Sorry about being a little oblique in my previous post. Every time I tried to go into more details, I cried, so I gave as much as I could.
So, here is the full story with no euphemisms or hyperbole.
I have depression. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I was about 6 or 7 when I first shut myself in my wardrobe and wished for the world to disappear.
My depression got worse when I contracted the Epstein-Barr virus and developed the glandular fever that eventual led to my M.E.
For a long time I resisted going on anti-depressants, seeing it as a failure of will. However, spending hours on my bedroom floor howling made me change my mind.
It was wonderful. Truly amazing, what this little pill could do to my brain chemistry. Unfortunately, while it was positive for one part of my brain, it was negative for another and I developed muscle spasms.
I had all kinds of tests in case I had developed the same condition my mother had, but everything came back normal (first time for everything!). It was only in passing that I mentioned to my GP that I was still having these spasms, tremors and twitches and she suggested that it may be a side-effect of my beloved pills.
We decided that I should slowly come off them and see if they were indeed the cause.
They were. I am now 99.9% spasm-free. However, this has come with a price. The Black Dog that for so long had been held at bay found me again.
I can only describe those three weeks without anti-depressants as the worst weeks of my life (and I’m including the death of my grandfather in that). If it hadn’t been for the love, support and reassurance of my family I’m not sure I’d be here writing this. At least, not in one piece. Things got very desperate.
At the end of those three weeks, I went back to see my GP. She gave me a questionnaire to fill out about my mental state. I think I scored quite highly. And, as in golf, large numbers are not good.
I’m now slowly easing myself on to another, newer, SSRI that is supposed to have all the benefits of the old one but with fewer of the side-effects. It’s been less than a week and I already feel 100 times better. I don’t care if it’s psychosomatic and I’m just taking a sugar pill. All I care about is I now feel like a useful, functioning human being again, instead of a worthless fatty lump of shit on the the bottom of someone’s shoe.
I hope that in being so open I can help reduce the stigma that still surrounds mental health issues and also go some way to explain my absence from your blog (and mine, for that matter).
I hope to be able to get back in the swing of things soon, although now I’m feeling better I’m actually spending less time online, so maybe not!
Oh, and I’ve been crocheting.
dyedinthewool 