Meds & anxiety.

My therapist has been making noises of getting my psychiatrist to change up my meds again. I'm really not sure I like that idea, and not just because I'm getting sick of the constant switching– four meds over four months– or because of my general distaste for being super medicated.

Meds and I, we don't get along great. I started out on Cymbalta and (after a period of violently nauseous adjustment) it helped for a while. But only a while. Prozac left me numb and aggravated my seizures to intolerable levels. The lorazepam I take as-needed for anxiety does its job, but knocks me out flat for a good ten hours, so I prefer not to use it unless I have to. My current Pristiq/Deplin cocktail, however, actually seems to be working, and doing so without any adverse side effects (save for my irritation at the idiots who decided that square was a good shape for a pill). My depression has been under control for once; my mood has been stable and in line with my actual experiences. I'm even able to get things done, when I need to.

My anxiety, however, is decidedly not remotely close to being managed at this point, and the recent absence of major depression symptoms and/or episodes has left me fairly at its mercy. Whenever one half of the problem is being dealt with, it seems, the other takes the opportunity to invade my conscious all the more aggressively. The anxiety issues have led my therapist to bring up possibly switching me over to some kind of anti-anxiety drug instead of the antidepressants. The thought of switching is fairly horrifying to me– it's been so long since I haven't been feeling depressed 98% of the time, and I really don't want to go back to that place. But trying to cope with my current levels of anxiety is not exactly a great prospect either.

I always feel so ambivalent about psych meds. This is really not helping.

Solstice of the mind: panic attacks make the longest nights.

This month's theme for the blog carnival comes at an apt time for me. For whatever reason, late at night (or technically early in the morning, really) tends to be the most difficult time for me, the time when anxiety or depression or both reach a critical mass. I'm also a terrible insomniac, and lately my schedule has been skewed to the point of my being essentially nocturnal. Night is when I am awake– but no one else is. The isolation doesn't help matters, I'm sure.

I want to talk about a particular long night. ( Read more... )

Linkage: Blog Carnivals

•Astrid just posted the entries in the first Blog Carnival of Mental Health. You can find the full list of submissions here. Definitely worth a read!

•The second round of the carnival will be hosted at CBTish on the theme of 'night.' If you have something to submit this month, you can do so here.

•The Disability Blog Carnival this month will be on the theme of long nights and what we need to get through them and hosted by Rolling Around in My Head.