This is long, but i hope it helps some people.
I have been posting in this forum for 3 or 4 weeks now and I haven't really touched on who i am or why i am here. My name is Mike, I am 40. I have been an anxiety sufferer for my entire life, or as long as i can remember. For a longtime i just thought being constantly worried was normal. My anxiety issues basically takes all the fun out my life. I am married to a wonderful woman, have two young boys and for the most part a very supportive family. I have a stable job and so does my wife. I am one of the fortunate ones in this day and age where i don't stress about money. We aren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but i do not worry about paying my monthly bills either. I am a perfectionist, everything i do i give it my all, and I get frustrated with people who do things half ass or simply don't care. My work ethic is a source of pride for me and i believe some of the reason for that is to keep my mind always occupied. I am definitely someone who cares about my friends dearly and always try and help them cope, i probably worry about them too much to be honest. I will go out of my way to help my friends who are struggling with things, but i never seem to do it for myself.
I have found as i have gotten older in age, the bouts of severe anxiety are tougher to get over. One of the biggest reasons for this is my fear of death. I am someone who always worries about my health, and how ultimately my life will end one day. I know its irrational and pointless, but i cant help it sometimes. I work a physical job and get a lot of aches and pains from it, but for the most part am in good shape physically from a height and weight stand point. I have never been overweight in my life. I, fortunately have all my hair and my (ahem) sex drive has never been a problem.
My early years were a struggle. I was never physically abused or anything like that, but my father was very mentally abusive. He controlled my life for the most part and its only now i am starting to break free from his grasp. My dad is a very intelligent man, but has zero interpersonal skills. He has no patience, will holler before he thinks and sometimes i believe it is a miracle that i havent shut him out of my life completely. He is a big GAD sufferer, he may even be depressed but would never admit it and would definitely never go and seek help for it.
My mother is the most loving mother a son could ever ask for. I love her dearly, and to this day i still go to her when i am emotionally spent or anxiety ridden. We live 200 miles apart, but she has gotten in her car before and driven to see me when i needed her. My mother is a woman who was unfortunately also under my dad's control. It was a different era in time in the 70's and 80's when i was young and a lot of women were home makers and the men were in control of everything. My mother endured and stayed in a marriage she wasnt always happy in. She says she did it for my younger sister and I. There was a lot of hollering and screaming in my household growing up. I was a funny but real quiet kid. My father had me afraid to do anything on my own and everything was always his way. I second guess my own decisions to this day. Looking back, i was a really well behaved teenager, but dad was never happy. My younger sister never seemed to get in trouble or hollered at, but she suffered also. She was the kid in the back room crying when everyone else was yelling. It truly sucked. Everything was a secret in my family growing up. I remember one Christmas, my parents purchased a new car. We had a ton of family coming over on Christmas day and for some reason my dad wanted to hide the new car he purchased from my extended family. God only knows why, but thats what he wanted. Well, i went to throw something out in the garage forgetting about the car and my uncle saw it. My father was furious with me, the rest of the day was ruined for me because i knew the minute the company left i was going to get it good. Thats just an example, but things like this were every week. My anxiety started to snowball when i was 24, by this time i moved into an apartment and was in year 1 of a full time job i still have today. It was 1997 and the day after New Years. My mothers twin sisters adopted 22 year old son (my cousin) jumped off a bridge to his death. It was -30 C that night and they found him frozen solid. My sister and I were very close to him. We grew up on the same street and every holiday was spent together. The funeral was open casket, which is what his parents wanted but would never be my choice. It totally affected me. I didnt want to remember a former good looking 22 year old man lying there with his face so swollen he was hardly recognizable. To this day the image of him lying in that coffin is one of the first things i can remember when i think of him. It will be there for the rest of my life. The holiday season and the joy i used to feel has now been altered. That was 15 years ago, its gotten better with the birth of my own kids but its still there lingering. My sister went down in 2000. She was the closest to my deceased cousin and they were the same age. It was a traumatic experience for all of us and something that would change all of our lives forever. It was 3 months before my wedding. She was in a longterm relationship that ended badly and her beloved dog which she used for comfort in tough times passed away. She started slicing her arms up, it scared the heck out of me. At the time i knew nothing about depression, so i was angry at her for doing such a thing. She finally hit rock bottom in March of 2000. She attempted to take her own life with prescription drugs. After taking them she got cold feet, called a nearby relative who called an ambulance and took her to the hospital. She had her stomach pumped and thankfully was fine. This began her treatment for depression. She would spend 3 or 4 months in the hospital at a time. As a family we knew nothing about this disease and relied solely on what doctors said to do. They drugged her up so bad she was a zombie for years. It was scary, but i personally did everything i could to block it from my mind. I had to function at work. Finally after 10 years she went to see a Japanese specialist who questioned why she was on 12 different medications at the same time. He told her to ween off all of them as soon as possible which she did. 2 years later she is off every med but still takes a non addictive drug to help her sleep. She is the best i have seen her is almost 20 years. She is now trying to build a life for herself with 12 years wasted. its been a long road for her, she has finally made it though.
