Coming off antidepressants
Hi, my lovely gang. I hope you are all well. I suppose my lack of writing has come from being away. I love this part-time life. As soon as I attach a little annual leave onto it, it feels like ages. I'm sitting by the pool, finished my book and not quite ready to open another one, so I'm writing a blog. Today, I've chosen to talk about coming off antidepressants as I did a lot of googling on this the last couple of weeks, and well, to save you the googling… I thought I'd enlighten you.
So, as you all know, since my nose op, my brain went funny, and I had to go on antidepressants (Citalopram for any of those really interested). I kept to quite a small dose because I'm not going to lie; people told me how numb you can feel on them, how addictive they become and how once you're on them, it's apparently truly horrendous to come off them. However, when you are desperate, and nothing else is working - you give them a shot. This is what I did; I stayed on 10mg daily for a while and was going to taper off a little, and then Hayley died, and Kelsey, so I stayed on them. (So many times I wanted to increase, to be honest, and so much time googling if I should).
I'm unsure what they do for me; they calm me a bit. They make you feel weird, but you adjust to them and notice if you forget one. On such a small dose, though, a lot of it came with a placebo effect, but I'm not a doctor. I really wish the stigma of taking these would go away since being so open about taking them, so many people I have realised are on them too. They never made me feel numb; at one point, I wished they did, but I still had moments of feeling just as sad.
Anyway, in September, I decided to taper off them slowly; I probably had 2 good weeks in a row and thought bam, I'm cured 😂. To be fair, my low moods and panic are no way near what they used to be, so for the last 3 months or so, I have been taking them every other day, and I was pretty happy with this. I didn't think I'd be off them in a long while; however, I came to my 3-week holiday in Dubai and forgot them. I left them in my other Chloe bag and packed the wrong one (I know the violins are out for me), haha.
So when I got here, I thought, shit, I better get some as I'm going to have severe withdrawals and not enjoy my holiday. I went to the doctors here, and they do not make it easy; it's frowned upon here, and hardly any pharmacies have it, and when finally finding one that sells it, they don't do the brand that I was on. They did Lexapro, which is the closest, and the pill comes in a bigger dose. I sat on it for a few days and thought, what should I do! I took one and then changed my mind.
This is the deciding factor to quit and see how I go. I can always go back now and will if I need to. Anybody thinking about it, well, I didn't really notice anything the first few days, and then about 4/5/6, I felt a little bit weird and scared in the mind, but nothing a little wine doesn't fix. I'm now on day 10/11, and I feel so much clearer in my head; I feel more emotions and definitely less spaced out. Now, I'm not knocking them at all, but I really think that this was a good thing to happen to me. I don't think I would have quit otherwise, as I was so scared about what I'd read.
I had a couple of brain zaps that felt like electric shocks, which is what I heard about in most people's cases, and they didn't scare me at all, to be honest. I'm sitting here at the pool feeling pretty damn optimistic. It has been a totally shit year in lots and lots of ways, but I have learnt so much and appreciate everything that bit more…
Don't fear change; everything will have scary moments, but ride them out and know everything passes. Maybe I'm speaking too soon, but fingers crossed for more peace in my mind for 2024!!! (If not, I'll take you for the journey, haha).
xBx
P.S. We all lose lots of hours to Google, right?!?