dear diary, i am sick of antidepressants | 5k words about how my life has been the past few months

tldr: i have a terrible several months and am trying to now go back to normal

i honestly probably shouldn't make this public but honestly i don't care lol

also, i doubt any of my other entries are ever going to be this long, but we'll see haha

there's probably a lot of grammatical errors and typos but i'm honestly too lazy to proofread and correct everything

know that despite the fact that this post discusses poor mental health, it does not NOT contain and deliberately steers clear of topics of harmful content stated in rule 5 of spacehey's content rules.

soo, first entry. i found out about spacehey a few years back and only used it a couple times then forgot about it. i remembered it existed because a friend of mine had their spacehey in their bio, so i decided, hey, why don't i make another account and log the shit that goes on in my life? so here i am

i'm not a coder, hell, i hate coding. i don't have the patience for it and it overstimulates my brain. i wish i could get a better profile code, but alas, i am too lazy and there's no way i am making my own from scratch. i'm just picky with my themes. i really want a profile code themed after my favorite band, REALLLY BAD, but you'd more likely catch me dead than coding that myself, LOL

anyhow, onto the things that've been going on for me recently, where do i even start? life has honestly been a living hell. i'm honestly not sure what all i'm allowed to share on here, so i'll try to leave out the more sensitive topics.

within the past few weeks, i've been to the ER a total of 3 times. the first reason, i believe, was because my body was so incredibly tense that it made me physically ill. countless times i had to lay on my bedroom floor after taking nausea medicine every few hours for days at a time. my anxiety has never been so bad, even before i was medicated. fucking prozac, caused it all.

i think what i was feeling was a mix of many things. apparently my magnesium was low, so that's one, then of course, the nausea medication i was taking every few hours every single day for those few days, was interacting with my current medication, and then of course my anxiety, and probably much more. it was utterly miserable.

the second time i'd gone to the ER, it was for dizziness and shakiness. which, i assume were caused by stopping the prozac and starting my old antidepressant again, along with taking another type of nausea medication.

now, a running theme in these visits, you might notice, is nausea medication. the reasoning for this is my emetophobia that i've had since i was a small child. it's a fear that has utterly ruined my life, and it seems that it continues to do so, unless i am heavily medicated like i am now. then it's only occasional.

i'd gotten so constantly terrified of getting sick that i was taking nausea medication at every opportunity. i don't mean it in the sense that i was taking it every hour or anything like that, don't worry. i simply was taking it everytime the minimum time between doses had passed. i like to call it "taking it on cooldown".

back to the story now. the third time i'd gone to the ER was for shortness of breath. i couldn't seem to get in a proper breath. no breath felt deep enough, and the more i tried the worse my chest felt. i'd gotten terrified that i was going to end up unable to breathe, so i had a panic attack and got my dad to take me to the ER again.

they gave me some calming medication, and there i was, normal again.

this was the third time. each ER visit, they'd given me this medication to calm me down and relax my muscles. it worked, every single time. it made me realize that most of this was caused by anxiety. it was frustrating to realize that. at least i wasn't dealing with a life ruining disease, i suppose.

anyhow, it turns out that shortness of breath was caused by a mixture of my anxiety overthinking and a side effect of one of the medications they'd prescribed me from my time of one of the first two ER visits. great!

they'd given me the medication for both my heart and my anxiety, since it's typically prescribed for one or the other, or both. during my visit, i began freaking out so intensely that my heart rate reached 170, which seemed to alarm them enough to prescribe me that medication.

oh, and a side note here, i found out during a doctors appointment that my mom tagged along in that apparently my heart has been over-active since i was a kid. wow, mom, thanks for telling me that, it only took 18 years to indirectly find that out when my dad's side of the family has a history of heart issues and my dad's dad passed from said heart issues. i really appreciate it, mother. you're not the sharpest tool in the shed.

now, after that third visit to the ER, i was utterly defeated. i'd been running on nothing but fumes for weeks, and i seemed to finally collapse underneath it all. i began rotting in my bed for days. i couldn't get up, or else i got nauseous. nothing felt interesting anymore. i lay there for days, doing absolutely nothing else but watching youtube and playing some stupid game on my phone. nothing else.

then, i developed, and what i found out about for the first time, was "bed rest syndrome". apparently, to no one's surprise, if you're exclusively in bed for several days at a time, your body starts to kind of fail on you.

