I haven't posted in a while and I am happy about it. For a long time I found myself posting when I was angry, depressed or having physical problems due to withdrawals. Lately I have been smooth sailing. I have found myself researching and reading things that I want to learn about rather than trying to find others who are feeling the same pains as myself. Though I still want to reach out to people who are going through the same thing, I am gaining comfort in not actively looking for others who feel the same brain shocks and tremors as I did while withdrawing. I hope people who are going through it and brave enough to take the plunge find my blog or others like it and know they are not alone and the feelings they have do actually exist. We as a society are constantly brain washed into believing to blindly follow and trust the people in authority (doctors, etc.) Life only becomes living when you blindly follow your own intuition and trust yourself. I have found that I couldn't do that while being on antidepressants that chemically changed my own natural being. They didn't simply make me a better person as each advertisement campaign longs to make you believe. They make you a shell of someone you want to be more like. They allow you to swallow this little capsule which you magically think will change your faulty human brain into something more beautiful. True beauty is seeing the faults and allowing those faults to be small miracles of existence. It is dancing with the ups and downs of life and not actively trying to change them. The more you struggle, the more you will drown.
Doing something as painful as getting off antidepressants has opened my eyes to our constant unconscious suffering and the dance we all must do to live life. People constantly hide this suffering and try to change themselves for the sake of what other people think of you. What you perceive other people to think becomes your own thinking and that constant nagging in the back of your mind destroys life. Let life live through you and not through your ego. This is just a small portion of what I have learned and how I am coping with the ups and downs of life.
I have found myself reading more on spirituality, parenting and even cooking/baking. I love having passions other than trying to change myself!
On another note on the the process of withdrawing or protracted withdrawals, I have been having a lot of joint problems this year and other random things which I have never experienced before. I experienced carpel tunnel, my knee has a torn meniscus and I have random pain in my feet/other places. My asthma seems to be doing better and I think/hope the rebound of advair/singulair is finally tapering off. I had a scary situation where my lungs closed up on me after using a "bath bomb" which is a smelly ball you put into the tub. I ended up going to a pulmonologist who said my lungs were fine and I just had an allergic reaction. I took a breathing test and he said my asthma was functioning just fine, but he wanted me to take flovent. Really? So my asthma is getting better yet you want me to go on more drugs that took a year to get off of painfully? That just locks into place everything I have been feeling and shows me my true direction in life. I am not going back to that pulmonologist of course, as all I wanted in the first place was to xray my lungs and make sure they were okay. I didn't want new meds, a sleep study and a referral to come back to him every month. No thank you. It is sad that refusing these things that I didn't want in the first place gets you a "are you crazy?" look from the doctor, because no one refuses a doctor! It feels good to trust myself because I know my body and I am not afraid to say no any longer.
More on the protracted withdrawals, my vision has changed to being nearsighted and I have also had a very strange menstrual cycle. For about 6 months after I got off effexor it was either early or late and extremely painful. The last two months it seems as if it is getting back to a normal cycle.
So I truly believe all the new aches/pains/hormonal problems is due 100% to getting off everything including the antidepressants and corticosteriods. I think my immune system is rebuilding itself and my hormones are starting to relearn how to behave without synthetic chemicals. I welcome these changes, though painful and annoying now, my system is going through a fundamental change and it needs to happen. I do not want to change it or hinder any growth that might come.
One more thing, last year on around this same date I picked my LAST prescription of Effexor. Wow! I cannot believe it has been a year, I still remember counting the beads and wondering to myself if I could go through with it. It was just the beginning of the brain shocks, the nausea, insomnia and irritability. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that everything would work out. What a wonderful feeling to know where I am today in contrast to the journey I was embarking on. Also, my husband was there every step of the way. When I needed to vent and I felt like scum, he was there to explain to me why I was doing this in the first place and that everything would be okay. He was right. =)
