What Antidepressants Have Been Doing for Me

I wrote a lot about my decision to start taking Wellbutrin in June, about my fears and hopes surrounding the drug and about the experiences that prompted me to finally seek chemical assistance. I haven't, though, followed up to tell you what it's been like for me to take that pill ever day, what kinds of effects it's had on my emotions and my life.

The easy answer is that it's been awesome and very helpful.

In more detail: taking the medication does in fact make it easier not to sink into the moods I used to fall into so quickly. I can still react to things, I'll still get upset if something is upsetting, but it passes much more quickly. I react, I feel, and then I get over it. Before the meds, a relatively small thing could send me into a funk for days. When a few bad things happened in a row, that was a depressive episode waiting to happen. That feeling of looming despair is almost gone.

I've also only had one migraine since starting these pills. That is remarkable. For a while there, I was getting one every month.

My migraines are incredibly debilitating; I get blind spots, flashing lights, numbness in one or more of my limbs and sometimes my face, complete disorientation, inability to come up with words, splitting headache, dizziness, exhaustion, sensitivity to light and sound, and nausea. I can't work or do much of anything for the first four hours of a migraine, and am sometimes slowed down for days afterwards. So yeah, I'm happy to be having fewer of those.

The pills have also definitely been helping my ADHD. I didn't notice this as much through direct ability to focus better, which is sort of hard to track, but I noticed its lack when I missed a few pills the other week. I forgot, like, four things I was supposed to do for my boss and couldn't concentrate for shit. That's been better now that I'm on top of my meds again.

I've also had no side effects, so altogether I'm a happy camper. It's hard to believe it's taken me so long to take the step, but I know I did it at the right time, in my own time. I can't really ask for more than that.

1 comments:

R. said...

Yay! I'm so happy to hear that it's helping!

On living, loving, learning, and fucking with the materials I've got at hand.

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