Tag Archives: medication

Mental Illness

Coming Round the Mountain

After I wrote my last post, I came across notes with the title of this entry.

From years ago.

Ironically, they referenced a book by Emily and Amelia Nagoski entitled, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.

Seriously.

I’d say you can’t make this shit up – but I literally did.

In fits and starts I have been working my way towards this puzzle – for years.

At the end of my last post, I said “I should go back to the beginning of this latest cycle”.

On some level, my mind, returning to that little coffee shop table repeatedly over the last few years, has known it needed release. That it’s been dragging around all the stress and feelings associated with that deluge of depression and fighting my way back to the surface. And three years ago, when I drafted this ‘mountain’ of notes, I even discovered a big part of why I haven’t been able to let go.

“Magazines tell us that if we just drink ten green smoothies a day, we’ll feel great and look great, our kids will say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and our boss will give us that promotion.  And if none of those things happen, it’s because we failed to drink the ten green smoothies; it’s certainly not because of systemic bias.
 
The message is consistent and persistent – whatever is wrong, it’s your fault.  It can’t be true that the whole rest of the world is broken or crazy; you’re the one who’s broken and crazy.  You haven’t tried hard enough.  You haven’t done the right things.  You don’t have what it takes.”

Amelia Nagoski, DMA and Emily Nagoski, PHD

It was in the months/year leading up to January 2020 that I made my first ever attempt at bullet journaling – and it was to track the administration of my natural supplements. Increase to two DHA, take Zen GABA twice daily, add 5-HtP. The fact that I hadn’t ‘cured’ my anxiety and depression just meant that I was adhering to the protocol closely enough. And so I went into logistical overload to ensure I’d given it my best shot.

And I realized two things. That the supplemental schedule was untenable with all that my day already demanded of me – and that it wasn’t enough. While it did improve or ameliorate certain aspects, it did not destroy my depression.

But why couldn’t I trust my body, my own intel?

Obviously what bothered me in 2020 and since then is much bigger than a slender bottle of petite pills.

I still must work on releasing the emotional gak associated with that transition – but it plays into the larger cycle of self-actualization and acceptance I’ve been working through for the larger portion of my life.

Message around the other side of the mountain . . .

Mental illness is not a failure on your part.

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Mental Illness

Harnessing the Seether

“Seether” hits differently as a middle-aged woman.

As a 16 year-old, I was obsessed with the song from Veruca Salt, with its hard-hitting guitar, sick riffs, and angry lyrics – but I was a bit mystified by who exactly the seether was.

I saw it as someone or something outside of her, trying to control her or change her actions – which makes total sense, seeing as how the rage of teenage years is totally self-righteous and almost always directed outside of oneself.

A nasty break-up. Parents trying to tighten the leash. Managers not giving us enough shifts or pay.

Now, as a middle-aged woman with real reasons for rage, I see that the seether is within me.

In January 2020, I had hit the bottom of a very low low. Not as bad as, but the lowest I’d been since, post-partum depression.

Two and a half years earlier, I had weaned myself off the antidepressants I’d been on for nine years. It was a combination of that often false sense of good health that medication management can give you and refill snafus. In the ultimate combination of Yankee can-do attitude/Catholic flagellation, I figured it was time I was healed enough to handle it on my own.

And I was, for a while.

Whether the meds hung around in my system for awhile or my naturopathic/lifestyle aides helped or I got worse in only slight increments, I was doing okay. Until the increments started stacking up the other way and there was such a big pile of mess, I was fucking depressed. Like bad.

I relived the ridiculous feeling of failure/guilt that I felt the first time I went on meds and went to see a psychiatrist nurse practitioner for the first time.

My anxiety for this appointment was beyond. I was all wrapped up in avoidant behaviors, irrational thoughts, nerves, worry. Of course I was running late. Of course there was road construction blocking the entrance to the building I stared at as the clock ticked by. Of course it was raining as I realized I parked in the wrong lot and rushed my then toddler over the adjoining stone wall. Of course I busted into a podiatrist’s office like a crazy woman to get directions to Unit 8.

When I arrived breathless and sweaty at the reception window, the sanctimonious office manager asked me how I was doing. I think he actually thought he was creating a pleasant atmosphere. I was so amped up with anxiety, for once, I answered honestly.

“Horrible.”

I still haven’t figured out whether he had no personality or I set the tone for our relationship with my snarky response.

