nanowrimo: 2 more days! And Being On Drugs.

[lobelia321]

I have made it almost to the end!

It's been quite interesting looking at my excel spreadsheet chart wot i have been obsessively filling in. My moods and my morale have gone up and down, from a few 10s to an all-time low of 4 yesterday, because I have a cold and do not feel like writing 1,667 words!! I just want to sleep! But strangely, even when feeling crap, I managed to churn out the words, and after initial complete rubbish they were even useful words. Also, sometimes I've written a load of words on a low morale, and sometimes I've written a load of words on a high morale. But it is rare that I've written no words at all and had a high morale. Even to have a stab at a high morale, I need to have produced wordage.

All of this is good to remember for the post-nano rut.

Also, sertraline, my current tranquilisers (or to be more medically specific: anti-depressants and stimulators of serotonin production in t'brain), have a number of drawbacks, and these are becoming more apparent now that I'm okay about my job.



Pluses:
I have dealt with my job depression. I am currently not depressed. I am in a calm frame of mind that enables me to make rational decisions and follow them up. The other day, I had to do a godawful waste-of-time absurd job for t'institution and instead of getting into a complete state about it and feeling resentful, I did it and felt calm and thought, 'I just wasted two hours of my employers' time, not of my time. If that's what they want to pay me for, fine.' When I told t'counsellor this, she clapped my attitude!

Minuses:
The highs are gone, the lows are gone, the libido is gone. My interest in sex is minus 562. I feel disconnected from t'h, partly because of the lack of libido and partly because of what the lack of a libido is a symptom: a sort of self-sufficiency and lack of strong emotion. I couldn't, e.g., fall in love right now. I can feel happy but I've noticed that there's a certain something lacking when I write. I can produce the words but the ecstasy factor is rare.

Picasso, I think, once said, 'I paint with my prick' (as did Renoir), and I used to think this was a chauvinist macho attitude, blah, blah, but I've come round to this. I think I do need my libido to write creative fiction. It is a very sexual activity for me, a sensual activity. This is also why, in my current libidoless state, I've lost interest in slash. Very Bad!! Also, I've lost interest in delicious words and just write to get the plot moving. That's not how I operate normally!

I'm also less obsessed. Actually, I'm not obsessed at all. This, I'm realising, is actually not all good. I used to think that my obsessions were bad: nocturnal LJ sessions, compulsive reading of fanfic, late-night bleary-eyed LJ cruising. But I am not myself without these things. E.g., my interest in LJ has also waned. This could make me sad! (If I were able to feel sad...) It's an interactivity, interconnectivity chip that's missing from my brain right now.

I've hit the moment where I'm sick of the tranquilisers. I have benefitted tremendously from them. They have been fantastic in allowing me to deal with stuff and to move my life onward and to have insights. But now they've done their duty.

My counsellor says I should wait till after Christmas because Christmas is a stressful time. But do I want to wait that long to get my literary groove back??

Comments

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I think you should wait.

Going on medication like that is basically rebooting your entire brain chemistry. In essence, you're putting your brain chemistry to the place where it "should" be -- correcting for a balance your brain doesn't naturally produce. It's only natural that it'll take a while for you to figure out who "you" are when you've got that balance; this is entirely new to you!

The side effects of these drugs are killer, but give it time. Many, many people find that the side effects even out as time goes on; even if they don't, you've got a good chance of being able to figure out ways to work around them. And in the meantime, having the experience of what "normal" is like will let you recognize it in the future, when you decide to make changes to your meds. Fucking around with your brain chemistry requires informed consent and a steady range of experience, and a lot of the time, you're so out-of-whack (generic 'you') that you can't make that informed consent -- but the more time you have with the experience of that 'even' feeling, the more you can make the decisions as to whether or not it's worth it to sacrifice the good parts of being unmedicated to avoid the bad parts of being unmedicated.

Do you know about http://www.crazymeds.us ? Their motto: "The drugs suck donkey dong, but the alternative is worse." I love their attitude, their honesty, and their tell-it-like-it-is lack of bullshit. Worth some perusal.

