I haven't posted here in years. Not since I was about 17, but I still come and read regularly. I posted in the 'mid 20's' thread, and I guess I wanted to say a lot more than I could there. I'm not much of a writer, so i'm sorry if it's a bit hard to read. But this is my story of experiencing depression hell and coming back out the other side.
This is going to be a major TL;DR for a lot of people, but for anybody in the same situation, this story is for you.
Chapter 1 - The time of ignorance.
I have always been a 'strange' kid. Not many friends for the majority of my childhood, I always seemed to be a bit weird for people, say stuff out of context, get overly excited about stuff or overly cynical. I always thought that this shit was normal, and was really confused by why everybody else always seemed so level? Well come 13-14, I started to make friends pretty easily. People wrote my strange tendencies off pretty quickly when they found I could be a pretty chill dude to be around. I backed off a lot as well, and spent a lot of time in social situations withdrawing so as not to say anything dumb. Girls were never a big part of my life, I had one fling with a junkie chick when I was 15, and had a few 'couple of month'ers through high school, that's about it until I got with my current girlfriend of 5 years.
So high school was going alright, smoking a lot of herb, hanging with some pretty cool people. I started getting a tendency to be unable to control myself in threatening situations, though. I did some bad shit, I broke my hand on a dudes head and have never regretted something more in my life. The next 6 months of my life were spent in solitary, taking a LOT of Oxy, and just thinking and regretting. I can't explain how much this event shaped my future. At this point, I feel my psyche was cut in half. The half which was angry, frustrated, confused and scared. This half of my brain had no impulse control, and would get me in trouble a lot. The other half was my depressive side, the part which was self-pitying, sad, anxious, and would very regularly remind me that life wasn't worth living. I also started to notice more and more how specifically different my moods would be, in comparison to my friends and girlfriend. I would be bouncing off the walls, feeling like I was coming up on good speed or something for the morning, and then just want to sleep the day away in a little ball of depression come the afternoon. All of this lead my mum and girlfriend to ask me to go see someone.
Chapter 2 - Poison.
So off the the doctor I went. Having never really trusted doctors since seeing a few psychiatrists when I was a kid that were arseholes, I was very apprehensive. I figured if I was going to do it, to do it right. I told the actually pretty chill doctor about all my drug history. Told her a lot of shit that I had never told anybody, and was incredibly surprised and amazed when she thought nothing of it. I was inspired! She told me there were others like me, and that it was common etc. and this made me incredibly happy! I was starting to feel like I could live a normal life, with a normal job etc. She gave me some Xannies which I had heaps of experience with recreationally, so I was pretty keen on that haha. She also gave me this weird shit i'd never heard of - Citalopram. This stuff went well, I was happy and less depressed etc. for a good 6 months, I thought it was the bees knees! But alas, it stopped working. So I went back and explained what was going on. This is when shit got real - Effexor was her answer. Now I will apologise in advance for anybody who is on this stuff, or has a positive view of it, but this is my opinion. It is fucking poison. The first few weeks were hell, as I was promised it would get better, and it did. Kind of. I found myself back to that kind of happy way after a while, and was pretty content. Although my anxiety was still there, and the mood swings were still there, it was lessened. About a year in, I crashed, hard. It stopped doing it's job, and I was in a living hell. Living out of my car, never seeing my family, not giving my girlfriend the attention that she deserved. I was seeing the doctor fairly regularly at this point, as she was pretty worried about me as was everybody else. She upped my dose. 150mg a day - not the largest out there but enough to be a bit heavy on my brain. I did this for a year, living in a constant state of waiting for the drugs to work again. They never did.
Chapter 3 - Re-diagnosis and cocktails.
So one day, my doctor and I had another heart to heart. She was convinced, I was BiPolar1. Characterised, she said, by how I slip into psychosis after a 'manic' period (i'd spend a day of transition in a paranoid state consisting of illogical thought pattern and auditory hallucinations after a few days of what she calls 'manic'). I didn't really understand much of this, but she assured me that it was what was going on. So she started me on Lithium and told me to stop taking my Effexor. The next 6 months of my life were insane. She stopped my script so I had no way of weaning off correctly. She told me it could be done in a week. I started doctor shopping to get my Effexor as any more than a few hours of missing a dose and I would turn into mush. Head spinning, cold sweats, vomiting, hallucinations and an incredible urge to kill myself.
