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Except for any residual depakote that may be hiding around my body, the drug should now be pretty much gone from my system. And I feel great. Really great – but not too great as we mental folks like to say. I almost feel guilty about how, well, normal I feel after what was really a relatively quick drug taper – a little over a year to get off five psych meds. There are people who’s blogs that I follow who have been tapering since before I started and are still fighting with withdrawal and illness. It breaks my heart when I read their updates. The fact that they remain optimistic in the face of what is a terrible experience which caps the horrifying experience of being in what passes for today’s mental health systems makes me hopeful that they will succeed and feel as well as I do.
Gianna from Beyond Meds has been a personal inspiration. It was her blog that I found when I was struggling with the failure of the medications to control the symptoms of a bipolar II diagnosis. A diagnosis that I had lost faith in. I had been taking Depakote, clonazepam, Lexapro, Strattera and trazadone for five years by this point along with brief dalliances with Risperdol, Remeron, Lamictal, Xanax, Ativan and Provigil. All this to cope with what I now believe was a seriously bad trip on Cymbalta. I had gone to see a psychiatrist about a reoccurring major depression. After a five minute visit he prescribed Cymbalta which in three weeks time put me into a dysphoric mania. I was bat shit insane – having visions, screaming, beating my head into a wall. And I was still deeply depressed, go figure. A emergency visit to a new psychiatrist got me labeled with a diagnosis of bipolar II and ramped up to 1,500 mg of Depakote ER in three days. Those of you who are familiar with this drug are saying to yourself, “That’s insane!” And you’d be correct. No one should be taking 1,500 mg out of the gate. I basically became a sleeping drooling vegetable, dead to the world for 14 – 16 hours a day, my mind in a barely penetrable fog. I couldn’t read. I could barely write. My friends and family were happy that I was getting help but were noticing that I wasn’t acting like myself. No one, including me, thought that the doctor might be wrong. We all bought into the conventional thinking on mental illness.
It took almost a year to the day that I started taking Depakote for my mind to finally clear. Even then I was sleeping 10 – 12 hours each night, forgetting names, places, memories, words, how to spell. My digestive system was out of wack. Constantly bloated, constipated, I managed to go from 155 to 180 lbs in eight weeks but was lucky that the weight leveled off. I have met many people who have gained over a hundred pounds on this and other mood stabilizers. Even with popping stool softeners, drinking gallons of water and watching what I ate, a particularly bad attack of constipation tore up my lower intestines, requiring four weeks of bed rest and surgery. I have never experienced such pain.
I had other fun side effects as well. Lexapro had me jaw clenching. I broke three molars and had to get crowns. Lamictal tried to kill my liver. I started having panic attacks which required medical attention. I had fainting spells – once I woke up half-under a parked car in the middle of the winter. I was exhausted all the time. My sex drive become a memory. I lost my creativity and on and on.
Through all of this my original complaint, the deep soul killing depressions continued to get worse. None of the medications that I was given could contain it. Risperdol and Remeron made my symptoms worse and gave me even more horrifying ones. More weight gain, despair, anxiety. The depressions became more frequent and more hopeless. My psychiatrist gave up on me and stopped seeing me as a patient. He couldn’t help me. My therapist referred me to another doctor who changed my life. This doctor listened to my story without judgement. He listened to my concerns, my fears, he wanted to know what was and had been happening in my life. Each meeting was an hour, not the standard 15 minutes. I had to pay a $126 dollar copay each visit but it was worth it. When I nervously approached him about the possibility of tapering off all of the meds he was very positive and gave me examples of other patients who were living successfully without meds. He gave me hope, let me make my own decision and made sure that I knew that we could always try other medications if need be.
So, it’s been almost two weeks since I took the last pill. With each taper, after an initial dip into depression, I have felt stronger and less tired. My thoughts are clearer. I do experience continued anxiety which I cope with through exercise and a kind of walking meditation. I also avoid stimulants.
So what is wrong with me? Why the depressions? I believe it stems from a childhood living with a verbally and mentally abusive father, his eventual suicide, experiencing violence for coming out as gay, a rape, and trying to live a life that wasn’t authentic to who I am. The pills made it difficult, if not impossible, to deal effectively with these issues. I continue to struggle with them, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t. But I can feel the pain now. I can think with a mind not dampened by medication. I can reason once again and I hope to deal with things as they happen and move on.
