Finding HopeSome ‘Interesting’ Medication Experiences
Posted on February 23, 2019
I’ve now been taking various medications for four and a half years. It’s been a very mixed experience but through it all, I’m an advocate of medication because when we get it right, it’s incredible. A whole new person emerges, a person you’d forgotten you could be and that is the most amazing experience. It’s the closest thing to freedom that I’ve ever felt. But during that time, there have been a number of interesting and strange experiences. I don’t know if reading about them will be helpful to anybody but all of this stuff can be so scary if you think you’re going through it alone. So I’m putting it out there, just in case.
Venlafaxine withdrawal
I’ve written about this before but it makes sense to include it here as well. Because of several very busy days, I forgot to take my Venlafaxine and accidentally went into withdrawal. It started with an almost debilitating headache and on day four I woke up unable to think clearly. I couldn’t hold on to a thought: they were moving so fast that it made me feel dizzy and sick. On my Psychiatrist’s advice, I resumed the medication and I started to feel better pretty quickly although it took about a week before I felt like myself again.
Too much Pregabalin
At one point, I picked up my prescription and didn’t realise that the pills were at different doses than the previous prescription had been. So when I thought I was taking 150mg, I was actually taking 450mg. I woke up the next morning feeling shocking: I felt like my head was filled with cotton wool, the ground was moving under my feet like ocean waves, and my legs and hands kept twitching. It was awful and because I wasn’t aware that I’d changed my dosage, I was really freaked out. I ended up at the out of hours doctors because both me and my family were so worried. They didn’t find anything serious so we were left to wait and see but then my Mum realised what had happened. So that was a scary experience that I have no desire to repeat; I’m much more diligent about checking these things now.
Obsessive eating with Amitriptyline
Almost from the moment I started taking Amitriptyline, I was obsessed with eating, constantly thinking about what I could eat next, what it would taste like, what it would feel like. It was very much about the sensation of eating rather than being hungry. And the higher the dose, the more I wanted to eat. It was all I could think about. Seriously. I couldn’t think about anything else; I couldn’t function. It eventually caused me so much anxiety that I had to stop taking the Amitriptyline and try a different medication. I’d lost a lot of weight while on previous medications but I gained it all back while taking Amitriptyline and I found that very stressful and upsetting.
Taking Diazepam with Redbull
During a period of particularly high anxiety, I was taking Diazepam regularly throughout the day. The anxiety lifted but what was left was this overwhelming tiredness and sleepiness that had me falling asleep in the middle of the day, sometimes mid sentence. So I started drinking Redbull to keep myself awake and functioning. It wasn’t until a few weeks later – when I used Redbull to wash down the Diazepam – that I realised that it was the Diazepam that was making me so sleepy and that this was not something I could continue to do (not that Diazepam had ever been a long term strategy). I’d been taking it to ease the transition between medications and fortunately my anxiety started to go down and I didn’t feel the need to keep taking it.
Running out of Pregabalin
At one point, I ran out of the 225mg capsules, which didn’t seem like a problem because it was less than a week until my next appointment and we still had a load of Pregablin pills from earlier prescriptions, when we were still trying to get the dosage right. But then we realised they were 50mg capsules that you couldn’t split in half so I wasn’t going to be able to take my full dose of 225mg. I’d have to take 250mg or 200mg and the safer course was the latter. So I did several days on 200mg with pulsing headaches to remind me exactly why you take the exact amount you’re prescribed.
Too Much Magnesium?
This is speculation but not long after I started taking a Magnesium supplement, my mood seemed to nosedive. I’d been doing pretty well and was actually having bursts of what I think was happiness and so I’d felt able to add the (nutritionist) suggested supplement into my system. Nothing happened straight away and taking it became a habit but then depression started to creep in again. The only thing we could attribute it to – the only change – was the addition of the Magnesium. I’ve always been incredibly sensitive to stuff like this (I once threw up moments after taking a different supplement because it had too much copper in it) so I stopped taking it and within a couple of weeks, I felt more like myself.
Twitching on Pregabalin
The one real side effect of taking Pregabalin – in my experience, at least – is that it causes twitching, mostly in my legs but sometimes in my hands and arms too. It’s very disconcerting to not feel in control of my body and I really, really don’t like it. But as of now, Pregabalin is something I need to get through the day. It helps me manage my anxiety but if another option became available, I would jump at the chance to change, even with all the potential problems of switching medications.
I hope I haven’t put any of you off medication. These experiences weren’t fun but as I said, getting it right is worth it. At least I hope so.