You're the only one who can make your decisions, but it's like I tell Best Beloved, who has a lot of the same problems: Problems in the brain chemistry are not something you can overcome just by wanting, or strength of will, or therapy. It's a physical problem, and strength of will doesn't do anything for that. She struggles with the belief that she "should" be able to be 'normal' just by wanting it, and she's tried to give up her meds a bunch of times, because she doesn't like the side effects either -- but I keep telling her, over and over again: I need drugs to be able to walk; she needs drugs to be able to be not-crazy. This isn't a sign of weakness, or something she should be ashamed of. It just is.

Give it some time to make your decisions. It might take some time to figure out what specific drugs work for you, and you might have to try a few others -- but there's nothing wrong with having to take the drugs. Seriously.

Me, I've made a conscious and informed decision not to take the crazy meds, even though I should, because I don't like the person I am when I'm on them and my symptoms (very light bipolar type II, known as cyclythymia) are manageable with therapy techniques and an awareness-and-ability to recognize both the highs and the lows and self-regulate -- but there's a huge downside to that, and occasionally it swings out of control. And it might be the technique you arrive at, too -- but give it time before you get there.

(And when in doubt, whine to your LJ. We love you. *g*)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this thoughtful comment. It's been really helpful, and I've turned it over in my head. I especially liked your point about weighing up who I am without the pills and who I am with them because, after all, there was a reason why I went on them in the first place, and now that I'm better, I tend to forget that reason.

Problems in the brain chemistry are not something you can overcome just by wanting, or strength of will, or therapy
I think therapy helped me a lot, or rather, is continuing to help. As my counsellor and the G.P. kept saying: The drugs don't solve your problem but they help you to solve it. This is true: the drugs can't make my bosses nicer or change the idiocy of my institution but they can help me to get to a place where I can cope with these things and not just wake up in the middle of the night and go 'AAAAAAARRRRRGHHHH', which is what I was doing for months and months before.

But I've now got to the point where I feel I'm missing myself, the 'me' that connects me to the rest of humanity. The drugs isolate me. They cocoon me from the horrors of reality but also from the ecstasies and the real pleasures of fellow people. They also don't allow me to respond to art; it's as if the asthetic empathy chip has gone missing. They kill sex. They kill slash. And ultimately, they kill my writing because my writing is libidinous and the one thing I did decide during the medicated state was to write seriously and more.

Anyway, to make a long ramble short. I've made an appointment with the G.P. to discuss coming off them but am not deciding unilaterally. :-)

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I think that's a good plan -- talk to your doctor, see what you've got in the way of options. If nothing else, you have these observations, written down, to come back to; it'll help you calibrate your baseline, and you can remember what it was like both ways and make a conscious and informed choice.

Either way, whatever you decide, remember that you're not alone, and any time you need an ear or another perspective, come find me. :) *hug*

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Boah. You (almost) did it and well, two days left. Yattaa! I totally failed at the writing ten minutes a day thing. I just can't bring myself to produce fiction if I had to produce academic writing all day. Wah.

*claps your attitude as well* So, the plus is a really, really, reaaaallllyy big one. But the minuses. Not funny and if you feel you're ready to stop with the antideprassants. I mean, hell yeah, christmas is stressful but on the other hand, there will always be stressful times. Oh well, I'm sure between the counsellor yourself and t'family you figure out the best way.

I'm just glad you feel better. If out of obsession, libido and the writing groove.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You are very kind!

[junalele.livejournal.com]

I try my best. heh.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

It's an interactivity, interconnectivity chip that's missing from my brain right now.

Yep, yep and yep. As you know, in the end I decided the benefits weren't worth what I lost when I took the drugs. But... when you get the good stuff back, the bad stuff comes back too. Looking back on it, some of the doctors I spoke to must have been on some pretty strong stuff themselves, because they talked complete crap! It was all 'it's just an imbalance, take a course of these and you'll be right as rain after six months.' Years later...

It's just so much more complicated than that, and I still have no answers, and find I can't really offer advice in either direction.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But... when you get the good stuff back, the bad stuff comes back too.

Yes, this is what they tell me... Except no, not true. Rahaeli tells me this, and you, but my counsellor and a neighbour and the G.P. maintain that no, once I've dealt with the issues, I won't fall back into the hole. I've been on them for over 6 months now. I'm having dreams about coming off them! I've made an appointment with the G.P. to discuss the coming off issue. :-)

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure you're right, and I think different people have different experiences with this. I know several people who've taken them for a short while, used them to get better, and never needed to go back on them.

