Treatment Records

I began composing this over three months ago, and never finished. And I never will. Enjoy. Morning. I know that I said I'd shoot for thrice weekly in my last post, but it's just going to be whenever I muster the will to compose something worth sharing.  As of this writing, I've been taking bupropion for 43 days. I tolerate it fairly well (though I have had headaches in the last two weeks that were , and overall, it's more helpful than escitalopram was. However, I think I'm reaching the point where my brain chemistry has fully adjusted to the presence of the drug - the point where I stop seeing improvement, the point where it's all downhill. An episode rolled in hard and fast a few days ago, with the first inklings coming on July 31st and full-blown depressive hell the day after. It left me unable to do much more than scroll idly through Facebook; I missed an entire day of work. I'm still not fully recovered from that period, not by any stretch of the imag...

Morning.  I know that I said in my last post that I'd try to put things up at least a couple times a week. Clearly, I haven't done that. Trying to find the motivation to keep regular updates is difficult to say the least, between the sense that I'm not keeping up with what I need to do (so why should I devote time and effort to something not necessary?) and the feeling that no one's following this or cares, even though I know that that's not the case. The fact that sharing what goes on in my head and my perceptions of things is incredibly difficult as it is - even if I'm talking to someone I otherwise trust - doesn't make things any easier.  I'm going to try to keep things simpler, for my own sake. 

Hello, readers. It's been over a month since my last proper post. The most important event that has transpired is my transition from taking Lexapro to a new antidepressant, Wellbutrin (buproprion). I took Lexapro for a total of 133 days, and have been on buproprion for 27. So far, I've seen much more improvement on this drug than I did with escitalopram, and am experiencing fewer side effects. However, and this is critical, buproprion is a far less forgiving drug than Lexapro as far as the repercussions of missing doses. Missing just a single dose of buproprion results in a rapid and intense resurgence of all of the worst aspects of my depression - the feeling of worthlessness, the belief that no one cares about me, the sensation of profound separation, the desire to die. It was an experience that scared me such that the mere thought of not taking it, or not having access to my medicine, makes me anxious and fearful in a way that nothing else ever has. Overall, though, my depre...

I feel like shit. 18 Jul 2017 

25 Jun 2017 

Evening.  Today, I reached the point of truly realizing that I'm in greater need of professional help than I ever realized, or perhaps accepted. I need to focus more of my energy on getting the help I need, and actually trying to get better.  Today, I crossed lines that I should have never approached. I said things that I shouldn't have, to a person that didn't deserve it, in any way, shape, or form. And while deliberately insulting them felt good in the moment, I feel sick to my stomach thinking about it. I feel terrible about it now, terrible in a way that I know deep in my soul is pure, unadulterated and untouched by the depression that I fight.  If I'm never forgiven, I'll understand.  To the person I speak of, I know that I've tried your patience with me. I know that you've put up with far more crap from me than anyone should deal with, and I know that I've been an awful person to you, especially lately.  I know that words are empty, but I...

Evening.  Day 111 on Lexapro.  Mood: 6 in the field, ~4 in my room.  Today was another field day, only of the more interesting variety. My team surveyed all inventory sites and opportunistic roadsides (more or less places we pass and go "hey that's a good place to look for bees"), and those kinds of sites are far more enjoyable than agricultural fields. There's a much higher diversity of plants, and that greater plant diversity supports greater insect diversity. Plus, they tend to be just plain more interesting locations than fields of wheat or clover.  Ah, I paused for a long while as I was writing and I lost whatever train of thought I had.  The sites were interesting, I saw a ton of cool plants (but didn't catch a lot of bees). One of the sites was adjacent to a pasture where cows where grazing, and during some downtime, I walked up to the fence separating them from me. The level of intelligence in their wary faces as they watched this strange new...

Afternoon.  Day 110 on Lexapro.  Mood: Hazy, bimodal range from 3 to 6. I spent all day in the lab today; in fact, I'm still in the lab as I compose this post. Here is the only place that really feels like home to me, even though I can't get in before 7 or 8am, or after 9pm, or on the weekends.  Half of the day was spent making potassium cyanide kill jars, since I'm apparently the only member of the team that knows how. It's kind of nice being the cyanide master here; it makes me useful, gives me a reason to be kept around. Turning basic things into vital research tools is my only irreplaceable skill at this point, since there are other people that are good at hand-netting, and other people that are good at bee ID, and other people that are good with general insect ID, and other people that know plants.  I was a bit sad as I made the jars, though, since I've gotten much faster at producing them, and ran out of paper to make plugs (I use a tightly coiled st...