The Next Chapter in the Medication Chronicles
Posted on January 19, 2019
Just over two months ago, I finally stopped taking Amitriptyline and started taking the new medication I’d been prescribed, Clomipramine. I’d had the prescription for over a month but I just hadn’t felt able to start taking it: I felt so drained and so worn down by what felt like an endless train of medications that made me feel worse instead of better. And on the off chance that it worked, I didn’t feel ready to feel ‘better.’ It’s hard to explain but it felt like I’d physically feel better – chemically happier – but still have all these ‘depressed’ thoughts, a juxtaposition that I did not feel strong enough to cope with.
But on this particular night, I felt a little more steady and so I took advantage of that: I stopped taking the Amitriptyline and started the Clomipramine. I felt different almost straight away; it took less than a week. I felt physically lighter, like a fog had lifted, a fog that I hadn’t felt settle. It was disconcerting – I felt a little bit like I might just float away – but it felt good too. It felt cathartic.
Suddenly, I was excited again. I was excited about pretty much everything, from swimming and playing with the cats to bigger things like future writing sessions and far away holidays. I hadn’t realised that that was something that had disappeared. I’d been excited about things in theory, in the way I thought about things – I could recognise that something was exciting. But I wasn’t actually feeling it. So to have it back was exciting in itself. It was amazing and I savour the feeling every single time it appears.
The most exciting thing is that my creative brain woke up and started firing again. It’s like my depression completely suppressed my creative brain and so I was physically unable to write songs, to function at the cognitive level necessary to write songs. I wrote about this in a post a few weeks ago. I’ve got several writing sessions coming up which I’m really, really excited about so I’ll keep you guys updated as to how they go.
I’ve also been taking Pregabalin – for several months now – to manage my anxiety. It has reduced my anxiety to a degree but I’m still dealing with A LOT of anxiety, so I need to talk to my psychiatrist. But it has helped. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been side effect free: I’ve been experiencing muscle twitches, mostly in my legs but sometimes in other parts of my body too. And it’s gotten worse as I’ve increased the dosage. That can feel quite scary, to not be in control of your body… I’m in the process of trying a new anti-anxiety, Flupentixol. It doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect so far but I’m trying not to lose hope.
The excitement and the giddiness have faded a bit since the initial boost. I’ve had a pretty bad week: my depression got overwhelming for a moment there. I’m coming out of it but it was pretty scary and I still feel quite shaken by it.
So that’s an update on the medication front. As per usual, it’s been a bumpy road but things are better than they were and for that, I’m really grateful.
2018 in Review
Posted on December 31, 2018
This year has been a struggle. Almost eighteen months ago, I made the decision to change my medication and that has basically been my life ever since. Lots of pills and doctors appointments but mostly dealing with the side effects, everything from nausea to shaking to a complete inability to think clearly. I don’t think I realised what a huge undertaking it was going to be but it’s not exactly surprising: you’re throwing all the chemicals in your brain and body out of whack. I tried Venlafaxine, Lithium, and Lamotrigine; I weaned myself off Venlafaxine, tried Amitriptyline, and now I’m taking Pregabalin and Clomipramine. This is the most promising combination so far and I’ve actually had a few really good days so I’m cautiously optimistic. But it’s been a long, hard road, sometimes so difficult that I wasn’t sure I’d survive it. And I don’t really feel able to acknowledge the good bits without paying tribute to the really tough things I had to go through and so got through.
The first of The Big Difficult Things was moving house. God, that was a struggle. Having thought that I’d found some sort of peace around it, when it came to the day, I was absolutely devastated. There were a lot of tears – from all of us. That house was my home for fifteen years – home to the greatest triumphs and tragedies of my life – and so, to some extent, it will always be my home. I think I could probably walk into my old bedroom twenty years from now and fall right back into that old rhythm.
I’m still learning the rhythms of the new house. There are days where it feels normal and then others where I hate it so much I could scream. Most of the time, it still feels like someone else’s house. Someone else’s house with all our stuff in. But every day is a step in the right direction. We’re filling all the empty space with memories, slowly but surely.
I’ve been writing a lot about Claire Wineland of late but I couldn’t write about this year and not mention her. Her death was another of The Big Difficult Things of this year. I stumbled across her YouTube channel late last year and have been following her on social media ever since. She was – and still is – a big inspiration for me and her death hit me really hard. It just makes no sense to me and never will and I’m still struggling to cope with that.
