A Full Plate...Of Meds, That Is...

*Disclaimer:  I am in no way advocating withdrawing from any medication without support and help from a medically trained person.  I am not saying psychiatric medications are bad, ineffective, or useless. 

For a long while, psychiatric medications were helpful for me.  And then I realized that they weren't.  Many of them were causing side effects that required further medications.  I also realized that the mood stabilizers and antidepressants were definitely keeping me from the depths of despair, they also prevented me from the highs of joy and happiness.  For awhile that was okay, but gradually flatness became intolerable, too.  

So I started researching medication reduction, withdrawal, and the options.  Psychiatric medications require planning before stopping them, partly because of physical side effects and also emotional ones, lumped under a heading on the medication handout termed "discontinuation syndrome".  I began tapering off on my own based on my research and also consulted my doctor about six weeks ago.  

I will look back on these six weeks with pure wonderment that I survived.  I wouldn't recommend my process for anyone else, and it could have been done with less suffering on my part.  But I'm one of those people that would rather have a really bad virus for three days than a mediocre cold for ten.  I figured since I was already feeling crummy, I would push the envelope and try to get through this as fast as I safely could.  

It's hard to know if my ulcer was a direct result of my gastric bypass or the amount of meds I was on.  Most likely, a combination of the two.  Bypass patients can no longer take NSAIDS of any kind (aspirin, Ibuprofen, Alieve, etc.) because they can burn a hole in our tiny stomachs.  On Sundays I would sit down with my shoe sized storage box of meds and dole out a week's worth of meds into my daily am and pm doses.  It would astonish me the amount of medication I was taking and I realized it was insane to think that these medications weren't causing some major harm to my body.  

When I decided to give up meds, here's what I was taking in one day:

And a week's worth combined onto one plate looked like this:

That amount of medication going into a person in one week is crazier than anything they are supposed to be treating!!

Effexor (the bright orange ones) and Zoloft (the tannish ones) are the most difficult meds to withdraw from for some people.  I was not an exception.  I noticed more difficulty related to the Effexor, but it's also hard to distinguish which is causing what issue. 

It's been 12 days since I last took anything other than my ulcer medication or allergy medication.  Here's what I noticed and am noticing:

My lovely shoulder purse strap bruises.

• The most obvious complaints I had were just that I felt like I had the flu 24/7.  I ached like I never have - especially in the chest, knees and the bottom of my feet. This is entirely gone in my chest but still a challenge in my knees and feet.  It's a deep pain - in your bones kind of pain.
• I was nauseous all the time. I've never had morning sickness, but I assume it was similar, only it lasted all day.  I would be hungry, eat two bites of something and the smell of it would overwhelm me and I would have to push it away.  Though I have no appetite, I am able to eat more than say a week ago.
• The dizziness is indescribable but was constant.  I couldn't move my head too fast or the room would spin and distort.  This has diminished a great deal and I notice it most in the afternoons.
• Changes in motor skills.  I began dropping things all the time. Incoordination.  Bumping into walls.  You know, fun stuff like that, but without booze!
• Severe allergy symptoms.  Because several of these medication also block H1 receptors which are also histamine receptors, another "side effect" they have is to help allergies.  Once I weaned off meds, my allergies came back full on.  
• I had chills and sweats at the same time.  These are mostly gone, and what I still have I attribute to lack of sleep.
• My face was puffy in the mornings if I managed to sleep. 
• Sleep was nonexistant.  I have been and am getting roughly 3-6 hours every 72 hours. 
• The sun makes my eyes want to pop out of my head.  I'm very sensitive to light at present.
• Capillary fragility means that anything and everything causes my capillaries to burst and I was covered in bruises constantly.  For instance, just having my purse on my shoulder bruises my shoulder.  
• Extreme anxiety.  Seeing a spider sent me over the edge.  Events or situations that were mildly uncomfortable became monumentally huge.
• Extreme anger.  The smallest thing (dropping a can of pop) was enough to make me feel like throwing it through a closed window.
• ITCHING.  All of the above were tolerable and I could manage them but the itching - oh, it's unimaginable.  This is one of the symptoms that compares to heroin withdrawal.  We've all heard of people coming off illegal drugs and having the sensation of things crawling over them.  Sometimes I had the light sensation as if something ran across my leg, or other times it's as if tiny needles are poked into my skin again and again.  At first I tried lotions, switching to gentler fabric softeners and detergents, but when nothing helped I realized it was the withdrawal.  I ended up with massive bruises on my legs because I would itch my legs which then busted the capillaries.  It wasn't (and isn't) pretty.  The itching has not subsided, and is still as bad as it has been.  I don't know when it will subside.  Since psychiatric medications work on the nervous system, it's not a big shock to have this side effect, but I certainly understand why people have wanted to throw themselves in front of the subway to stop it. 

Last week I was in a very dark place from all of this.  I was emotionally overloaded and physically at my breaking point from all these symptoms that felt like nonstop illness.  Monday, though, I awoke with more clarity than I've had in some time and some of the reading I had done about Dialectical Behavior Therapy had just clicked inside me and made me feel like I had regained some control over some important aspects of my life that just days before I didn't know if I would ever care to have again. I'll blog more about these moments of clarity this week sometime.  

Had I not gone through all this, I would have had no concept what this withdrawal was all about.  I'm sure some family and friends wonder why it's dragging on so long.  It's so complicated and hard to explain, but I'm so glad I'm doing it.  As much as it really stunk to be flooded with so many overwhelming emotions last week, it was actually what I had strived for when I went off meds - I wanted to feel again.  So ideally, not all at once, but at least the emotions are back.  That's what I wanted!  

I can't say I'll never go on meds again, and I don't say they are as horrible as they might sound.  I do know that before beginning any I will do much more research about the long and short term effects.   Though there's part of me that feels annoyed that no one told me it would be like this coming off them, the truth is I was in a place where I so badly needed them that the withdrawal ending them was so far out of the picture it wouldn't have mattered.  Sort of like chemo.  In the moment when you decide to opt for chemo, you don't want to die, so you do it.  You know it's going to hurt, and it's going to cost you some, but you also know it could save your life.  This is how psychiatric medications have been for me. 

 I've also learned that with even the best doctors, it's entirely up to us to advocate for ourselves and educate ourselves.  Docs don't take the time they should to run through it all.  They tell me what "most" people experience.  What I "might" expect.  Then it's really up to me to dig in and read what I can and ask other professionals to get the clearest picture.  I can only blame others for my own ignorance so much.  And as we've all seen, a fifteen minute consultation in a doc's office generates little beyond a bill.