Tom Cruise can kiss my ass
It's interesting how we can judge people for doing things that we do ourselves. Alice, of Finslippy, recently weaned herself off of an anti-anxiety medication. I remember thinking that it wasn't the best idea I'd ever heard, especially after she later posted about feeling super anxious.
My whole life I have suffered minor depression. Before it was formally diagnosed I was pretty much in denial about it. I always told myself that my problems weren't any worse than anyone else's. I always thought my crying jags were just me being overdramatic. I had a boyfriend once who was severely bi-polar and was on lithium. He was barely functional some days. That was a real problem. My life was just a little sad sometimes. Four and a half years ago things came to a head and I realized that my depression was real, and went on medication.
Medication helped immensely. Antidepressants aren't like aspirin or cold medicine or antibiotics. It's not like you take them and right away you feel better. It's more like your life is a mess, then you start taking them, and a few weeks go by and you realize that your recent past has been much less of a mess. I think maybe if enough time goes by people can forget what that messy life looked like, and they think that they don't need the medicine anymore because life is fine. Good even. I think that's what happened to me. The mess was gone, and what I had instead was not a perfect life by any means, but the mini-messes and bumps in the road were by far more bearable and could be surpassed.
I was off the medication for a while when I was unemployed, and it was manageable. I got back on them as soon as I got health insurance again, but somehow they didn't seem to work as well. My doctor prescribed a name brand drug rather than a generic, and something about it, some formulary difference, worked like a charm for me. I got to the place where things were good again. And that got me back to the place where I thought I was better again. I've had a prescription just sitting around for almost a year that I never bothered to get filled because life was good.
But, as it inevitably does with a disease like mine, things got bad again. Of course, when I realized that I needed the medicine, I couldn't find that suddenly very important piece of paper. I could have called my doctor and gotten a new prescription, but I didn't want her to know I had never gotten the original one filled. I found it finally the other day, and took it tonight to get it filled. But they wouldn't give it to me. My insurance company wants me to try a generic first unless they get a signed form from my doctor saying the generics have failed and that there is specific cause for them to pay for me to have the much more expensive name brand. So now my doctor will find out anyway, and I can only pray she signs off without me having to go in and see her.
I didn't realize how close to the edge I was until the pharmacist told me that they couldn't fill it and that they'd call my doctor tomorrow and try to fill it then. I managed to make it to my car before I started crying, but it wasn't easy. The crying jag that hit as soon as I was in the car was the first that I've allowed myself to have in a long time. I don't let myself cry because of that old programming that says that it's not so bad, that I'm just tired or being overly dramatic, or I'm just feeling sorry for myself when I should be doing something about whatever was upsetting me. I don't like to realize that life is getting to me, that my disease is back in control.
When I first went on the drugs I was terrified. I didn't want my mental state dependent on a pill. I remembered what the medications had done to my boyfriend, though I knew that he was suffering from something much more severe, I didn't want to be like that. But even after being on medication and knowing the world of difference it makes, sometimes I still think I don't need it. So far I've always been wrong. And I'm pretty sure that for me the decision to not be on the drugs will always be the wrong one. So why do I fight it? I wish I had the answer to that, but I don't. So here is hoping for a brighter tomorrow, and hoping that there is a bottle of little white pills waiting at the end of it so that I can go back to enjoying my life and not just having to get through another day.