And through all of this, depression has been my constant, oppressive companion. While I had experienced depression before, this was a whole new kind of prison. The lows were lower than I’d ever experienced and there were several pretty scary moments. And as well as affecting my mood, my depression made it almost impossible to write songs. I’ve had many discussions about writer’s block over the years and I’ve always thought that there are things that can make writing difficult and so you have to figure out what’s causing the block and address it. In my case, it feels like depression suppresses the creative part of my brain: I don’t get random sparks of inspiration, I can’t solve problems creatively, and any active creativity – like songwriting – is like pulling teeth. It feels like writing songs requires a certain level of functioning that I’m just not capable of reaching while depressed. I want to write more about this – about depression and writer’s block – but that’s for another post.
Having said all of that, there have been good days, as well as good experiences on bad days.
By far the best part of this year has been the time spent with my friends and family, whether that be online or in the physical world, in Nashville, London, or Brighton. Or anywhere in between. These people have kept me going through the hardest period of my life so far and I’m so ridiculously grateful to them for that.
I got to travel a little bit this year, which was amazing. I managed to get back to Nashville where I had the most intense ten days possibly of my life. I got to see some lovely people, write songs (or try to), listen to some of the best songwriters in the world, and play a Song Suffragettes show. Even though I was incredibly anxious about it, that may very well have been the best day of my year.
I also travelled to Iceland for the first time and saw so many beautiful things, including a 60m waterfall, the Diamond Beach, and the Northern Lights. The natural scenery in Iceland took my breath away time and again. It felt like the first breath you take after being underwater. Of course, there was a lot of anxiety during the trip but it helped me in a way that only the magnificence of nature is able to.
There have been more wonderful live music events than I can count: Paramore, Kelsea Ballerini, Sugarland, Kacey Musgraves, Natalie Hemby (and all of Tin Pan South in Nashville), Frank Turner, Betsy Lane, The Shires, Sinead Burgess, The Brummies, Halsey, Kina Grannis, Aislin Evans, Maren Morris, and of course, Taylor Swift. Despite the anxieties around concerts, these are the places where I feel most alive and so, throughout this difficult period, I’ve always tried to ensure that there was another concert to look forward to.
And despite my musical struggles this year, I’ve actually played a few gigs and played shows that I am so proud to have been a part of. I got to play with WRTW again and it was even more fun than the first time (if that’s possible). I played Autism’s Got Talent in London, which was such a great opportunity. I played for Brighton Soup and Disability Pride in Brighton, two amazing organisations that I can’t praise enough. I also played Summer Fest in Worthing, my first show with my awesome friend, Richard Sanderson. And of course, I got to play a Song Suffragettes show when I was in Nashville.
I’ve also managed to do a handful to Autism research studies, as well as giving blood. I’ve been feeling so useless so I tried to contribute as best I could during this time where I’ve felt incapable of contributing anything at all.
Another big part of this year was getting used to the kittens: my cat had two kittens in February and me and my Mum just fell in love with them so we ended up keeping them. I love them dearly but it has been a major adjustment and a real struggle, especially with the daily battle that is depression. So this has been both a good and a bad thing. I want to write more about this whole experience because there were – and still are – a lot of complicated emotions involved. But above it all, we have Lucky and Lucy and the kittens and I love them more than life itself.
So, that’s it: 2018. It has been a hard, hard year, and one I’m very happy to leave behind but I’m cautiously optimistic about the next few months and the next year. I’ve felt better in the last couple of weeks than I have all year and I’m hopeful that this is characteristic of what’s to come.
“2018, the year of living, fighting, but ultimately, surviving depression. There was a lot of gold in the grey but I’m so ready to move on to 2019.” (x)
My Experiences with Therapy
Posted on October 13, 2018
Going to therapy hasn’t always been easy. I feel so, so lucky to have such an amazing therapist now but I had a lot of difficult experiences before I started seeing her. So I thought I’d share some of those experiences. Maybe they’ll be helpful.
After many, many appointments with my GP, I was finally referred to the local NHS Wellbeing service but the session didn’t go well. At this point in time, my anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t talk to people I didn’t know. I just couldn’t. Answers to questions would form in my mind but I couldn’t force them up my throat. So I sat there, in tears, while the doctor tried to get my Mum out of the room and told me he ‘wouldn’t’ help me if I didn’t talk. I don’t want to rant but I WAS STRUGGLING WITH A MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEM. I wanted desperately to be able to talk about it but I couldn’t. I don’t remember much about that appointment but I do remember standing in the street afterwards, shaking and crying and screaming and swearing. I couldn’t understand why no one was helping me when there was so clearly something wrong.
