Learning the Hard Way that Coming Off Antidepressants for Absolutely No Reason is a Bad Idea

Not my best look... WHY must my generation document EVERYTHING?

I was dizzy and feverish, I lost my appetite and worst of all I had this weird symptom which literally made me feel like my face was on vibrate.  I think it's technically defined as "electric shocks" or "zaps" or something, although, I would more accurately describe them as "how I imagine a robot feels when it glitches, if robots had feelings, which I imagine they probably don't".  Anyway, I assumed my brain was melting or something which was pretty distressing.

It's a very difficult sensation to explain, because I really didn't know it was possible to feel that way before it was a thing that was happening to my face and body.  For me, it happened quite frequently, meaning up to ten times an hour and it lasted probably ten days... ish.  I found out after a few Google searches that it was a normal withdrawal symptom and that it wore off (and that I probably wasn't dying of some horrible brain tumour), but regardless it was really unpleasant.  Imagine like... I don't know, like when a bee flies into your ear but that sensation over your whole face and/or body?  Kind of like a shock, but a buzzy, vibrate-y shock... and these were not good vibrations.

Then it got a bit better.  I went to register with a doctor and started taking my medication again, still not sure if I needed it because I really did think I was doing a lot better and then I just stopped being okay again, almost overnight and I remembered exactly why I started taking them.  I'm still not 100% happy about being on them, especially now I know more about the side effects and withdrawal symptoms when I come off them, but I think that's a problem for Future Jamie and Present Jamie kind of needs to stop crying all the time and being scared to leave the house.

So, the last few days haven't been the greatest because antidepressants tend to take a few weeks to work and I'm still waiting on that.  I went to see my doctor on Tuesday and coincidentally I had something in my eye from Monday night... I don't know if I've explained this before, but these days I am pretty bad at dealing with any kind of medical thing in a rational way.  When I get something in my eye, there's a good chance I'm going to convince myself that I'm going blind... so, with that in mind, regardless of the fact that I hadn't wanted to leave my bed, let alone my apartment that morning, I was far more concerned about this whole eye situation than my suicidal thoughts.  Oh yeah, did I mention they'd creeped back in?  I kind of forgot how frequently I had them, but luckily they're very passive at this stage - they kind of flicker into my mind and straight back out again like a "oh did you know you could jump off this building and probably die? just letting you know, okay go back to thinking about boys or whatever it is you do".  I'm hoping they'll just die out again when my meds kick in again.  My doctor says that it's really normal for people with depression stuff, but if they become more active I should probably let someone know.  Well, no, I should definitely tell someone, because that would be an issue...

Anyway, so I went to the doctor, we talked about depression, she did that depression questionnaire thing and I realised I had many more symptoms of depression than I'd realised because they just seem normal by this point and then we discussed my medication.  I'll write about this in more detail at some point, but we're basically considering increasing the dose because even when I'd been taking them for a couple of months I was still experiencing some pretty intense symptoms... and yet somehow I convinced myself I wasn't really depressed.  HAHAHA. I'm a disaster.

THEN she moved on to looking at my eye - the main thing that actually got me to the doctor that day - and said that she couldn't see anything.  She arranged for a nurse to irrigate it and then she put some yellow dye stuff in it so that she could see if the pain was caused by a scratch on my cornea.  Turns out it wasn't scratched and she said that it's probably just irritated because it's likely there was something in it but it's gone now.  I didn't believe her, went home, cancelled on a friend and lay in bed all evening... from about 4pm I was in bed, I didn't eat, I just lay there, trying to watch Netflix and trying to ignore the fact that my eye hurt and was probably going to fall out because logically that is what happens in these situations.

Not dramatic, just scared of everything... especially health stuff, it's a huuuuuuge trigger for me.

Anyway, so the next day it still hurt and I stayed in bed most of the day.  I tried very hard to be active but by this point I was pretty accepting of the fact that I am a little depressed again.  There was no chance of me leaving the house to do anything more than take the bins out and even that took me four hours to work up the courage to do.

I was literally texting a friend all day for support, which literally went something along the lines of "just one step at a time" and "you had a shower?! I'M SO PROUD OF YOU"... because being depressed is quite similar to being an infant and I'm not always fully capable of looking after myself. It's not even patronising anymore, like I'm damn proud that I managed to leave my bed for an hour and take a shower so that I smell less like the bins that it took me all day to take out.

And now it's today... I'm not 100% yet, but that thing left my eyes, so I don't have to worry about it falling out anymore.  I left the house with a list of five things to do and I managed to do two of them.

Yeah, I would've liked to have done all five.  They were pretty minimal tasks.  BUT... two is better than none.  The good news is, I got out of bed today. I left the house.  I put clothes on.  I ate.  I did all the things you probably did before I even woke up this morning afternoon, but some days that's all I can expect from myself and I can accept that because I've been here before and I know that one day it will get better again.