I have been hesitant about posting this, mostly because it’s really nobody’s business but my own. Over the past few months my lifelong on-off war with depression has hit a rough patch. I’ve had to cancel travel, both abroad, and to the Hay Festival where I was supposed to have been an attraction. My posts on social media and on this blog have dwindled to almost nothing. People have begun to notice – well, two people have, and kindly sent notes of concern (thank you — you know who you are). So that’s what prompted me to write.<\/p>\n
As a Veteran of the Psychic Wars I have been on all the -ins and -ines at one time or another, and a couple of the -ams and even an -ole. Mianserin<\/a>, right at the beginning, now only used as horse tranquillisers I suspect. Then (in no particular order, as they say on the game shows), citalopram<\/a>, sertraline<\/a> and mirtazapine<\/a>, culminating in venlafaxine<\/a>. I have probably forgotten a few. Venlafaxine \u00a0worked beautifully for a decade, until the day came when it didn’t. Then came the long, exhausting and occasionally frightening period of coming off one drug and transitioning onto another. So, for a few months I was on vortioxetine<\/a>, which wasn’t as good as venlafaxine has been, so had to be propped up with aripiprazole<\/a>, which screwed me down flat.<\/p>\n This clearly couldn’t go on, so for the second time in less than a year (under medical supervision I might add) I had to undergo the whole wearisome process of coming off aripirpazole, then coming off vortioxetine (hey, I hope you are both following this) and starting a new drug, duloxetine<\/a>, progressing in increments to successively higher doses. The entire process took more than a month — most of April and May.<\/p>\n Transitioning from one drug to another is not a process I’d recommend to anyone, though I suspect it’s a whole lot better than cold turkey. Throughout the process I have been seized by constant anxiety. I have nothing in particular to be anxious about, but I had all the physical symptoms — fight-or-flight, panic, sweaty palms, constantly wanting to visit the loo. I used to make light of anxiety — but no longer. It was entirely debilitating. The worst thing was that there is nothing I could do except endure it. It was like having a constant nagging dental pain in the mind. Throughout it all my family, colleagues and pets have been wonderfully supportive, and I can only imagine the hell that people with anxiety suffer if they are alone.<\/p>\n By complete coincidence this period of transition overlapped with Mental Health Awareness Week<\/a>, the theme of which this year was anxiety. I read the advice on how to cope with anxiety<\/a> and took the tips. I am very lucky that I live in a lovely part of the world, and it’s spring, so I am able to go for long walks in the woods with my dogs. I can’t stress enough how therapeutic it is to take exercise, and also get out in the natural environment. I have been doing a lot of cooking, which I enjoy. I have also coped by working fanatically hard to take my mind off my own internal state, both at the day job (by day I am with the Submerged Log Company), and also researching for and writing my next book.<\/p>\n I am now nearing the end of the transition — nearly a week now on the full dose of duloxetine — and the anxiety has almost gone. There is still some lingering depression. I have a library of books I don’t care to read; a rack of musical instruments I can’t be bothered to play; and a garden full of weeds I can’t be bothered to clear. Life — just the ordinary process of living — takes effort. But at least I can now envisage the possibility that these feelings will pass.<\/p>\n It’s a salutary thought that nobody really knows how antidepressants work. Psychiatry is still very much in the leeches-and-bloodletting phase. You just have to try one drug, or another, in what my son describes as the ‘throw-wet-spaghetti-against-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks’ method. But they do work, somehow, and I try not be frightened by the fact that for my whole adult life I have been dependent on, and cannot function without, powerful chemicals that do who-knows-what to my brain.<\/p>\n So now you know. I guess it’s the way I am made. And as someone said in a song, I am what I am — I don’t want praise, I don’t want pity. But next time someone ignores you, or is a bit crotchety, or cries off some engagement, remember that they might be suffering — really suffering — from pains you can neither see nor imagine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been hesitant about posting this, mostly because it’s really nobody’s business but my own. Over the past few months my lifelong on-off war with depression has hit a rough patch. I’ve had to cancel travel, both abroad, and … Continue reading