My second attempt at therapy was a bit better. I started Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with a really lovely therapist. She was very patient and very open to working around the anxiety that kept me from talking. She was also happy to have my Mum in the room: it helped my anxiety and meant she could provide information. Slowly I started to trust her and started answering questions myself. But it was exhausting, bone achingly exhausting. As hard as we worked, I didn’t feel like we were making any progress and it was too hard to go through that to make no progress. I really liked her and I could tell that she was a really good therapist but the approach wasn’t right for me. I found the format too rigid. In simple terms, CBT is about breaking down your problems and then trying to create change in those areas. I felt, and still do feel, that my problems are too murky for a short stint of CBT. I know now that many of my problems originate from my Autism and the fact that it went undiagnosed for so long but even with that knowledge, the difficult things still feel overwhelmingly huge. I can see CBT being useful for a specific anxiety. For example, we tried to work on my anxiety around making phone calls. But I think the reason it didn’t work is that it wasn’t an isolated problem; it was a piece in a much bigger puzzle. I don’t think you can solve that sort of problem if you don’t know what’s causing it. Plus, being rational about what you’re struggling with in the controlled setting of therapy and being rational when it’s overwhelming you are very different things. CBT sort of assumes that you can still apply the skills you’ve learnt in therapy regardless of how you’re feeling, which can feel impossible, especially if you live with really powerful emotions. But maybe that’s just my perception.
The next thing we tried was Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), recommended by a family member. In the few months between finishing CBT and starting EMDR, my anxiety had sky rocketed so starting a new therapy was really hard. It was so bad that I actually never spoke to the guy I worked with. But despite that, and my difficulty with eye contact, communicating with him was easier than it had been with previous therapists. He was fantastic. He accepted my difficulty speaking and suggested writing on a whiteboard. I considered that and it felt possible so that’s what we did. He asked me questions and I replied, scribbling as fast as I could. It worked. And to take the pressure off, we would spend part of the session on the floor, playing dominoes while he asked me questions. I felt absolutely safe there. It was incredibly strengthening to have someone accept my anxieties as they were, to have someone recognise that I wasn’t just being difficult, that I was genuinely struggling with something really hard. And although it didn’t turn out to be the right thing for me, the sessions are still really important to me. For several months, we worked hard. We tried. I felt supported. And even though I didn’t ever speak, I did once sing for him and he almost cried. That was a pretty big moment.
After that, I didn’t go to therapy for a while. There was a lot of life stuff going on and there just wasn’t the time to find someone new. But I did start seeing a new psychiatrist. He prescribed me Phenelzine (which I’ve previously written about) and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was causing my problems. I guess it was a type of therapy. We went through my history and analysed my emotions, trying to find a diagnosis. The medication helped and we managed the side effects but it still took a long time. When my university said that they couldn’t help unless I had a diagnosis, I pushed for this and in January 2015, I could finally put names to the issues I was struggling with (apart from the Autism diagnosis which came several months later). My psychiatrist recommended Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) so we started looking for another therapist.
My current therapist is the first one we met. I just knew she was right; me and Mum walked out, looked at each other, and said, ‘she’s the one.’ We did meet another one but my mind was made up. And we were right. She’s amazing. I’ve been seeing her for three years now and I’m so grateful to have that safe place. DBT suits me much better. It’s based on CBT but, as the Mind website says, it’s “been adapted to help people who experience emotions very intensely.” They both help with changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviours, but DBT also helps you to accept yourself. It’s about a balance between acceptance and change. That really makes sense to me and always has.
In the beginning, I needed my Mum in the room with me and she would answer all the questions. We’d always talked about everything so she knew pretty much all the answers. But over time, I felt more comfortable there. I needed Mum there less and less and eventually I started doing the whole session by myself. Three years later and it’s really, really important to me. It’s a huge part of who I am. It’s not easy; it’s really hard work and I often come home exhausted, sometimes falling asleep on the sofa afterwards. But it’s really satisfying to talk things through, to make connections, to see change happen. I’ve talked about things that I never, ever thought I would talk about and I’ve worked through things I never thought I’d let go of. That’s so huge that I can’t really comprehend it.
So that’s my therapy journey. For me, it’s DBT that works but I’ve seen the others help people too. You need to be ready, you need to find the right approach, and you need to find the right person. It’s not easy but it is worth it.