This leads me to me. Even though i had been told numerous times over the years that i am a good candidate for anti-depressants i always resisted. Three times in the last 3 years i went to the specialist to get meds, but chickened out and went home empty handed. Without meds i am someone whose anxiety level was always at around 4/10. Its always there, but it doesnt always affect me. When i am triggered by something, it spikes to 9 or 10 out of 10 and one bad episode can last weeks before i get my head above water again. When i am bad, i dont really want to do anything. I shut down. I am easily angered, and my tolerance level isnt what it normally is. I seem to always want quiet time. My appetite goes and i genuinely start over focusing on every little thing my body does. For example if i get a slight pain in the chest or weak legs i always seem to think its a heart attack, or maybe im developing some sort of horrible life altering disease. I dont know all the terms for different types of anxiety, but i think this one is called "Impending Doom" I do get panic attacks but fortunately not too often. My health is my biggest trigger and always has been. I think i am mentally always waiting for a bomb to drop. Someone else in my family will die or something bad will happen..
I want to enjoy my life, i want to be happy. I want to take my kids to Disney World and not be looking forward to coming home the minute i leave my house. I dont want to worry about work when i am off on holidays and worry about my health. I want to enjoy Christmas time and the holiday season again without worrying about my cousins suicide or anything negative that could spoil it somehow. I want to be able to make a big decision without feeling the need to call my father and get his opinion on it. I have been taking counseling for 3 years and i must admit it has helped me recognize my feelings and also made me realize what anxiety is and how i can deal with it. I know when i feel a certain way its anxiety and not anything else. What i am struggling with is getting past the triggers that set me off. Counseling has not been able to get me over the hump though. Its helped but im not there yet, which led me to Cipralex.
I went once again to my doctor who referred me to a Psychiatrist at my local hospital. I had seen him a few times years ago, but didnt take his meds advice. I didnt want to turn into a zombie like my sister. That was my fear. I have to function at work, and of course all the side effects would then need to be worried about. For me it was almost a no win situation. I dont want to be so anxious all the time, but i dont want to be on meds that are supposed to help with anxiety because of the side affects and/or becoming addicted to them. But i wasnt happy. Thats the predominant symptom. I was always sad. Its like going through life functioning at work, but inside feeling like you are on the verge of tears but cant cry. Its like that for days and days. It was time to go on meds. My wife has been very supportive and has some issues of her own, but my unhappiness wasn't fair to her either. She loves and worries about me. What happens to me affects her. Regardless if i want it to or not. The first appointment at the Psychiatrist he explained to me and made me realize that i am/was suffering. There was no need for it, a small dosage of a medication could make all the difference in the world for me. I insisted that anything i took be the bare minimum because if i decided to change my mind i would have an easier time getting off them. The Psychiatrist gave me 4 medications to research. Cipralex, Cymbalta, Effexor and Pristique. Didn't know anything about any of them other then i knew one of my co-workers had been taking Cymbalta for 2 years and he said it was really helping him. Cipralex was the drug he was recommending to me. So i went home and nervously researched them all. My sister is an encyclopedia when it comes to these drugs, and she said this was one the best ones. I was still on the fence. Finally, a female co-worker of mine who knew i was struggling came into my office and i told her what was happening. She then says she went on Cipralex a month earlier and it helped her immensely with her very similar anxiety issues that i have. Not only was she taking the same med the Psychiatrist was recommending, but the exact same dose. One of my worries was how i was going to be able to get myself on this med while working, she said it wasn't a big issue at 5 mg. She said she had a mild headache for 3 of 4 days and after that it was fine. She also told me she knew two more of my co-workers on the same medication too. So anyways, that 10 minute conversation changed my feelings on going on Cipralex and from that point forward i wanted to get on this drug. October 9th comes and i go to my appointment. I tell the Psychiatrist i want to go on a light dosage of Cipralex and take things from there. So he gave me a prescription of 7 weeks worth of Cipralex and my journey began. The next morning i cried before taking the first one, i dont know why, but i did. I think in my mind i felt i had lost my battle with anxiety and i was weak to be going on Cipralex. I kept saying to myself. If i had cancer and the doctor said to take this miracle pill for the rest of your life and you will be fine.. I would do it in a second regardless of the side effects. Why wouldnt i do the same thing for my mental health?