Afternoon. I'm not going to even bother justifying the late post; no one cares anyway. Day 109 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5, and 3.  Yesterday was the second day out in the field for the summer, even though I'd planned on being in the lab (two people canceled, and I wasn't about to just let the rest of the team carry extra weight just because I didn't want to be in the sun). It was even hotter than the first, though I felt significantly better about it.  I worked in a team of three, and we did three agricultural fields. They were mostly barren - in one field, only a single flowering clover was reported in vegetation surveys. As a result, trying to catch bees was hellish to say the least, around three hours of wandering around fields, looking for bees that just weren't there. Thankfully, though, there were stands of trees around the edges of each site, so we had some small refuge from the sun's rays. It wasn't a ton of shade, and each shaded area just go...

Afternoon.  Day 108 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5, +/- 1.  Today was the first field work day of the summer! It was VERY hot (the high was around 90), and I spent more or less all of my ten hour workday outside, but I enjoyed it. Field work, even when it's boring, gives me something to focus on. Something that isn't inside my mind.  My partner and I surveyed four sites - two agricultural fields, a wooded area, and a roadside. The ag fields had been hayed recently, so there were relatively few flowers growing. This meant very few bees - in a total of 320 person-minutes, or five and a third person-hours, we hand-netted fewer than 30 bees across both fields. The wooded area was no better. It was entirely dominated by a nightmarish amount of poison ivy, and the few flowers that were present ( Erigeron  sp., black eyed Susan, and wingstem) were all at the end of their blooms.  I'm extremely glad that I don't react to poison ivy. The stuff was nearly s...

Afternoon. Today's post is early, relatively speaking, because I have little better to do with my life at present.  Day 107 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5. I'm beginning to think that the effects I'd noticed when going off Lexapro for a few days - the mood boost, not the withdrawal - were some kind of elaborate placebo. Because my medicine (well, medicines, since Lexapro isn't the only thing I have to take to function from day to day) has been packed away for a few days, I've missed a couple doses, and there has been absolutely no uptick in how I feel.  Today was spent getting more situated in my new room. I still don't have a mattress, which sucks. My family got me a shelving unit, which is great. All of the books that I brought with me now have places to live. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a desk to my liking, so my room is without workspace. I need something that can hold 100lbs or more, since the larger of my two aquaria will be on my desk. T...

Evening, for the last time today.  Day 106 on Lexapro. Mood: 5.  Today, I made the 5 or 6 hour trip down to Carbondale, to get fully moved into the townhouse I'll be staying in for the next year. I slept for most of it, to minimize the time that was free and therefore available for brooding.  My room is nowhere near fit for living, as I still don't have a complete bed (the mattress was supposed to arrive today but didn't), desk, or chair.  This townhouse, while technically my home, doesn't feel like it. I might be paying to live here, but it doesn't feel like home.  Something I've noticed that my mind returns to a lot is this drive I have to pair off with someone suitable. It's probably an outgrowth of my perpetual loneliness, but I really, truly, strongly wish that I weren't single. There's not much I can do to change that fact of my existence, though; I barely understand why anyone would want to be friends with me, so greater involvem...

Evening, yet again.  Day 105 on Lexapro.  Mood: 7.5.   Yesterday, I met with a friend that I haven't seen in years (I think I'll call him...Kofinsa), to catch up. While waiting for him at the designated meeting place, this odd nervousness began bubbling up. This friend and I have some history - we had a thing for each other around the time when we first met, though that never went anywhere. From time to time, those old feelings still come up, though they're usually tainted with a lonely veneer these days.  I was worried and nervous for no reason, though. When he finally made it to the meeting place, and when I hugged him, breathing in that familiar scent, it was like no time had passed between seeing each other at all, like putting on your favorite pair of house shoes that you'd forgotten about in storage but still fit absolutely perfectly. We walked down Michigan Avenue for a while, looking for someplace shaded and quiet to park ourselves to picnic. Neither ...

