A couple of months ago, I (with the help of my psychiatrist) decided that it was time to stop taking the Venlafaxine. I don’t feel like it’s helping; it just makes me numb to everything and, as overwhelming as my emotions tend to be, feeling is better than not feeling. It might not always feel like it but that’s the truth. Plus, the side effects are not worth it, even if it was helping: my concentration and motivation were pretty bad before I started taking it but I’m pretty sure it’s gotten worse, especially recently. Writing has been such a struggle, even the practice of it. My depression has always had a negative impact on my creativity but this is the first time I’ve found it so incredibly difficult to simply write at all: getting words out has been like pulling teeth.

So I had some good reasons for wanting to stop and I’d put in the time to make sure I had an informed perspective. So I discussed it with my psychiatrist and we decided that the right move was to wean myself off the Venlafaxine and try something new.

When I first reduced the dosage, I didn’t really feel the difference. I still felt both depressed and numb, which is a really weird combination. But over time that’s changed. Obviously I can’t know how much of that to attribute to the medication change or to life in general but I still think it’s worth keeping track and I recommend this practice to everyone: it allows you to see the trends in your life and analyse what does or doesn’t work for you.

Not long after lowering the dose, I started getting headaches. The pain was very similar to the pain of a migraine but I didn’t have any of the other symptoms that come with it. Normal painkillers didn’t seem to help much and there were several occasions where I just retreated to my bed and tried to sleep through it. I had one of those headaches almost everyday for about two weeks, which was horrible but they have now passed at least. So that’s progress.

Coming out of that, I felt really raw and emotional, which was very weird, having felt so blank for months. I felt like I had no control over my emotions, which was more than a little bit scary, and kept bursting into tears over the smallest things. It’s felt a bit like I’ve had all of my emotions bottled up since I started taking Venlafaxine and suddenly they were overflowing everywhere: if something upset me, I became inconsolable and if someone irritated me, I had the urge to scream at them. I feel very lucky and grateful that I’ve managed not to scream at anyone because that isn’t how I actually feel. Once that emotion has died down a bit and I’ve been able to process the whole experience, that’s how I really feel. I live in fear of saying something I don’t mean and it ruining everything. So far, I’ve managed to manage these emotional tidal waves. They’re still happening though, even now that I’ve stopped taking the Venlafaxine completely.

And more recently I’ve started to have moments where I can think more clearly. They don’t last very long and to begin with, they were so sporadic that I didn’t even connect them to coming off the medication. But now that there have been a handful of them, it seems pretty likely that the two are linked. These moments are amazing. The feeling reminds me a bit of coming up for air after being underwater for a long time. You breathe in and you can almost feel the freshly oxygenated blood rushing around your body; everything suddenly feels so easy and you’re shocked by how hard it was up until that moment. These moments aren’t lasting very long and I wish there were more of them but it’s something.

I realise that I’m not giving this progress the recognition it probably deserves but I’m really not in a place where I can be enthusiastic and optimistic; the most I can manage right now is one foot in front of the other. My depression is worse than ever but at least it’s real. And I’m doing the best I can. That has to be enough.