Late that afternoon, when my husband had returned from work and all the kiddos were settled, I stole away to a quiet coffee shop for a writing session. I still hadn’t processed all the high-energy feelings from the day. I was likely feeling some sort of post-adrenaline slump. I managed a journal entry and this.

I knew it wasn’t enough for the blog that usually helped me think through major mental health journeys. But it was all I could muster. It was all I had.

I was devastated by the complete control my irrational thoughts and fears had over me. And that was coming at the tail end of a harrowing descent into depression.

Periodically, over the last four years (that also included a worldwide pandemic, Holy Mother of God), that little table in its dim corner, complete with coffee cup, has come to mind. The incompleteness of my thoughts that day – and since. How that is a story I have needed to tell. But haven’t been able to. How I should go back to the beginning of this latest cycle – but haven’t been ready to.

I still don’t know if I am.

But “Seether” helped me recognize the strength and sorrow of that rage within.

Perhaps it’s time to process it – and harness it.

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Mental Health, Mental Illness

Red Hot Reminder

I had just taken my morning meds when I went to light the woodstove. 

Reduced to embers and ashes from the night before, I had to start fresh and stacked the bricks of compressed wood dust in their faintly cheerleader-ish pyramid.  I twisted two long tears of newspaper into loose spirals and set them inside.  Usually a small square of firestarter set atop would be all that was left. 

But this morning, I picked up the medication information sheet that shipped with my newest refill of meds.  I usually just recycle it.  I’ve received dozens, if not hundreds, before.  This morning, for whatever reason, I tore it into quarters and laid them over the delicate spirals of newspaper, tucking the firestarters in as if for bed. 

The opposite ends of each coil of newsprint burst into light at the touch of the match, that crawled toward the center as usual.  But the information sheet, made of a heavier weight and sitting atop it all, didn’t catch right away.  It sealed in the tongues of flame and made the smoke swirl above the bricks in a pulsating plate. 

One quarter of the sheet, that rested vertically, served as a firebreak.  On one side of it, the fire roiled, yet the paper seemed untouched.  On the opposite side, the words of warning, of various side effects and negative outcomes attached to this tablet meant to cure me, to fix my foibles – glowed, as if alive with molten lava; not painted or poured; moving, active – and yet about to disappear.  About to be consumed by the heat and flame.  At their brightest and most brilliant – about to fade into oblivion, no longer legible or meaningful.  Not even holding shape or form, a hot rush of ethereal, ephemera.

Obviously, I am a sucker for symbolism. 

And so, as I sat and stared into the fire, amazed and mesmerized by what very likely was a mere reaction of the ink to the heat of the fire, I pondered glowing prophecies and potent mystical messages.  I know that seeing warnings like ‘may cause nausea or stomach upset’ in a rosy hue doesn’t make them magical or more enjoyable.  But as someone always ambivalent to ‘fix my mood’ with meds, the occurrence seemed to have some sort of message.

I’d thrown the paper in the woodstove this morning on purpose.  Prescriptions and warnings and medical material litter my life and countertops and brain.  How I would love to wake in the morning and walk out the door without having to take something so life doesn’t seem so overwhelming.  But as much as my stubborn will desires and tries to snuff it out of existence – the problem, the illness remains. 

Sometimes I need a red hot reminder to stay the course and keep healthy.     

Pexels/Free Range Stock
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Mental Health, Mental Illness, Recovery, Survival

Post Script

The following is not advisable, nor is it recommended or endorsed by any of the information herein; the anecdotes serve as a reflection of my personal experiences. Do not take the same road I have.

 About three and a half weeks ago, I weaned myself off my antidepressant of seven years. For all the advice I’ve heard saying not to do so without medical supervision and all the times I’d poo-poo’d those who abruptly stopped medications – I weaned off my meds without medical supervision having made the decision totally independently.

I’ve written before about the panic that ratchets up watching the tablets dwindle in my amber colored bottle of sanity; about the same reasons I take them leaving me overwhelmed enough not to call the doctor for a new string of refills. It happened the same this time.

Except this time, I’d been growing ever more resentful of that daily bitter pill, something to remember, something to lean on heavily, something to possibly poison me.

In an as-yet-to-be-seen brilliant realization, I decided to space out my tablets to make them last longer – ‘until I got a refill’. I think that was my rationalization. I went down to one for several days, half for several more, and then a quarter.

