Posted by CareBear04 on January 12, 2005, at 11:43:21
In reply to Re: pdocs who do therapy, posted by Joslynn on January 12, 2005, at 11:01:36
hi everyone-- thank you all for your responses and for sharing your experience.
like a few of you mentioned, therapy is a really big piece that can get you or keep you off meds. yesterday, with my pdoc, i was sort of lamenting ever starting meds. depression does run in my family, too, as does alcoholism, but my family is really religious and from a different culture where mental illness is taboo, so i'm sure there's more sick people than we acknowledge in my family. though there's a lot of depression, i'm the only one to be diagnosed as Bipolar, and though the diagnosis comes up with almost every practitioner, no one is really sure it's the right fit.
being on the mess of meds that i'm on, i do wonder where i would be now if i were more of the therapy person and was able to make use of intensive therapy to deal with the problems that came up. i was really high-functioning-- though i was super-depressed, i still managed to stay on top of a crazy schedule and keep up with my responsibilities. and my depression was for good reasons, if there is such a thing-- one of my best friends died from a drug overdose, i was an RA and TA and student leader and had too many people to take care of to take care of myself, and i wasn't getting more than 3-4 hrs of sleep over months. also, i think i was going through a normal neurotic teenage existential crisis. i've always been intrigued by authors like sartre and camus, and i did a minor in french literature and society, so i spent a lot of time reading depressing stuff about the meaninglessness of life and its absurdity. after a month of so of teeth-pulling in therapy, the T referred me to a pdoc for meds. i was put on lexapro, which within weeks, gave me something like akathisia so i couldn't sit or sleep or stop shaking, and all of a sudden, i became obsessed with throwing myself out windows or off high buildings. i started having morbid hallucinations and saw blood everywhere and paranoid delusions about people on the street wanting to kill me and spy cameras in my own room. the drug just messed me up really bad and made me out of control until i ended up spontaneously taking handfuls and handfuls of pills and landing in the ICU. that was the first time i had to leave school.
once in the hospital, they're pretty set on putting you on meds. since about two years ago, i've been constantly medicated on no less than 5-6 drugs at a time. between march-august of 2003, i lived in a fog, stabilized on lithium but below baseline and still depressed, though not suicidal. the cognitive impairment was really bad, my pdoc wouldn't work with me to find better meds or taper the doses down, so finally, i took myself off everything at once... not smart. effexor withdrawal especially was horrible not just physically; it send me spiraling immediately into the worst and blackest depression of my life. i was referred to a new pdoc back in NYC, and i left four messages and never got a response. i turned to everyone who would know some names, looking for anyone who could just get me back on my meds. it wouldn't have been that hard, but i didn't find anyone to the point that i gave up and felt like no one could or would help me. so i planned every detail of a deliberate and lethal suicide and am super-lucky to have made it alive.
that was a year and a half ago, and i've been on med after med-- dozens in total-- and am now on about 12. i can't help but feel that if i had worked hard in therapy and made myself overcome this reluctance to talk, i could have avoided meds or could at least be on less. when i look back, it's really the meds that caused the worst problems-- the lexapro, the effexor, and most recently, narcotic painkillers. i ended up missing a year of college and ending up deciding just to graduate with my class having only three years of what are often referred to as the best years in a person's life. when i did get back into school, i was living in a fishbowl, was required to see a shrink 3x a week and check in with my "parole officer," a school shrink once every two weeks. it was overkill, and as someone who really values privacy and independence, it was really constricting and frustrating to have so many eyes watching for me to slip.
i'm not bitter about my experiences, but i am curious about what could have been. i used to be a big believer in meds and the biological, but experiencing so much trouble from meds recently, i know at least in theory that therapy can be healing and important. i just wish i could learn to make use of it and open up. there's a quote in an article someone sent me that i really like: "the world loves talent but pays off in character." all of us who have been through the ups and downs and struggles of mental illness will surely come out with a hell of a lot of character!
best wishes to you all. thanks for your support!
poster:CareBear04
thread:441031
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050111/msgs/441154.html