Happy pills – the changing of the guard

Disclaimer: I know there will be people reading this who don’t think medication for mental health is a good idea. That is your prerogative. I have tried living both with and without it and have come to an informed decision that I would rather be a functioning human being on cray cray pills than the wretched creature I am without. Please don’t send me articles about side effects and studies saying they will turn me into an evil alien cyborg. Trust me, I have read them. This is not a blueprint for everybody. It’s what works for me. Please respect my decision.

Right, now that that’s out of the way;

I have been on my little blue (sometimes green, sometimes purple and blue) happy pills off and on for 20 years.  I found something that made me able to function and achieve in the world and eventually I stuck with it.

Last year my old faithfuls stopped working.

It didn’t happen suddenly. In fact it took me quite a while to actually work out what was going on.

I’d have little ‘episodes’ completely out of the blue. I would be happily going about my day, then have a screaming anxiety attack. My jaw would start aching, then I would realise I had been clenching my teeth for an entire day. I would feel really low and lethargic for no apparent reason or I would be overcome by unaccountable rage.

It wasn’t until I started experiencing OCD symptoms again that I realised something was really up. It was just the preliminary stuff – having to stop myself from repeatedly checking whether the door was locked or the iron was on, counting, having to repeat certain phrases a certain amount of times or something bad would happen – but i knew if I didn’t do something about it things were only going to get worse.

Even then, it wasn’t until I talked with a friend who had been through something similar, that I worked out what might be going on.

Like everything, there are differing opinions about this, but for some people – my friend included – once you reach a certain age (in my case *cough* mid-30s) the meds can stop working as well. The colloquial term is ‘Prozac poop out’

It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, but I was pretty sure it was happening to me. I was put on fluoxetine when I was 15 years old and there are many different drugs out there now, so I figured it might be time to give something new a try.

My GP wasn’t keen to change my prescription without an expert opinion, so off I went to an incredibly good (and incredibly expensive) head doctor. It’s crazy (‘scuse pun) that you have to spend so much to access decent mental health care in this country and so wrong for people on lower incomes – but that’s another rant for another day.

Brain doc said fluox shouldn’t conk out but agreed that something wasn’t working in my case and thought something different might be better for me in a lot of ways.

Enter sertraline (more commonly known as Zoloft) my new kid on the block.

I won’t lie to you, I was pretty scared. Changing something that has kept you sane for decades is bloody frightening. I remembered what it was like in the black days when I was really bad and I was so afraid of going back there. But what I was doing wasn’t working anymore.

I did the switch over the holidays so it wouldn’t affect my work in any way and I’m glad I did because the first couple of weeks were pretty awful.

I stopped the fluox completely and started with small but increasing doses of sertraline until I got up to what we thought would be a therapeutic level. There was a period of time, when one drug was leaving my system and the other just entering it, that i was definitely undermedicated. I was twitchy as all hell and would start hyperventilating and crying while making dinner for no apparent reason.  I was determined to stick with it though, and eventually it passed.

After the first couple of weeks I did begin to notice a rather surprising side effect. I had energy again.  I guess because I had been on the fluox for so long I hadn’t really noticed that my normal was pretty much a permanent state of drowsiness. It had become worse over the past couple of years but it had always been there.

I was on quite a high dose of fluoxetine for my OCD and one of it’s known side effects is that it comes with extra added sleepy. Considering how permanently wired I was when I started taking it this was a welcome side-effect. It meant I could sleep and make it through life without bouncing off the walls. Some people don’t like taking it because it makes them vacant and foggy in their mind, but I never had that. I was still myself and I could function without screaming.

What it did mean though was that, in the later years of taking it, I didn’t realise that fantasising about going home and going to sleep at 3pm every day was not normal. That sneaking off for a nap at any possible moment at any time of the day wasn’t something that everybody did. If I got home from work before Paddy did I would crawl into bed and try to sneak  some z’s before he got home. He told me later there were a lot of times where he thought ‘where’s Anna? Oh, she’s asleep.’

Over the past few weeks I have felt more awake and alive than I have in a long time. I’ve achieved so many things over the past few weeks that I have been putting off all year and I’m getting back into writing again. It feels amazing.

One of my friends asked if I felt ripped off that I hadn’t done this earlier, but I don’t really. I needed to calm my mind and body down when I was really sick. After years of terrible insomnia it was a blessing. It’s only really been the past few years that it has been a problem, and even then I didn’t realise that it was. I achieved some pretty awesome things during that time. I sailed and scuba dived, I wrote a book. I don’t feel ripped off, but I do feel better than I have in a long time now.

The only other side-effect I have noticed is insomnia, but that is definitely easing up now. And the funny thing is, I didn’t get anxious about not sleeping. Previously not being able to sleep would wind me up like a corkscrew until I had to knock myself out with drugs. I don’t feel like that now. I just read a book  until I eventually conk out, and when I do I stay asleep, which is a new and exciting thing for me.

It’s still early days, but so far I have been having very few anxiety symptoms and I’m not getting the breakout OCD stuff anymore.

I feel awake and alive and happy – so roll on 2017!

PS – shameless product placement.

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