Also around this time, however, I began reading A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives by Kelly Brogan. Now, if the rest of my follies here are not endorsements, this most certainly is not an endorsement of this book. It took me an awful long time to swallow – pun possibly intended – what Brogan had to say. After years of coming to terms – mostly – with taking antidepressants, here was an in-your-face account of how they were absolutely unhealthy and unnecessary. The whole first half of the book told me in no uncertain and sometimes holier-than-thou terms that I had been duped and made a terrible decision for and possibly irreparable damages to my body.

As I said, I started reading this book around the same time I was weaning. I did not read one ‘expert’s’ book and change my entire life regimen around it. As I was already tapering these ‘evil’ meds from my system, however, I was curious to see what other options could help me complete this process.

The second half of Brogan’s book is the best; the part where she gets to the heart of her mission: helping women live healthy and whole lives. I don’t know that her tone was less sanctimonious or I was better able to temper it with my own decisions of what would/would not work for me. Her plan focuses on a four-week implementation of diet, detoxing the home, meditation, exercise and sleep – a four-pronged approach to keeping the body and mind on track.

There is a lot in this book that resonates with me – some of which I already do, in fact. However, the four-pronged approach makes that panic rise in my chest almost as much as the rattle of fewer and fewer pills in the bottle.

When I started meds, feeling so like a failure for needing them (no projection, just my own neuroses), my therapist said, “this is the tenor of your life right now. Whether or not you were previously suffering with a mental illness, you were able to cope. Now, mothering several children, there are significant unalterable circumstances that make you unable to cope. Your medication can help you do so.”

Tenor still untenable.   Nothing new there. Well, actually there is a new kid.

So perfecting diet, sleep, mindfulness, exercise, clean living – all factors dependent on me, everyday, in my imperfect life is a little terrifying. Especially considering that failure, which is inevitable really, means a depressive state. No big.

Back to weaning: Brogan advises her 30 day detox before weaning to reset your system first. Ha. That may have helped. It also may have helped if I didn’t wean in the last week before my period as I prepped and embarked on a week-long trip with all four kids solo only to return, take two weeks to prep for school, and pack for one final vacation that ends on the eve of the new school year. Timing is everything.

There were times I wanted to scalp myself or my children that first week; times I wanted to scream louder than the baby refusing to just.go.to.sleep; scared that the crying jags meant my depression was coming back; irritable and snippy with my husband; and in a much lesser, yet slightly amusing development, America’s Got Talent’s package materials and any high note hit by a contestant made me well up.

Brogan warned me the withdrawal symptoms might present as a relapse of the original condition. Who’s to say I was struggling because I desperately needed the pill to supplement my body or give it a crutch?

I didn’t complete a long yoga session last week seeking clarity of mind in regards to all this. I was finally sick and scared enough at the skin and muscle getting looser around my frame and the big kids were shoe shopping with their grandparents. The amount of tension in my muscles shocked me. I sobbed at even the slightest release of it. Not the wet, slimy tears of a betrayal or breakdown, but the semi-silent, breath-catching heaves of chest with a few slick tears sliding down from the corner of eyes when I unsquinched them long enough to let them fall. I didn’t realize how much I’d been carrying until I tried to let it go.

And that was just the physical.

As trite as it may be, I had an epiphany on the yoga mat that morning. Even if I was taking medication to take care of my mental health, I wasn’t taking care of my self. I’d forgotten to force time for the things that keep my soul alive. Stretching, meditative thought and moments, reading, writing.

Did I need to stop meds to hit rock bottom hard enough to make the burning fire of my calves burn a hole in my consciousness? Perhaps not. Would I recommend cessation of meds as a path to clarity? No. But stopping meds to see where my mind and body were at this point in my life, nearly eight years out from the offending episode of postpartum, and then having such a visceral reaction to the stress in my life and body – that sent me an important message.

Regardless of what my decisions are in regard to lifestyle and care, self-care must be part of it. Placebo or perfect chemistry, a pill isn’t a miracle. All cylinders of my life, my soul must be firing.

Life will never be perfect. Even if I decide to follow Brogan’s regimen or another with or without meds, there will be times I fail. I can’t control circumstances outside my body, my sphere – hell, even in my sphere. (Did I mention I have four children?) But perhaps with the balance of self-care, I can temper the abberations. It’s a tall order, but right now, it’s keeping my mind centered on care – not maintenance or even just keeping the lid on.

That’s a pretty compelling read for me.

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