just doing what people were telling me to. To be fair, if i hadnt been told what to do, i wouldnt have done anything, so i was grateful for my wife and gp giving me direction on a week by week basis.
But it was as if i'd been dreaming for the last 3 years and now it was time to wake up and take back my life. It didnt really happen overnight, but i could feel the change happening over just 2 or 3 weeks. It really was weird.
So, to the GP, and "i want to come off venflaxine", "oh really??", "yup, i want to do this". "OK, just take it gently", we agree i'd go 225-> 150 -> 75 ->37.5 -> clean. It wasnt without issues though. I found that after both the two 75mg drops, i'd have a week of headaches, and feeling a little low, i'd then have a week where i just couldnt be bothered doing anything, not exactly depressed, i didnt think things were awful, i just couldnt be bothered. The first of these passed ok, the second one coincided with a trip to the diabetes nurse. "could you take your shoes off and jump on the scales", "no, i cant be bothered, i wont have changed at all". She disappeared for a minute and came back and basically frog-marched me off to the GP saying something like "sort him out please". I'm sure it wasnt really like that, but thats felt it felt like looking back. I went back up to 150, stayed there for a couple of weeks, and then went back down again. I still had the week of headaches, and then the cant be bothered week again (but made sure i didnt see any one), i just decided that as i had put up with the headaches for a week, i could put up with being "not bothered" for a week, and sure enough it passed. The two reductions of 37.5 gave more headaches, but no "not bothered" period.
And so we approached christmas. The previous two xmasses had been particularly unpleasant, with my wife noticing that i had basically shut down for the month of december. One thing my wife had been insistent on was that i continue to do all the family meal prep and cooking. So, i prepared to do battle on xmas day and boxing day. It hadnt been good. the first xmas, i got the bird cooked, ready to carve, the veg were in pans ready to boil, potatoes in the oven nearly ready, and gravy about to be made. unfortunately Mr Anxiety paid me a visit, so i told my wife the above, and ran upstairs and stayed there for the next 5 hours. Fortunately our guests rallied round my wife and got the meal to the table. The following year, i got through the main course, then there was a bit of final work for the pudding - a delia yule log - everything cooked, just needed assembling. As before, i ran off yelling about the bits that needed sorting. Although guests rallied around, they werent quite as sober as they could have been, but apparently they had a laugh, and though it wasnt a "yule log" that was eaten for pudding, it had chocolate in it, so that cant have been bad.
this xmas? no problems at all (well nearly). I didnt even feel apprehensive, no shoulder shiver, it just went ahead as planned. Though i did spend a few minutes each day in the week before the 25th telling myself that i would cook and whatever got cooked would be dinner, if it went wrong, then tough, we had a lot of ice cream in the fridge and we could have that. And apart from completely forgetting to put the stuffing in the oven until the end of the first course (the stuffing that i had spent 2 hour preparing the night before) it went fine. I wasnt bothered about the stuffing, i just put it in the oven and told people that i was cooking it for their doggy bags. I did feel exhausted after the meal and needed an hours sleep, but the rest of the day went fine. Boxing day - and we had more ppl over. for this, we decided to cook a few curries, i cooked 3 of them in advance and froze them, and my wife had committed to cooking a couple of vegetable curries on the day. Everything went fine, again an hours sleep after the meal, and then onto playing games in the evening. WOW i hadnt had a xmas like that for 4 years, and by "like that" i mean "normal".
On the 2nd of January i took my last 37.5 venflaxine and threw the packet away. I do work therapy, and turned up this week, and spent most of the time talking. Now, that felt really weird, i'm not the greatest chatter in the world (even pre-illness), but more recently i'd basically clammed up, and here i was "chatting to people". To be honest i just felt so bubbly that i started becoming concerned that i was going manic. I told them i'd come of the meds just in case something strange happened, and they;d be able to talk me down. I told the wife about the concerns, and she just said "you do realise that you used to be quite talkative before you got ill?" well, no, i couldnt remember that far back.
Today i shaved (that doesnt normally happen), and realised i'd missed my niece's birthday, so wrote the card (hasnt happened for3 years) and just decided to drive around and drop the card off, and i wasnt bothered whether they would be in or not, if they were, i'd chat, if they werent, i'd leave the card. They were, and so i stayed for a couple of hours and had a cup of tea and chatted (omg - "hasnt happened for 3 years" - getting the picture?).
And then i decided to write this post.
Since starting my journey in getting off the meds, i'm getting the occasional "frission of anxiety", e.g. all these spelling mistakes, and missed capital letters. I still have very little self confidence in my own decisions - it took me a month to decide which new graphics card to buy - but i've decided !! to do a course on that. and my concentration is still poor. And of course my bubblyness feels all wrong. I'm not going to say i've recovered, but if anything its the end of the beginning, and now i can get on with repairing my life and starting the next chapter.
But wow -i really do feel that its my life again. For a while, i didnt think the drugs were really doing anything for me, but they obviously were suppressing everything, and a lot of it needed to be suppressed. But that day in october feels like it was the day that the really bad stuff no longer needed completely suppressing, and that my body and brain decided that perhaps i could deal with stuff. I've had a very supportive wife, gp and kids and i know that not everyone gets all three of those, some not any. I also have two very empathetic cats who are really awesome, and have always known when i needed something to cuddle and no-one else had been around.
So i'm not sure exactly why i've written all this, apart from proving to myself that i can face a blank piece of "paper", but hopefully some others will relate to that october feeling and realise that the light at the end of the tunnel is turned on occasionally, and that improvement, if not complete recovery, is always a possibility.
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