everytime i got up, i was intensely dizzy, weak, nauseous, and, bored beyond my mind. so, the boredom pushed me away from actually trying to get up and do anything. there was really no reason for me to get up, so i didn't.

that was until my sister offered to watch a show with me.

my sister...

one thing you'll find out about me very quickly is my love for my sister. nothing in this world will ever come close to the love i hold for my sister, and how much she means to me. sure, there are things that i am passionate about, that mean something special to me, like my favorite band- but my sister is, and will always be, my number one. she means the world to me. she's the only person i have IRL, always has been. she is my foundation, and without her? i can't say the things that would have happened, but to say the least, i wouldn't be able to function. i would've never gotten out of bed.

so... i got out of my bed, turned on my computer, and sat in my chair, and proceeded to watch south park with my sister. honestly, i'd never watched south park, surprisingly enough. so we've started watching it since then.

after that... i started getting out of bed again. i've started to return to my usual habits. this was maybe 4 or so days ago?

every time she asked to hang out, i easily slipped out of bed until it became natural again.

and this is why i hold her so dearly to my heart. countless times i've come out of a place so dark i could've never found my way out alone, all because of her. yeah, maybe our relationship has an unhealthy amount of love and dependance, but it keeps us going. it's what we need, even if it might be a bit too intense at times.

well, i guess that all brings me to the now. i've lost my dependence on nausea medication for now, and i'm no longer stuck in my bed.

as for my current struggle(s)... it all leads back to my medications. shit, man. 

so, earlier on in the story i mentioned that i stopped taking my new medication, prozac, because it'd made my anxiety the worst it's ever been. when i did this, i started taking an antidepressant that i'd been on prior to the one i'd taken before prozac.

my antidepressant pipeline is a hard one. and i hate to say this, but it is one that i'm still not quite finished with.

first zoloft, then paxil, then lexapro, then prozac, back to paxil.

zoloft was whatever. felt weird being on an antidepressant for the first time. some strange side effects i had, too. but other than that it was honestly nothing special. didn't work much. so, my psychiatrist started me on paxil.

me and paxil, is complicated. i was on it for a year or so before finally deciding to try something new. i'm honestly not sure how i tolerated it for so long. it works, most definitely, but it works too much, i would say. while it, of course, dulls the negative emotions, it dulls the positive ones too. a lot. paxil made me uninterested in pretty much everything.

so, once i decided i was done losing my interest in my hobbies and my fixations, i was put on lexapro. let me just say, i fucking HATE lexapro. my depression became the worst it'd ever been, and during that time i experienced the most traumatic event of my entire life. fuck lexapro, bro. 

so then, i was put on prozac. i thought,"hey, my sister takes this, so maybe it'll be fine for me too!" i couldn't be more wrong, hell. lexapro made my depression a million times worse, while prozac made my anxiety a million times worse. wow... what a past few months that was.

so.. a few weeks ago, or something like that, i got started back on paxil. now, i'm pissed off. because i'm losing interest in everything again and i'm bored as SHIT. I'm trying my best, but man, this is irritating. i want nothing to do with the game that i've been obsessed with for more than a year now. that is NOT like me. 

so, NOW, i am going to see if i can get my paxil down to a lower dose and see if that helps. if it doesn't, maybe i'll go insane or something, but hopefully it'll all be sorted out. hopefully i'll be back to how i was before, able to draw and finish pieces several times a week, play my favorite games, and shit like that. c'mon, man, i miss drawing and raging at marvel rivals!

anyhow, i think some other things i can mention and talk about relating to the past few months is the timeline of how it kind of all went. i recall the start of it all was around the time i got my dental abscess. 

because of my prolonged depression since the 6th grade, i'd found it outstandingly difficult to keep up with basic self care and hygiene. because of that, and the fact that i was literally born with a disease that's caused me to be much more susceptible to tooth decay and weakened enamel, i found myself with teeth that are my biggest issue when it comes to self consciousness. i don't talk about it to anyone, because i know it's easy to judge that kind of stuff.

back to the topic at hand, because of the lack of self care, i'd formed a dental abscess.

well, two of them.

i remember it all began back in october. the warning signs. when i'd bite into absolutely anything, i'd get the most excruciating pain in my tooth that would give me a headache and shit like that. i tried not to think anything of it. i have a deathly fear of dentists and doctors, ESPECIALLY dentists, because of things that happened to me as a kid.

i tried not to think about it. eventually, it passed. i forgot about it for a while.