I took 5 mg's and it only took a day or two before i noticed the difference. It sounds nuts because i know its a small small dosage, but i truly did feel a difference. Then i had a really tough week at work, i thought a minor mistake i made would lead to the end of my job. I was never in any danger of losing my job, but my anxiety made this minor issue snowball where it triggered me and had me on the verge of a breakdown. I think the medication was partly responsible, i know it can screw with your emotions for the first few weeks. I lost 9 lbs in 2 weeks because my appetite was gone due to my stress. I was forcing myself to eat because i know food its very important to the serotonin levels in your brain. The first weekend on the drug i had these massive full body hot flashes and it freaked me out. I never had those before. Im like WTF is happening? My sleep patterns were all over the map. I was getting up in the middle of the night and i was wide awake. I found for the first few weeks i would get unbelievably tired in the middle of my day. I explained to my boss, my situation and what i was going through and thankfully she was very supportive. The mistake i made was very minor, but perfectionist me turned it into a full blown end of the world scenario. So other then sleeping patterns. hot flashes and lost of appetite the med has been fine. So anyone worried about going on it for the first time, the transition wasnt bad for me at all. Very manageable. I think the appetite stuff had a lot to do with being triggered at work. So, sleep patterns and hot flashes were the only two real side effects i went through. They have both since mellowed. I still get up earlier then i want but its about an hour. I do sometimes need to go to bed earlier then i used too. I am somebody who always needed about 7 hours to feel good during the day. My sex drive is a little bit different but its fine. I know woman are reading this and i want to be polite, but Mike Jr. is not as... umm lively as he used to be in terms of rising to the occasion needlessly. For example he doesn't care anymore if a sexy women is jogging down the street in tight clothes... But when its time to go to work for real with the wife, he hasn't let me down in anyway!!!So hopefully that will ease some of our male readers who are wondering if they should go on this med and are worried about their sex lives.
I go for my next appointment this Wednesday. Its basically a progress update. I am still on 5 mg, he will likely give me his opinion if i should move up to 10 mg. I will see what he says. I want to ask him what i can and cannot take in regards to cold and sinus medications, advil.. nasonex. I am prone to sinus infections thanks to wierd weather patterns during canadian winters. So i want to know his opinion on what is safe to take while on cipralex and what isnt.
Today is day 32. I am thankful i went on this drug at this time. Its made me calmer i find. My wife says that also. I still get anxiety, mostly in the mornings but i don't get submerged in it like i used to if that makes any sense. Its easier to get past things i guess... the Christmas season will be a test for me, its still a month or so away, but i will be interested in seeing how i feel. I am looking forward to it this year, so thats a good sign.
I know this is long, but I hope my experience helps anyone who is not sure about what to do and isn't happy. I am not cured, but i am better then i was and thats the main thing! There is improvement there. If anyone has any questions, id be happy to answer them.
Take Care,
Mike
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