Sometimes I Just Want to Have a Tantrum...

Yes - that's me.  Three days old!

Do you ever just get a little bit tired of being good?  Do you ever have those days when nothing goes your way and you've tried your best to keep your chin up and remember that your problems are minimal in the grand scheme of things, but you'd really just like to throw a fit and be done with it?  

That's pretty much how I've been feeling on a regular basis.  Then I feel guilty for feeling crummy when I have so much to be grateful for, and that just makes me feel even worse!

My emotions have been a bit all over the board lately.  I'm making some big changes in my life, and change is rarely easy.  After months of deliberation, I've decided that I need to get a "baseline" for my health and I've decided to go off of almost all of my medications, antidepressants and mood stabilizers included.  This decision is supported by my psychiatrist and the process is being medically supervised, but it's a complicated experience that has left me completely wrung out both physically and emotionally and mentally.  

One of the medications I have been on for several years is Effexor XR.  From what I have read about psychiatric drug withdrawal, coming off Effexor XR has been compared with withdrawing from heroin.  Having never used heroin, I can't tell you what that withdrawal is like, but I can tell you that withdrawal from Effexor XR is pretty crummy.  Here are some of the symptoms I've been experiencing almost daily:

• sweating while having cold chills 
• nausea and vomiting
• dizziness and motion sickness
• headaches
• inability to hold onto things
• tired and lethargic but being unable to sleep 
• increase in anxiety
• roller coaster emotions - from happy to sad in a short amount of time

The process for tapering off of Effexor XR as outlined by my doctor is as follows.  Effexor XR (and the generic) come in large capsules that can be pulled apart.  Inside the capsules are approximately 100 little beads of varying sizes.  The recommended taper is one bead per day.  That means that to come off of a very high dose that I am on could take almost a year - well over 275 days.  I'm not a patient patient and have pushed the envelope at times and thus experience more side effects from withdrawal than I might if I was more disciplined in my approach.  I'm not recommending anyone follow my lead, I'm just being honest about how I'm handling this. 

I have found in the past year that I have more and more medical conditions that are likely caused by the medications I am taking.  Thus, I am now taking medications to combat side effects of medications.  I felt completely over-medicated and worse yet, despite all these medications, I wasn't feeling particularly great.  So I wanted to know what my "normal" was again, without out this pharmaceutical intervention.  


This is not to say that I won't return to some sort of psychiatric medications to control my depression/bipolar disorder.  I will wait and see how I feel once I am completely off the Effexor XR and the other two psychiatric medications before determining what the next correct choice will be.  


Psychiatric medications come with tremendous benefit to some people, but they are not without a cost.  The side effects - both physical and emotional - can be as debilitating as the illnesses they are meant to correct.  While I was once confident in the use of psychiatric medications to treat my mood disorder, other health problems including a peptic ulcer and restless leg syndrome led me to believe that there might be a better way to manage my mood disorder symptoms while allowing my body to be less severely impacted by countless side effects.  


I have no idea what the right answer is, and no way of knowing if this is the right process, but all I can do is try.  It is a scary journey to know that I could plunge back into the depths of depression that has been all too familiar to me, but it is also encouraging to think that I might be able to manage my health in a way that provides me all-around better management of my body and mind.  


Most days I am optimistic and my grin-and-bear-it attitude keeps my chin up.  Some days, like today, I want to cry, stomp my feet, whimper and curl up in a ball until it's all over.  Of course that is an option, but I'm not really sure it would make me feel much better. I try to find a balance - cleaning part of the house, doing laundry or accomplishing some task and then letting myself have some down time - reading a good book, Pinteresting or just taking a nap.  That is when I really feel best - when I've balanced some accomplishment with some time to take it easy.  


I'm a perfectionist and I like to keep a checklist of accomplishments going.  It's not easy for me to be "sick" and feel like I've done so little in a day, but sometimes that's just what it is.  Some days I can't get anything done, and I have to let that be okay.  Otherwise, it just leads back to depression and disappointment in myself, and that gets me nowhere.  


Finding a balance is such a hard task for me.  I am an all or nothing, black or white kind of person.  I don't like to negotiate, least of all with myself, when I have a list of what I want to get done.  Learning to give myself a break and accept that my best is good enough is tougher than the withdrawal symptoms!  But my best really does have to be enough, and I have to accept that my best doesn't always measure up to the ideals and level of perfection that I imagine it should be, and that pouting about what I am not will get me nowhere.  

While a tantrum might feel necessary every now and then, it really wouldn't serve me any better than my perfectionist tendencies do!