Okay I know this is technically my year abroad blog and I'm no longer on a year abroad but I find writing therapeutic so deal with it losers. Today marks four weeks since I went to the doctors and got diagnosed and prescribed my antidepressants so I thought I'd write a little bit more on that experience and also how I've got on with the medication because I was always looking for posts like this before I plucked up the courage to go so maybe other people are looking too.
I guess first I should write about how depression affects me personally because everyone is different. I read so much about it and often have these lengthy eloquent almost poetic descriptions of how it feels to them. Maybe because a lot of creative people suffer from it. I read an article on Standard Issue yesterday and it had one of these lovely descriptions - "Clinical depression is an insidious being, enveloping the many parts of you, shrouding your world with darkness, turning the light to a dim flicker." - I mean seriously, how heartbreakingly beautiful does that sound? What a sentence. I am in awe a bit. I identify with it but also I just can't comprehend how somebody can construct a sentence like that because when I am suffering with my depression, it hurts to even think. I think it's important to try and describe how I feel because it can hopefully help the people around me.
A lot of the time depression is portrayed as sadness and there certainly is a lot of that, but there's also a whole lot of nothingness. My brain just is nothing. It's completely black. I don't care what's going on. Then sometimes everything hurts. It's effort to just get out of bed or to get dressed or to want to leave the house. I forget to eat, to shower, to brush my teeth. All I can do, all I want to do is lie in bed. I don't often get tearful, maybe because crying doesn't make me feel better. I end up ignoring people's messages purely because I can't bear to have to continue a conversation which makes me feel worse because I am a terrible friend but it's just not possible sometimes for me to do things like that. When I feel down like this it's very hard to get myself to feel better. I kind of just tried to deal with it and ride it out for the last few years but the end of my year abroad it was getting really bad and I started having intense anxiety on top of all of this. The last two weeks I was in Spain I spent in bed watching Grey's Anatomy instead of being at the beach and that's when it finally clicked that I needed to sort it out.
So basically I had to register as a temporary resident at my doctors up here in the North East as I'm now fully registered down in Norwich, but all they needed was a little form filled out and that was easy. I asked for an appointment for a mental health consultation and got one and waited and got more and more anxious and then it was time and I don't think I've ever been more scared. This from the girl who's been through results day stress (knowing she missed her offer), moving from Northumberland to Norwich, and moving to Spain. And yet a doctors appointment was the worst thing. So daft because my doctor was really nice and understanding and calming and it was really easy to talk to her. I told her I'd been suffering with depression on and off since I was 15 but I needed help now and she got me to do this questionnaire (which I'd taken a few times on the NHS website, link here) and we talked through some of my responses and then after adding up all the points I got a response of 'moderate-severe depression' which I guess means it's a bit worse than moderate but I'm not really really bad which was reassuring.
She asked what sort of therapies I thought would help so I said probably talking therapy but I really wanted to try medication, just with how long it's been going for and how bad it's been recently. I have friends who have been through similar stuff, some on meds and some not and from talking to different people and doing research and stuff I thought it was a good idea to try them. I was also given the contact details for the Northumberland psychological support service but have decided not to get set up with any kind of counselling until I'm settled down in Norwich again.
So I was prescribed antidepressants, 20mg of fluoxetine once a day, which I take as soon as I wake up. Here's where the fun begins. The box comes with a list of side effects longer than my arm, I'm not even joking. Luckily I didn't seem to get any of the really bad ones. The first few days I felt incredibly nauseous and like I was going to be sick constantly. I struggled to get to sleep and would wake up at 3 or 4am most nights the first week. I got headaches and abnormally dilated pupils and heightened anxiety at times. I feel sleepy all the time. There was also excessive yawning which didn't help. Mainly though I just felt happy. I was stunned that they seemed to work so quickly, I didn't know whether to trust it was the medication working or that it was just a placebo effect. It suddenly just felt possible to not just get through the day, but to enjoy it. Everything felt sunny and optimistic and it was fab. Then about ten days in my mood dropped and it felt worse than ever before. The box warns that the medication can make you feel worse and can even cause suicidal thoughts but it's usually when you first take them. To me it just felt even worse because I'd had so many good days in a row and to suddenly feel worse than ever without any warning was so disheartening and I spent a few days in bed not wanting or being able to do anything. Then it lifted and I had a good week and a half and now I seem to be in another low dip.
It's awful because I don't want to be like this. It feels like now I'm on the tablets I can't admit to feeling sad because anyone who thinks medication is a good idea will start to think it's not, and anyone who thinks they're bad will go "ha! I told you so!". At least now I know that it is a dip and it's cyclical and I will come out of this and will probably feel happy again tomorrow but I have to remind myself of that and it takes monumental effort. You can't help but feel a bit hopeless when a mood like this hits but I'm trying. I have to train my brain to not want to give up as soon as it gets hard again but sometimes it does just feel like everything has gone dark.
I hope this post helps explain stuff a little bit. Or at least offers an explanation to people who know me as to why sometimes I'm a bit shitty and don't reply or flake out of plans or go quiet. I don't know. It still feels very strange to be writing about this because it's all very new to me but also something I've known about for a long time so I don't know I just feel intensely vulnerable, it's weird. I do want to say a massive thank you to anyone who read or shared or liked my last post, who reached out to me about it, who made it a bit easier to be a bit more honest with the world. It warmed this little geordie heart of mine.
Until next time I suppose
Hasta luego (the most Spanish I've written since May) (oops)
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