that was, until many months later, it came back. except... this time, it didn't stop. it wasn't some toothache that came quick and left quick. it stayed. and stayed. and stayed. until it was constant. i used every remedy in the book. some of them lessened it for a while, until nothing helped anymore.

i was so utterly miserable. it was the worst pain i've ever experienced in my entire life. i genuinely cried my eyes out because of it, and at one point i truly couldn't take it anymore and went to the ER for it. there wasn't much they could do, obviously, because i was already starting on antibiotics from urgent care, and they of course don't do dental practices over there. so they just gave me a numbing shot in my mouth. 

however, that did nothing. that was the moment i realized, considering my past experiences with these, that numbing shots simply don't work on me. they numb the area around the nerves, but never the nerves themselves. now those experiences in the past made much more sense.

i was so miserable that my fear of dentists suddenly became irrelavent. it was so bad that i very quickly mustered up the courage to go to the dentist, and then get reffered to an oral surgeon. it was a pretty long process, unfortunately.

but the time came around for me to finally get surgery, and alas. 5 teeth were removed. pretty gross stuff, honestly. the time of the surgery was terrifying too. i walked in there, lay down on the chair thingy, and was given some laughing gas, which, personally i did NOT feel like i calmed down whatsoever from that, but they looked at my vitals on the monitor and said, "you're calming down a little!" um, no i'm not!!!

but anyhow, i got my first iv i ever remember getting, which was pretty scary, but as i was laying there they said, "alright, we're putting the sedative in now," and i said "what? now?" 

"yes, now." and after that, i said, "oh ok- goodnight, i guess?" and i remember absolutely nothing after that.

was pretty funny thinking about it now. 

i don't remember waking up in the office, i don't remember getting into the truck, i just remember waking up and obviously being high. i heard radiohead playing on the radio, and i said, "i love radiohead!" but of course, it sounded funny coming from someone so high. 

anyhow, after that canon event, came the next.

my ex. ohhh, my ex. the man who took up so incredibly much of my time and mental health that it drove me crazy. 

for context, we'd broken up the year prior. that was because of many factors of course, however one stuck out that finally made the decision for me.

we were on a call together, and i was already having a terrible day beyond words. though that did not stop him from venting and suddenly getting very upset, which i had no idea how to handle given what i'd already experienced that day. 

i understand. the sentiment of, "it always feels like there's a duo and then, just... me." or something like that. i get it. feeling like you're always a third wheel to friendships and relationships. however...

he said that it felt like i would choose my sister over him.

my sister.

my sister.

by now, you know her significance. her being a vital part of me and my life. the very foundation of who i am and who i've come to be, the foundation that allows and gives me the right to do all the enjoyable things that i do.

he knew this too.

however, he still asked me. "would you?"

yes, marcus, for the love of god, i would. at the drop of a hat, dude.

i hadn't even known him for a year! this is the same woman i'd known for all 18 years of my life, the same woman who lived through shared trauma, the same woman who I AM A CARETAKER FOR because of her mental disorder! it genuinely baffles me that he asked such a thing. it pisses me off everytime i think back to it, man. boy, do i hold grudges. maybe i'm insensitive for getting mad at him for asking something out of such a vulnerable state of mind, but unfortunately, when it comes to my sister, i don't play around.

anyways, in that moment, i was broken. i told my sister what he said, and she confronted him. i broke down, feeling like i'd just ruined everything with both of them somehow, that i'd just made every mistake possible.

i had a breakdown and then went to bed.

i woke up the next morning fucking furious. how could he ask me that?

i was weird to him that day, because mentally i'd already decided what needed to happen, i just had to come to that conscious conclusion. and i did.

i ended up telling him how i felt and such, that i thought breaking up would be the best idea. i was way too nice, man. i really wish i expressed my anger more instead of sugarcoating it all. but of course, i had to make it sound nice because of my people pleasing tendencies.

of course, that wasn't the only reason i broke up with him. we'd had many issues until then. him never changing his behaviors, never giving me anything to work with when i was communicative and open despite my past of trust issues. i'd never given anyone so much trust. and then he had the audacity to act like he was the only one that "went all in" (he was comparing the whole thing to a poker game he lost). (sorry, i'm really fucking good at poker, man.) (bad joke sorry, i am good at poker though)

anyhow, wrapping that up- ever since then he'd come in and out of my life despite my intention to have no more contact with him. one of those times was me reaching out during a moment of weakness. the next was him reaching out. the next was a friend of his reaching out clueless of what happened and asked if i wanted to hang out with them both. i said, man, fuck it, sure, why not?

that one was the biggest mistake of the three. because that lead to the absolute shithole of the next couple or so months.

