This time around I knew that the first anti depressant I tried may not be “the one” that makes everything better. I expected to have to try a few before finding the right one so when I was first prescribed Paroxetine I really expected to be back to the doctors for something different.
It didn’t happen.
It took the better part of a week but I begun to feel better. After a month I felt a lot better. Better and more motivated than I had in a very long time. It turned out that I was experiencing hypomania and that side effect didn’t last long, much to my own disappointment. After the hypomania passed I still felt good. There were no more tears for no reason–I’d even stopped crying at random moments through movies and during ads that showed cute duckies sleeping on a bed of tissues or similar content.
As the months passed things started to creep up on me. I noticed myself snapping at the girls for little or no reason and I noticed the return of the noise in my head. Luckily I realized what that meant and took myself off to the doctors for an increase, which I was given.
Not long after the increase I started to notice something new that I usually associated with being depressed, only I wasn’t or rather, I’m not. My moods are even, I’m not incredibly cranky and the noise in my head hasn’t returned. I’m just really, incredibly tired. All the time.
I’m so tired that I require at least one sleep during the day just to make it to nightfall. Writing this blog has become something hard to do because I’m so tired I can only rarely string a written sentence together. Something’s got to change and that change may be a frightening option.
Changing medication, especially one that I’ll have to ween off over several weeks with many scary withdrawal symptoms really does frighten me. The possibility of going back down that rabbit hole to a very dark place is almost too much to consider, but what else can I do?