One day I decided that i'd had enough of the bullshit. By this point I was feeling numb, all the time. No more BiPolar, no more manic, no more emotion at all other than crippling depression. I was now still on Effexor and Lithium, as well as smoking a LOT of weed as it was the only thing that could give me any form of positive emotion. I started weaning myself off Effexor and just stopped taking my Lithium. And with that, I was insane again. Doctor said it's normal. At this point I had no sympathy for her and decided she had no idea what she was doing. After all she was prescribing and taking me off meds without second thought every second week or so. Constantly changing my diagnosis. I bailed the situation, went on tour as a roadie to a friend of mine who's a magician. Spent a few weeks out in the bush, withdrawing in the back of a van in searingly hot weather. I wouldn't eat for days straight because it hurt to much and I had no appetite. There was a day there that I didn't think I was going to make it out. I recorded a goodbye message for my girlfriend on my phone, and then set to work out how I was going to do this. If it wasn't for my friend I was out with, it would have been done. I just couldn't work out how to do it without inconveniencing him, which strange as it sounds, was my biggest concern over the whole ordeal haha. I was not in a good place. He helped me through a lot of shit, and while I don't think he knows it, he taught me that life was worth living again.
Chapter 4 - A new life.
So we rented a house together in a small country town 200km inland from the beach town I had grown up in. I'm currently completely clean of all drugs (other than the bud, but it doesn't count), and life is looking up! I'm broke as hell, but looking for work. I've started recording music again. He yells at me to get out of bed every day at 10, and g's me up to do something creative with him. Painting, bush art, or just a walk down to the creek. I've started skateboarding again and the excersize feels great! Most of all, I'm alive. I still have my girlfriend, my parents are regaining their faith in my existence, and the friends who are still around after all the bullshit have proven themselves to be the best friends I could have. Sure a lot forgot about me while I was off battling my demons, but the few who stayed I owe my life to. I don't really know how to end this, as I simply wanted to write this as a message of hope for all those out there currently going through any of this.
I'm 21. I have friends who haven't made it to this age, who have checked out early, and I know why they did what they did. I'm just happy that I didn't.
When in doubt, I listen to this. I recommend that you do, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC3IrqUpm9U
This is going to be a major TL;DR for a lot of people, but for anybody in the same situation, this story is for you.
Chapter 1 - The time of ignorance.
I have always been a 'strange' kid. Not many friends for the majority of my childhood, I always seemed to be a bit weird for people, say stuff out of context, get overly excited about stuff or overly cynical. I always thought that this shit was normal, and was really confused by why everybody else always seemed so level? Well come 13-14, I started to make friends pretty easily. People wrote my strange tendencies off pretty quickly when they found I could be a pretty chill dude to be around. I backed off a lot as well, and spent a lot of time in social situations withdrawing so as not to say anything dumb. Girls were never a big part of my life, I had one fling with a junkie chick when I was 15, and had a few 'couple of month'ers through high school, that's about it until I got with my current girlfriend of 5 years.
So high school was going alright, smoking a lot of herb, hanging with some pretty cool people. I started getting a tendency to be unable to control myself in threatening situations, though. I did some bad shit, I broke my hand on a dudes head and have never regretted something more in my life. The next 6 months of my life were spent in solitary, taking a LOT of Oxy, and just thinking and regretting. I can't explain how much this event shaped my future. At this point, I feel my psyche was cut in half. The half which was angry, frustrated, confused and scared. This half of my brain had no impulse control, and would get me in trouble a lot. The other half was my depressive side, the part which was self-pitying, sad, anxious, and would very regularly remind me that life wasn't worth living. I also started to notice more and more how specifically different my moods would be, in comparison to my friends and girlfriend. I would be bouncing off the walls, feeling like I was coming up on good speed or something for the morning, and then just want to sleep the day away in a little ball of depression come the afternoon. All of this lead my mum and girlfriend to ask me to go see someone.
Chapter 2 - Poison.