(jeez, i'm starting to get bored of my own texting. i need to wrap this up quick.)

it led me down this long and draining time that included me obsessing over him and him basically leading me on only to say, "i know it wouldn't work, even if i do still love you". it was all very pathetic, to say the least.

i'll spare the details, because again, i am beginning to grow bored of typing this all, surprisingly enough to me.

however, i will explain how that whole chapter ended.

i'd invited him to my friend group i was in (danny why would you do that (i don't fucking know dude i was obsessed with the guy)), keep this fact in mind for what i am going to explain next. at some point, i was in a call with him and i was telling him about how my obsession with him was utterly ruining me and i couldn't keep up with it, and how it was ruining my mental health, and i wasn't sure what to do about it all.

as i'm saying all of it, on the brink of tears,

he begins laughing at gifs that he has saved.

yes, you read that right.

one thing that always bothered me about him is that he was always incredibly insensitive. i get that you struggle with and might lack the emotions you should have in situations like that, but that doesn't mean you should also lack the mindfulness of the situations at hand. you can still remain respectful of the person without feeling that emotion. it is the least he could do for me.

so i split. it wasn't pretty. i didn't raise my voice or anything like that, i simply took my leave from the call so i could prevent being externally pissed at him. i typically try to do that with the only ounce of self control that i have. i remove myself from the situation before i can blow up. because i know nothing good will come out of that and it will make me feel like a bad person, at the end of the day. i also don't want anyone to see how i act like a fucking crazy person when i'm in that kind of state.

hiding it didn't change, however, how utterly upset i was. i have never split on someone that badly before. my splits were usually me going into utter despair. this time, however, i was beyond fucking pissed. the most i'd ever been at someone who wasn't my dad. it was insane to me.

since then, i stopped hanging out with him as much as i could. but this is when i circle back to the fact that i had invited him to my friend group. i wouldn't be able to avoid him entirely. and that was bad. because everytime i saw his name, heard his voice- i felt physically ill with unreasonable anger. maybe it was all the anger piled up from all the times i should've ever been mad at him but wasn't because i was blinded by my obsession. all the anger from all of those moments hit me all at once, and boy, is it scary to think about now.

everytime he was in a call in our friend group and i so happened to be there also, (i avoided joining any time he was in there, but there were times he joined while i was there) and each time i found myself being extremely passive aggressive (and honestly, sometimes not even passively) at every opportunity. subconsciously i kind of do this because i hope to be able to right it off as friendly playful banter. that's fucked up, i know. and i feel bad for that fact.

a few days in, and i realized i wouldn't be able to keep this up for long. as i said earlier, everytime i heard and saw him i felt physically ill to my stomach and would start shaking uncontrollably.

i want it to be known that at this time i was adjusting to a new medication for my bpd/bipolar, so i was especially sensitive. it made my symptoms intensely worse before it made them better.

it was just all very poor timing, unfortunately.

so, i reached out to my best friend of many years and asked him what i should do. he asked if he could speak to the guy and i was hesitant, because it felt like sending someone off to do my bidding, and i hated it. but i knew i wouldn't be able to do it myself, like the coward i am- because i knew i wouldn't be able to explain my feelings to their full extent, because of my tendency to sugarcoat things and sway them in favor for the other person instead of being true to myself and my own feelings.

so i caved and let my friend help, and originally, i wanted it to be 1 on 1, but my ex did not want that. he wanted me to be there as well.

he then proceeded to bring up in the conversation that he didn't have someone there to speak for him.

you literally could've just spoke 1 on 1 with my friend but you said you didn't want to. but okay. i fucking guess, bro.

he said some stupid shit in the conversation, i'll spare you the details though. finally, it came to a close. my friend told us to block each other so neither of us could reach out at any given moment. and that was that.

thank fuck that was over. finally it felt like that chapter was closed. i've never spoken to him since, and i hope it will stay that way.

at some point in this story, i mentioned that i started a new medication for bpd/bipolar.

i want to tell the story of how that went. i keep writing the closing paragraph for this post but then i think of other things i want to touch on, jesus, man. this adhd shit gets serious!

