So I know it's been pretty quiet around here recently. I really don't want to fall off the blogwagon, but I think I've been spending so much time wrestling with the effects of the Celexa that it hasn't occured to me to post more. I need to fix that.
Anyway, a lot of you have asked me in person for updates on how they're doing. So here's a bit of an update:
In correspondance with a friend over this medication stuff, while receiving some very welcome sympathy, I found myself taking the attitude of, "well, it's not THAT bad." I came up with this explanation, which I liked enough to put here too. My depression, or whatever it is, isn't debilitating. It doesn't destroy me, nor has it really ever managed to knock me down for very long. So why bother doping myself up over it? Well, think of it like a bad hip. More than an annoyance, but much less than a disability. Like if your hip let you walk just fine, but you couldn't run very well, and it got worn out after a while. It's nothing you can't live with, but in many ways it's frustrating and limiting.
This is an experiment, I guess, to see if the treatment is better than the disease. Again, I could live with this, but if it means being less pleasant to those close to me, and not being able to do the things I want to do, perhaps it is in fact worth the downsides of the medication.
Speaking of, this morning the world went all bizarro again. My initial thought was like taking an Actifed and then drinking three cups of coffee, but the best description of it I heard was that it was like I was really nervous or about to have a panic attack, but I wasn't really worried about anything. I think the weirdest bit is that there were no physiological manifestations of this. From the way my mind felt, it seemed like my heart rate should be going 140 beats per minute. But when I put my finger to my jugular, my heart was just happily going along at an easy pace. No fidgeting, no pacing, except that my eyes seemed to want to dart around a lot.
Word from Dr. Eimers is that this should last somewhere between 4-7 days. It's also not nearly as bad in the evenings so far, which is very helpful. It better calm down. I'm fine sticking this out if it goes away, but there's no way I'm staying on this stuff if it doesn't.
Okay, quick apology here. I've never found it terribly interesting before to read about other people going on medication, so I feel a little silly putting it here. That said, now that I'm in th thick of it, reading about others experiences online (like this account) has been very helpful. So, if you're like me in a normal state of mind, and find these accounts rather uninteresting, just skip this post and others like it, please.
The world is a very strange place today.
This moment is one I've been studiously avoiding for several years now. This moment, as in, well, probably about five minutes after I finish this post. That's when I have to face up to the supposedly benevolent menace pictured at left. I think it's fair to say this downright scares me. Not in the shrieking horror way, of course, but at some rather deep level, I'm terribly worried about what this little pill is going to do to my brain.
The pill is apparently something called "Citalopram," but is probably better known as a generic equivalent of the antidepressant Celexa. Close to 20 years after a child psychologist first diagnosed me with depression, I'm finally breaking down and giving the "selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors" a shot.
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