Cold turkey: the re-heat

Let me tell you about the time I took an anti depressant 7 days into cold turkey withdrawal. 

Or, as I call it, "Being Human". 

(Without the vampires, werewolves or ghosts, but with the sofa) 

7 days into withdrawal, and I was facing my birthday as a zombie. 

As an itchy, tearful, spaced out zombie.

1 pill to rule them all. 

I'm not a fan of birthdays but that didn't mean I wanted a shit day. I wanted to have a clear head, and be able to walk to the station without stopping twice for a breather. 

So I took the Citalopram. I have a months supply in my drawer and I haven't touched it.

I wake up transformed. 

I wake up before my alarm. 

I wake up with a smile in my heart and on my face. 

I have 5 hours straight sleep and get to sleep with little trouble in the first place.

All of sudden, I'm human again. I still have pain in my stomach, but I eat pre-9am for the first time in weeks. 

I talk. It's like my mouth has been unchained. 

I read without feeing every word drag past my eyes. I drink and eat like I ordinarily would. 

My heart sang yesterday. Yes it was my birthday and yes I met a sloth. 

But my heart sang to the peaceful melody of medication. 

Oh Citalopram, why do we have to part? 

Is it true? Are you really damaging my insides?

There's only one way to find out. Coming off them.

Only I've found out why people don't go cold turkey off anti depressants and I've decided I'm not going to keep trying. 

Instead, I'll be going more baby learning to crawl speed. One laborious shuffle at a time. 

Cold Turkey

This is not a blog about Christmas leftovers.
About sandwiches with cranberry sauce.
Or about dead poultry.

This is a blog about withdrawal.

I have been off my anti depressants for 7 days. 
I was on them for 18 months and in less than 18 minutes I had made the decision to stop them. Dead.

It is not advisable to come off anti depressants suddenly, to go cold turkey with them.

I am learning why.

I itch.
My legs, at 1am.
My shoulders and armpits at 3am
My palms, at 5am.
My feet, right now. My head, all the damn time.

I am dizzy. I could look down at the ground and then up at the sky and lose my balance.
I am light-headed. I feel like my legs are jelly and I am going to topple over at any minute.
I put this down to the lack of food. Because I can count the number of full meals I have had in the last 10 days on two hands. Most of them were this past weekend. 

I can count the days I haven't thrown up this month on one hand.

I cannot sleep. I did not understand why I am so, so tired all the time and yet now I get into bed at night and sleep does not come. And when it comes, it does not stay. When it comes the dreams are just...weird.

I did not expect to itch, to not sleep or have even weirder dreams than usual when I do sleep (seriously: Ice cream. Crow people. Packing. Crime. My weird dreams just got weirder).

I did not research or ask about withdrawal before I stopped my Citalopram. Google says all of the above are expected withdrawal symptoms.
That the half-life of Citalopram is 36 hours, so the speed of it took me by surprise but if I'd done some research it wouldn't have surprised me at all. 

I am an itching, dizzy insomniac. All within a week.
And I am crying. This is the only symptom I expected. Naively, I thought that the only side effect of coming off anti depressants would be the depression making a comeback. Because that's what they're for, keeping the depression (or the worst of it) at bay.
I expected the suicidal thoughts, the tears.
I cry at adverts, at the news. I cried about the snap general election. I cried at Guardians of the Galaxy last night.
I'm crying now!
I am a crier; I sobbed down the phone to Oxfam once. But this is kind of ridiculous.

Except One Directioners, who cries at Harry Styles music?! Me, the wet-faced dizzy insomniac who can't stop scratching, that's who.

I should also expect headaches (got that down, 11 years in the making), anxiety (wait, why was I on this drug again? oh yes...) and nausea. Wait, nausea? You mean, the very thing I'm trying to eliminate by coming off the Citalopram?

I am desperate to stop throwing up. I am desperate to be well again, to stop feeling nauseous, to stop getting stomach pains. And that is why I have gone cold turkey from my Citalopram because if it is the cause behind my mysterious sickness, then I will work to find other ways of managing my depression. Another anti depressant, CBT, Mindfulness; the list of possibilities is endless. 

There is also the possibility that it is not the Citalopram causing my sickness.
But by the time my body has worked that out, I will probably be withdrawn from it anyway. 

NOW I'M CRYING AT GREEN DAY!

This is me admitting defeat.
This is my body overruling my mind.
This is me giving in.

After months holding as firm as I can against my depression, it is the sickness that laid waste to my life last summer that comes back to destroy my ambitions.

I'm not going to pretend I was ready. Hours of running time taken away by the headaches, muscle knots, foot troubles. My body isn't made for running, with it's tight hips and tense shoulders. And now with its grumbling tummy.
I can barely walk at times the pain is so bad. Stopping to throw up, stopping to double over in pain, puts even walking out of the question.

This is me flying the white flag and surrendering.

This is me wasting no more tears over the missed opportunity and feeling like a failure, because as that race door closes, a door to learning opens. Learning to let go of the frustration. Learning to find a silver lining.

Knowing that there's an answer out there somewhere, Just got to find it. 

Eye of the Storm

The last two months have been a storm, and my mind has been at the centre of it.

I have now reached the eye of the storm. Not because there's peace and calm inside my mind. But because I actually can't get my mind to do anything.

It's stopped really thinking, stopped really feeling. It's numb most of the time now, with peaks and troughs of sadness and happiness.
I think this is preferable to the overwhelming sadness I have been feeling. Sadness that came in waves, gushing over me and ebbing away, only to return once I'd managed to dry my eyes and carry on for a bit.

So this is my diary of depression. 

I don't make my bed like I normally do. 

The curtains don't really get opened.

And the mirror is back to being covered up because I can barely stand to look at myself.

Now, as an adult, I realise that everything I went through from the ages of 8-16 weren't all because of puberty. I have had trouble with anxiety, with expressing emotion, with feelings of self-hatred that go far beyond being a teenager and hating the world because that's the cool thing to do. 

This time it feels so much more like a failure, and there's so much more pressure to get better. No one is directly putting pressure on me, but it's pressure I feel personally because I'm an adult, and I have a place in the world. A place I have been carving out for myself. I have a job, and some responsibilities. Ones I have been struggling to carry out and maintain. When I can barely get out of bed and wash my hair, how can I be made responsible for the duties of my job?

I feel ashamed. I feel so ashamed that it has gone this far. I feel ashamed and guilty that I feel like this when the world is in the state that it is. I feel so self-centred. I feel like I have sunk so low. I feel like I have absolutely failed because I have been put on anti-depressants. Have I not been working hard enough with my counsellor? Did I not keep myself busy enough? 

Why me?

I'm also relieved. I am protected now, in a way. 

Do you know what the last straw was? The tipping point? Other than dragging myself to work and being unable to hold back the tears?
It was not being able to enjoy exercise. Not wanting to go the gym not because I was tired or being lazy, but because I didn't see the point in exercising because my life is worthless.

I've reached my tipping point. Or have I? It could get worse, I know that from experience. It feels right now as though I am in the eye of the storm, and the only thing ahead of me are rocky times as I make it through. Up, not down. Through and out.