So off the the doctor I went. Having never really trusted doctors since seeing a few psychiatrists when I was a kid that were arseholes, I was very apprehensive. I figured if I was going to do it, to do it right. I told the actually pretty chill doctor about all my drug history. Told her a lot of shit that I had never told anybody, and was incredibly surprised and amazed when she thought nothing of it. I was inspired! She told me there were others like me, and that it was common etc. and this made me incredibly happy! I was starting to feel like I could live a normal life, with a normal job etc. She gave me some Xannies which I had heaps of experience with recreationally, so I was pretty keen on that haha. She also gave me this weird shit i'd never heard of - Citalopram. This stuff went well, I was happy and less depressed etc. for a good 6 months, I thought it was the bees knees! But alas, it stopped working. So I went back and explained what was going on. This is when shit got real - Effexor was her answer. Now I will apologise in advance for anybody who is on this stuff, or has a positive view of it, but this is my opinion. It is fucking poison. The first few weeks were hell, as I was promised it would get better, and it did. Kind of. I found myself back to that kind of happy way after a while, and was pretty content. Although my anxiety was still there, and the mood swings were still there, it was lessened. About a year in, I crashed, hard. It stopped doing it's job, and I was in a living hell. Living out of my car, never seeing my family, not giving my girlfriend the attention that she deserved. I was seeing the doctor fairly regularly at this point, as she was pretty worried about me as was everybody else. She upped my dose. 150mg a day - not the largest out there but enough to be a bit heavy on my brain. I did this for a year, living in a constant state of waiting for the drugs to work again. They never did.
Chapter 3 - Re-diagnosis and cocktails.
So one day, my doctor and I had another heart to heart. She was convinced, I was BiPolar1. Characterised, she said, by how I slip into psychosis after a 'manic' period (i'd spend a day of transition in a paranoid state consisting of illogical thought pattern and auditory hallucinations after a few days of what she calls 'manic'). I didn't really understand much of this, but she assured me that it was what was going on. So she started me on Lithium and told me to stop taking my Effexor. The next 6 months of my life were insane. She stopped my script so I had no way of weaning off correctly. She told me it could be done in a week. I started doctor shopping to get my Effexor as any more than a few hours of missing a dose and I would turn into mush. Head spinning, cold sweats, vomiting, hallucinations and an incredible urge to kill myself.
One day I decided that i'd had enough of the bullshit. By this point I was feeling numb, all the time. No more BiPolar, no more manic, no more emotion at all other than crippling depression. I was now still on Effexor and Lithium, as well as smoking a LOT of weed as it was the only thing that could give me any form of positive emotion. I started weaning myself off Effexor and just stopped taking my Lithium. And with that, I was insane again. Doctor said it's normal. At this point I had no sympathy for her and decided she had no idea what she was doing. After all she was prescribing and taking me off meds without second thought every second week or so. Constantly changing my diagnosis. I bailed the situation, went on tour as a roadie to a friend of mine who's a magician. Spent a few weeks out in the bush, withdrawing in the back of a van in searingly hot weather. I wouldn't eat for days straight because it hurt to much and I had no appetite. There was a day there that I didn't think I was going to make it out. I recorded a goodbye message for my girlfriend on my phone, and then set to work out how I was going to do this. If it wasn't for my friend I was out with, it would have been done. I just couldn't work out how to do it without inconveniencing him, which strange as it sounds, was my biggest concern over the whole ordeal haha. I was not in a good place. He helped me through a lot of shit, and while I don't think he knows it, he taught me that life was worth living again.
Chapter 4 - A new life.
So we rented a house together in a small country town 200km inland from the beach town I had grown up in. I'm currently completely clean of all drugs (other than the bud, but it doesn't count), and life is looking up! I'm broke as hell, but looking for work. I've started recording music again. He yells at me to get out of bed every day at 10, and g's me up to do something creative with him. Painting, bush art, or just a walk down to the creek. I've started skateboarding again and the excersize feels great! Most of all, I'm alive. I still have my girlfriend, my parents are regaining their faith in my existence, and the friends who are still around after all the bullshit have proven themselves to be the best friends I could have. Sure a lot forgot about me while I was off battling my demons, but the few who stayed I owe my life to. I don't really know how to end this, as I simply wanted to write this as a message of hope for all those out there currently going through any of this.
I'm 21. I have friends who haven't made it to this age, who have checked out early, and I know why they did what they did. I'm just happy that I didn't.
When in doubt, I listen to this. I recommend that you do, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC3IrqUpm9U
