I have a confession. I have a new psychiatrist. I haven't had a psychiatrist in about four years. That's not the confession. The confession is that she gave me a prescription for Welbutrin and I haven't filled it yet. I haven't filled it because I feel fine now and I've been managing my anxiety as it comes up with a PRN short acting anti-anxiety med. And I only need it a couple times a week right now and if history says anything, eventually I'll notice that I haven't taken it for a month and then I'll got several months without needing it.
About two and a half years ago I saw a regular doctor about anxiety and he gave me Lexapro (an SSRI I think) and I took it for a few days and it made me feel manic and scatterbrained and I hated it, so I stopped it. I had never had such a strong and immediate negative response to a psyche med before. I've taken nearly all of them (another long story involving some not so great doctors and diagnoses), and honestly, the thing I remember most about them is their lack of doing... anything. Sometimes they felt like sugar pills, sometimes they just gave me headaches, sometimes they made me tired for a few days, every once in a while I felt some mild relief from depression, but then it would eventually stop doing that as well. And on a couple of them the withdrawal from missing just one dose was extremely bad. There is one that I will absolutely never take again only because the withdrawal from it was so bad that it made the actual good effects of the drug not worth it (and it took me several very annoying months with lots of symptoms to get off of it).
I'm also nervous because I was on a lot of meds during some very important brain development time. And I wonder if my strong reaction to the one SSRI after being off everything for a few years has anything to do with this. Actually I wonder if it's why I sometimes feel my brain acts strangely sometimes (I get random vertigo occasionally and feel like a few things are mis-wired). Not to mention possible liver or kidney problems that can come from meds that are broken down there. I kind of wonder if I should just be done with any long term psyche meds. I was feeling pretty crappy in September... but it passed. It didn't stick around for months and months. I will probably need the occasional short-term acting anti-anxiety for many years to come, but I think that's all I want to do.
I kind of feel like; been there, done that, I'm going to try vitamins and exercise and therapy and writing now. I still want to have a psychiatrist, just in case I need one for consult, especially during any future pregnancies. I took ZERO psyche meds during my first pregnancy and I don't regret that, in fact it was a goal and I made it and I can say that I did it, but it was NOT easy, especially when wine and cigarettes are also not allowed. I want options for the next one, I at least want to be able to talk with someone who knows the latest research and can guide me through it. But I think I might make a future appointment in a few months and tell her I actually don't think I need the Welbutrin. That I was pretty sure any side effects were going to outweigh any benefits for me at this time.
So, no, I'm not trying to make any statement about psyche meds being evil. I'm just saying that they might not be for me right now. And I could write up a very depressing tale about my psychiatric care when I was an adolescent. And for anyone reading this who want so get off their meds, do it under the guidance of a doctor, I did it once cold turkey and it pretty much completely fucked me up for about 6 months... possibly mildly for the long term. I just didn't feel I had the support of my doctors at the time for quitting them and I was also 19 and stupid.
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