I think I'll probably aways be prone to depression, but I'm so much better able to deal with it now than I was a few years ago, and I'm sure the periods of being on medication had a lot to do with that.

Good luck! :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think you're right. There's a 'proneness' but one can learn to deal with it better. I'm meeting the G.P. tomorrow morning!

[kireseth.livejournal.com]

I haven't been on lj for a while, so you may not remember me. We've talked a bit about the depression before. There are a couple things I've learned from experience that might things to think about when making your decision.

I was off and on antidepressants several times before deciding that I really needed them to function. That's not the case with everyone, certainly, especially if the depression is more situational than not. Part of the off and on was it took a while for the doc to find the meds that worked for me. I'd been through taking some that made me so tired/sleepy I could hardly get out of bed or stay awake if I did. One or two made me so wound up I couldn't stand myself. So it took a while to find what works. The trap I had to learn to avoid is this: If the meds brought me to the point of saying "I feel good, I'm not having my meltdowns, irritability, blue moods, exhaustion... whatever" and the conclusion is I did't need them anymore and went off them, then I was sooner or later back into depression. Sometimes it crept up on me so imperceptibly I didn't realize it until I was nearly nonfunctional and sometimes much more immediate. I finally learned that if it takes the meds to be balanced, going off them will undo that.

I suffered majorly from the lack of libido as well. Without it, I didn't feel like myself... at all. Not having a partner removed the dimension of having someone else affected by it, but I felt a huge part of myself was missing. My doctor responded to my complaint about it by adjusting the ratio of the two meds I was taking so that I (pretty much) got it back. I can't say it's quite the way it was before, but I don't know if that's 'cause I'm forty-nine or because of the meds. But it's nearly the same, and I certainly feel I'm myself again. That's so important.

Anyway, that's just my experience. It may or may not be relevant for you.

Hang in there!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I've been turning it over in my mind these past days. And I do remember having a discussion (not sure I'd have remembered your name but then, I'm hopeless with names!).

but I felt a huge part of myself was missing

Absolutely. It's been a revelation for me to what extent I depend on the libido as part of my identity, and how it connects me to the rest of humanity. And don't say that about being 49, eep! I just turned 45 and I always intended to go down the Bette Midler route: 20 goes into 80 a whole lot more often than 80 goes into 20! (Re an older woman with a younger man vs an older man with a yournger woman) *g*

[mandalaya.livejournal.com]

I don't know how long you've been on them, but "they" do say that being on them at least a year decreases the chance of the depression re-emerging. I was on Prozac for a year, and it successfully fixed the depression problem then and for several years afterwards, not that I was blissful but not clinically depressed at least. Now that I'm in a cold European country, I'm having some trouble again, but that's likely sunlight-deficiency related.

So, I would suggest you stick with them for at least a year, and through Christmas isn't really that long now anyway. When you go off them, it seems to be very important to go off slowly. And getting regular exposure to sunlight and regular exercise seems to help too. Maybe you could adjust your dosage down slightly and see if that helps you feel less disconnected? Good luck with it all, I know it's complicated and often frustrating.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and really interesting comment. I've been on this medication for 6 months now, and I'm heartily sick of it, although I adored it at first. It seemed like the dream magic pill. It's interesting abouit the sunlight; I already go to a gym once or twice a week, and they have sunbeds there. I'll investigate. Thanks about the tip about going off them slowly.

[msilverstar]

I'm definitely less emotional now, less caught up in movies and tv shows and especially books, which I kindof miss. Dunno whether that's depression or medication. My libido comes and goes, partly according to where I am in my monthly cycle. But I'm just so incredibly grateful to finally be on meds that let me cope with what needs coping with, I'm not going off them any time soon.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But I'm just so incredibly grateful to finally be on meds that let me cope with what needs coping with
This is what I felt like when I first started taking mine c. 6 months ago. I thought, wow, the magic answer, fantastic. But now I've reached a point where I'm sick of them. I also want to be caught up in the movies and the slash and in humanity. I still did read a lot but I don't think I cried once the whole time and that, for me, is not normal. :-) G