An Update!

I keep coming here, wanting to write, but more times than not, I stare at the blank screen, unsure of what to say.

I wrote an entry in the beginning of June when I started on Effexor, and I've barely been here since. But I keep coming back, believing that a place like this is where I need to be in order to try and recover from my mental illness.

The Effexor didn't work. In fact, it made things worse; sometimes a LOT worse. Every day this summer was it's own battle; symptoms, side-effects, uncontrollable sobbing and this terrible feeling of tension and vibrating throughout my body with no way to escape it.

I started seeing a Psychiatrist after explicitly asking for one from my GP. He took me off Effexor and put me on Luvox. The Luvox actually seems like it's helping, but it's not without it's own problems. I felt really good at 150mg, but I was instructed to gradually work my way up to 200mg. When I got to 200mg, everything imploded; I felt awful, possibly the worst I've felt all year (and I've felt like a lot of shit this year), and after 4 days of 200mg, I put myself back on 150mg and notified my GP. It's been... ok since then. Some days have been awesome; to the point where I consciously note how good I felt and how my symptoms seemed to almost vanish. But some days have been difficult too; some symptoms return, making me feel VERY uncomfortable, and there seems to be a delicate balancing act involved to keep me stable. If I stay up too late on the weekend, the next week is rough unless I deliberately try and catch up on my sleep, but that doesn't even seem to be a consistent thing yet either. I avoid caffeine past 1:00pm because I find it affects my sleep; in fact, I try and avoid is altogether since it seemed obvious at one point that the excess caffeine I sometimes consume got amplified by the medication. I'm trying to avoid significant amounts of sugar too. My diet isn't very good, but lately it's been a case of fighting my appetite just to eat at all!

I feel like I know what I need to do to find that balance, but it isn't an overnight fix. At best, I can observe slight improvements from day to day until I get to the point where I notice that I'm feeling really good overall.

This week I'm focussing on staying consistent with meditating in the morning and before bed, and getting to bed no later than 11:00pm in order to maximize my sleep length. This past weekend I "pushed myself" a bit by staying up late (until after 2am one night), drinking more caffeine/soda, and smoking more cannabis than I have lately (I'm trying to cut it out entirely; baby steps), and I feel like I've slipped a bit early this week because of it.

It's been INCREDIBLY frustrating the past 4 months; finding the right medication at the right dose has been very trying and I have undoubtedly suffered because of it. I'm unable to make significant plans because I literally don't know how I'm going to feel from one day to the next. I've already cancelled plans with people in recent weeks because I'll be feeling good one day, then the next day I crash hard and it takes me a week to recover from it.

The physical symptoms of all this are pure torture. If all I had to deal with were the obsessive/anxious/stressed *thoughts*, I could probably handle it. But to feel physically ill because of it; to have it rob me of my energy, my mental focus and motivation, and to cause my physical pain (among other things) is almost unfair, and has very much resulted in health anxiety. And it's especially upsetting when my body makes me feel ill because of an external stressor/trigger; especially the type that results from ignorant people spewing their venom and hatred (the Internet as a whole contributes to this). It's not fair.

I have my first "therapy" appointment on Sept 22nd, and an appointment with a new Psychiatrist on October 4th. At least I'm "in the system" now, and I have hope that I'll get the help I need. I've done this journey mostly alone up until this point, and I'm simply to a point where I can't do it myself anymore.

Until then, I need to keep doing what I'm doing to try and keep myself stable.