For this chance I am truly grateful.
I want to take a moment and personally thank everyone who has contacted me and commented constructively on this blog. You will never know how much your words have strengthen me and given me the courage to see things to this point. Now I venture forward into this next chapter of my life feeling hopeful. Thank you for giving me that hope. I expect that now my posts will turn to focusing on healing rather than on dealing with side effects.
Peace.
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I have lost most of my depth perception. Figured this out while attempting to drive. I assume that this is a Depakote withdrawal symptom and is temporary. I’ve had freaky side effects before but this is one of the weirder ones.
Otherwise I am feeling great. Sleeping has returned to a normal eight hours. No exhaustion. Digestion is kick ass. Being able to drive again would be nice.
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It is 1:06 AM and I am wide awake. I assume that this is the effects of the final taper off of the depakote. Otherwise there appears to be no other symptoms. No racing thoughts, no more than the usual anxiety, no depression and no agitation. After writing this I plan on going to bed as that may trick my body into sleeping.
I spoke with my mom today on the phone. She told me that I was sounding more relaxed lately and that she was happy that I am feeling so much better. It was nice to get that validation. When I think back to that stressful job and how I was living then I am amazed that it took me so long to realize the damage it was doing. Not that there was anything wrong with the job, it just wasn’t right for me. However, the only reason that I lasted so long at it was because of the psych meds. The numbness allowed me to ignore how unhappy I was.
Anyway, quick update.
Update: It’s the following morning, got six hours of sleep. Cool!
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The last depakene 125 mg (aka generic Depakote) pill went into my system last night. That was hopefully the last psychiatric medication that I will ever take. I expect that there will be a depression or elevated anxiety in the next couple of days but if things go as they have it will dissipate within 48-72 hours. Wish me well.
Now the work of living without meds begins.
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I managed to make it through Easter without succumbing to the darkness. Being drunk for most of the day on wine helped. I’d like to say right now that the people who wish to condemn any excess alcohol consumption can shove their comments up their respective asses. My father is dead by his own hand. If I wish to numb myself with alcohol instead of Depakote one day out of the year that’s my own business. I think the Depakote is harder on my system anyway. Check out my meds page – I’ve been on much more addictive PRESCRIBED medication. Feel self-righteous on our own dime.
I spoke with my mom on Easter morning but didn’t talk about dad’s death. It would have only upset her (she blames herself). It was nice to hear about the pies that she was baking for my brother and his family. It sounded normal which is what she needs right now. I tried talking to a friend but could tell that she didn’t want to hear about it and so changed the subject. No one wants to hear about suicide. No one wants to hear about pain. We are suppose to magically deal with these issues on our own. Like some fucking fairy with a wand. Poof! Problem solved. How bourgeois.
Unfortunately, alcohol simply makes me feel more. Which in a way is a good thing. Going off the meds has caused issues to come to the surface and have forced me to deal with them. Or not in the case of my father’s suicide. It’s too big right now. I need to get past the anniversary to be able to think.
Isn’t suicide a strange word? Shouldn’t it be called ‘murder’? That’s what it is. No one that I know has been murdered by another person so I can’t tell you the difference but I assume it’s pretty similar. It’s all an act of selfishness. The person doing the justification never considers the impact. Except that in the case of suicide I believe that the person has tunnel vision and is so desperate to stop their pain that they forget everyone else out of self preservation. They become blind to the destruction that they will cause.
So yeah, I survived the anniversary but it wasn’t easy. I think it was harder because of the lack of meds. Feelings that have been numbed have been forced to the surface and need to be faced. I feel stronger today, free of meds and alcohol and the trauma and ready to deal with it.
I just wish it was so simple.
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I am not a fan of Easter. As a child I loved the day because there was chocolate and colored eggs involved, plastic hay and tinfoil covered candies. It was also the end of Lent so I could stop pretending that I’d given up whatever it was that I’d forgotten weeks before that I was supposed to have given up. My mom would cook a big meal with mashed potatoes and pie which would bring our family together for an hour before we all ran off to our separate lives. Dad would watch football on TV and fall asleep, Mom would retreat into the kitchen to clean up, my brother would go off to meet up with his friends and I would lay on the floor in the sunroom with a book.
