I should have probably started writing this earlier but I slightly hyper-fixated on getting this new look sorted out; isn't neurodiversity grand? Anyway, this is going to be a bit of a blog post of correlational & causational... Stuff. As you can see, I've had a bit of a "glow-up" around here & it's all related. I've tried to get a bit of an old-school LiveJournal vibe going on. Nostalgia & LJ-Cutting myself as a midlife crisis maybe? Meh. Don't care. I've enabled comments and stuff too; feel free to let me know what you think about any of this drivel I write.
The main reason I've been able to write anything at all is a change in my antidepressant medication I think. I've been persisting with Sertraline since before Christmas and my experiences haven't been the best. I've had pretty much constant insomnia since I started taking it, and the beneficial effect it should have had tamping the MDD pendulum has been negligible at best.
The GP ignored the raft of peer-reviewed evidence that Sertraline causes sleep disruption and told me to persist, upping the dose every time. With every dosage increase, my ability to function was equally diminished. I eventually stood my ground & told them it wasn't working. Again "Oh, you need to be on it a little bit longer, give it another couple of weeks." At this point I'd been on the maximum dosage for a month & there wasn't a day that passed where I'd not end up wondering what the best exit strategy was. During a Zolpidem (Ambien) drugged evening, I told my nesting partner that I was going to kill myself with helium. The GP gave not shit one about the ideation; he was rude, dismissive and combative. He eventually, begrudgingly switched me to Citalopram 20, admonishing me that "There's no guarantee things will improve, and in fact they'll probably get worse and I won't change your medication for another 3 months." Oh, how wrong he was.
The difference between Sertraline & Citalopram has been nothing short of seismic. I noticed the difference from pretty much the first dose; I could think a little clearer, the anhedonia and inability to do anything but coast along on my ADHD medication started to shift. After 3 doses I've pretty much stopped crying & the ideation has evaporated. In the last 3 days I have baked and decorated a cake & done a fairly big chunk of housework. I had a day that was borderline manic yesterday and I got a lot done. Today has been lower-energy, but I hyper-fixated the whole day on getting this blog just so, so I could write this. Is it perfect? No. Anehdonia has been replaced with... Nothing. I don't feel anything; I'm not happy or sad, I'm not even apathetic. I care, but I feel about as emotional as flatpack furniture. For a Limerant like me whose feelings are nearly always cranked up to 11, it's a weird place to be. I don't like it, but I like the alternative less.