anyway, back to it, the medication. lamictal. 

i told my psychiatrist that i was certain that i had borderline personality disorder. my therapist was literally giving me therapy for that, so i wanted to ask if i could be medicated for it as well. he obliged (despite previously claiming that people with bpd were "constantly in and out of mental hospitals" and basically framed them to be crazy people... hello?) and it began.

the climb on this medication was absolutely horrid. i had to slowly wean onto it because, apparently, if i took a dose too high too fast, i could get a rash and die. wow, that's great!

this might be me misremembering the exact numbers, but i believe it went like, starting 25 mg for 2 weeks, then 50 mg for 2 weeks, then 100 mg from then on. i think 200-400 is the typical dose for adults, however i'm extremely small and underweight so i probably didn't need all that much.

man, it was crazy.

i want to mention that before i started this medication, i stopped taking my antidepressant. what i'd forgotten, however, is the fact that that medication was paxil. i stopped taking paxil. cold turkey.

one of paxil's biggest defining factors, is that it has the shortest half life of almost every antidepressant. what that means, is that it is the easiest medication to withdraw from, and the withdrawal symptoms are typically much more intense.

and boy, were they.

i lived through the consequences of my own stupidly foolish action of stopping that medication cold turkey, most definitely. 

the brain zaps were insane. they happened every 30 seconds or so and dear god were they bad. along with that, if i remember correctly, i was experiencing pretty much every single withdrawal symptom in the book. dizziness, brain zaps, fatigue, sweating, chills, shakiness, trouble with my sleeping, and all that. utterly horrible.

called the mental health office, got to talk to a nurse, (should have way sooner than this) and they gave me some directions of how i could taper off of the medication.

and just as the medication was successfully tapering off, the side effects of my lamictal began kicking in.

i want to say beforehand that during this period of time, i was in a very triggering community. i do not want to go into detail, and i honestly cant within the rules of this website, but it was a community that glamourized and normalized things that shouldn't be normalized, and very much reinforced bad mental health and bad mental habits.

i'm not sure why i joined it, honestly. i got so deep into this bad mental state that for some reason i put myself into a community surrounding it, only to realize that it was such an unhealthy place to be in and that it was more definitely making me worse and would continue to do so.

while it was a horrible place to be, it was a place where i could embrace all the negative parts of my brain. i could express everything that i couldn't express around anyone else. i could express the parts of me that i was so terrified to show anyone. and in this community, it would be met with understanding individuals, and sometimes even praise.

it's an extremely unhealthy thing, and i want to raise awareness. but i'm not sure what platform i could even do that, given the heavy topics it surrounds. it's more popular than it should be, and many young people are in those communities and hurts me to see. so many users around the age of 13 and 14 were there, and it was so upsetting to look at.

now that i've given that context, i'm going to move on and shift the focus back onto my medication at that time. the side effects had me reeling, and i wanted nothing more than to stop the medication then and there instead of pushing through it because of how bad it truly was.

if i felt the most mild negative emotion, my body would begin shaking violently. i was so easily triggered into fits of deep rage or states of an extreme lack of self control. 

of course, many physical side effects followed, but the mental side effects and the physical side effects of mental distress were the most bothersome. 

that period of my life was severely distressing, and it was also around the same time that i started lexapro. and if you can remember, is when i also mentioned that i experienced the most traumatic event in my entire life. this was also around the time i was still talking to my ex and i was obsessed with him.

all of these things piled up and i've never been worse.

i am very glad that i managed to make it out. i saw things and felt things i'd never wish on another living being. it was the most traumatic period of my life. 

and it passed.

i want this to be a lesson to anyone reading this, that things can pass. i know, it's corny. i know, you've heard it before. maybe countless times like me. but i finally lived to find that the sentiment was true. even if things are still not perfect for me, even if things are still hard for me, they're not nearly as bad as they were then. i lived through that worst moment and i live to tell the tale. you can do that too. if i did, anyone can. i promise you that with great certainty. 

and now, i can finally say that i can bring this to a close. it was a long ride, i know. i'm glad i could at least include a little something useful towards the end of it, so the read wasn't ultimately useless lol

if you read this, and read this far, i want to thank you sincerely. i never wrote this for people to read, instead it was to log my thoughts, the events of my life, and my memories. but for someone to read this and care enough to do so means so extremely much to me. thank you.

i hope you have an amazing day, week, month, year, and life. you can do this, okay?

until next time,

danny