Now Easter simply reminds me of the last time that I saw my father alive. My parents were going through a divorce and he drove to the city that I was living in to go to church and out for dinner. He was agnostic, my mother Catholic, something that they had worked out prior to getting married – that regardless of his heathenism the children would suffer at the hands of The Church as God intended. That Easter Sunday he was depressed so I took him to the local Unitarian church to hear the service and the live choir, something that he enjoyed. Then we went to dinner at a restaurant where they stuck the two of us in a party room with one other big family of twenty, which served only to highlight my father’s loneliness and misery. I remember nothing of our conversation other than my telling him to “buck up” and getting angry at his weakness, reversing our usual roles. He had always been this large angry unapproachable presence in our lives. Seeing him confused and cry only served to piss me off. So the sins of the father visited his son.
My father chose that time, in that party room with the large family boisterously in ignorance of us, to take my hand and tell me that he loved me. Two things he had never in my memory done before. I flashed back to the last time that he purposefully touched me. I was maybe five years old, sitting on his lap. We were watching TV and one of the characters was gunned down. My father asked me something in jest and I remember laughing and saying that I would kill him. Meaning nothing as children do, after all what do children know of death? Regardless, he slapped me across the face, threw me to the ground and never touched me again unless by accident or necessity until that Easter Sunday at the restaurant. But that was his way – angry, brooding, controlling. Not that he was a bad person, he simply hated himself for a reason that we never understood.
Two days after that dinner he was dead. Several lives collapsed in that minute. The survivors recovering or not, at their discretion ever since. Each trying to understand the impact this his decision made on our lives.
Now every year at Easter he comes back to life, resurrected like Jesus Christ (or more appropriately Zombie Jesus) laying waste to any hard won peace that I may have found.
Why can’t the dead just stay dead?
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Obviously the moods are still a swingin’. Very annoying. Happy. Sad. Happy. Deeply depressed. Happy. Fuck. Seriously, it’s not like it use to be but WTF?! I have been feeling lonely lately and have almost been tempted to brave the personal ads.
Almost.
My experience with personal ads has been spotty at best. I’ve met a couple of nice guys out of hundreds of frogs but they didn’t work out for the usual reasons. Not enough in common, no attraction. What’s a guy to do? I suppose that dating right now isn’t the best idea anyway. I mean, what kind of impression would I give? Who am I kidding. I’ve been photographing myself for a project and am horrified by how much I look like my father. My mother tells me that my father was attractive but all I see is his suicide. Every time that I look at a photo of myself I see him staring back at me the time when I last saw him. Right before Easter.
Shit.
I am realizing right at this moment why my moods are all over the place. This is the anniversary of my father killing himself. No wonder I’m a bit wonky. He put a rifle to his head and ended all his thoughts. The police said that it was a good thing that he use the 22 and not the 30-30 as there wouldn’t have been much left.
Funny that they told me that.
His coffin was solid oak. The mortician was proud of this. He wanted to show us how substantial it was so he picked it up my the handle and pulled it up and slammed it down. With my father’s body in it.
Funny what you remember.
I remember laughing over the tupperware container like thing that he was buried in. I remember screaming at the police, at the mortician, at my mother. I remember being very angry. The memorial was a blur. I remember going up to speak with tears streaming down my face. I remember the strange distant cousins that showed up. I remember the guardian angel pin that my aunt wore. I remember how upset my mother was. I remember how pissed the police where at my mother. I remember yelling at the policeman who was showing us the rifle that my father used to kill himself. I believe I told him where to stick it.
I remember writing thank you notes with my mother.
Yet, the doctors don’t understand why I am depressed. They wonder why the depression still comes to fuck with me. That’s not fair, my current doctor knows. He is the only one.
I miss my father.
Even after all the shitty things he did I still miss him. He had a chance to change and he chose not to. That’s what pisses me off. This is what makes me sad. The last thing that my father said to me was that he loved me.
It was the only time he ever said it.
Bastard. How could he do this to us?
Those who speak