Evening, again.  Day 104 on Lexapro.  Mood: ~6.  About half of Thursday was spent laid out on the couch, watching Supernatural, or Sherlock, or something else, on Netflix. I killed time, trying not to think, about anything.  Later in the day, Soul Sister paid a visit. We chatted, and hugged, and laughed. The two of us see each other so infrequently these days that any time together is precious beyond description. With her, I don't have to worry about filtering what I want to say, so generally, what comes out of my mouth is exactly what was in my head. On this occasion, it led to an interesting discussion on the revival of the gas chamber.  That's pretty much all that happened.  Until then.  10 Jun 2017 

Evening. Yes, I've missed quite a few days. I'll try to get myself back up to speed; if I can stay awake, there will be a bit of a post dump today.  Day 103 on Lexapro.  Mood: 5, I guess. It's hard to retroactively gauge how I was feeling, and then condense that into a single, neat number.  Since it's a few days out from the events of the 7th as I write this, I've probably forgotten small details as far as what went on, but that's fine. The gist is that I made my 7:45am flight back to O'Hare, got an Uber from the airport to the house of my childhood with my mother, and went to sleep later than I should have, considering how long I'd been awake.  Some inconsequential information that I do remember from the day: I slept through my 4am and 4:30am alarms, and was awoken by the sound of Favorite Person knocking on my door.  We found one member of our party that had disappeared the prior day, but lost another.  For some unknowable reason, Favorit...

Evening.  Day 102 on Lexapro, though I'm going to miss tonight's dose for reasons I'll discuss here.  Mood: 5.  Well, today was supposed to be the day I made it back to the US, but things don't always go as planned.  The study abroad group collectively got up around 4:45, and we all packed into The Van at 5:30 to drive to Glasgow - one member of our group had a flight at 9am, which was delayed to 9:45, but we needed to get there early. And early to the airport we were - we made it around 7:30ish. Myself, Favorite Person, and two other ladies had a 2:15pm flight from Glasgow to Heathrow, and check-in wasn't until noon, so we were forced to sit in the airport for five hours before we could even check in. Thankfully, I had books, so I read for a while. When I tired of that, I chatted with Favorite Person and one of the other ladies, Claudia, about various books.  Check-in time came around, and it went without issue. My checked bag was around 42lbs, which ...

Evening.  Day 101 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5.  Today is my last full day in Scotland, and that being so, there was very little going out and about. I went to Dundee, to get a Scotland hoodie and a tartan tammy hat (I adore hats, and this one looks really good on me, and doesn't squish my hair too much). While in Dundee, I checked in for my flights tomorrow. It was a little bit frustrating to say the least - I had to give Favorite Person my login information for my university email so that she could send me my reservation number. I didn't get a seat near her, for either flight, and that fact bothers me a lot more than it bothers her.  While in Dundee, I also purchased some things from Lush. Got a few samples for my mother as well. I'm considering telling her to not open her gifts from here until her birthday, since I won't be in Chicago for it.  Dinner today was pulled pork, mashed sweet potatoes, and this amazingly creamy corn. I ate a lot of corn. Dess...

Evening.   Morning. Definitely morning.  Afternoon. I'm a bit of a mess.  I started writing and then forgot to finish. Whoops.  Day 100 on Lexapro. Wow, is that kind of a milestone? I guess that now's a good time to reflect on how things have gone for me on this drug so far.  When I started out on escitalopram, I noticed a distinct uptick in my mood, a floaty feel-good period that lasted about ten days, before I gradually returned to a baseline of sorts. There were no depressive episodes for a while; eventually, though, they began to creep back into the picture. Though it became clear to me after a certain point that the Lexapro wasn't helping, my psychiatrist suggested that I continue taking it anyway, to see if a longer span on it would provide greater benefit. It did not. Eventually, I began experimenting with stopping cold turkey, to see how it would affect me (and against the advice of every source I've read on the topic). The first time was entirely ...

Afternoon.  Day 99 on Lexapro. In a foggy, painful moment around 3am, I took a double dose, which constitutes 40mg of escitalopram oxalate. It'll either significantly boost my mood, or make me feel significantly worse. We'll see tomorrow.  Mood: 4. Today was rough; I'm feeling very worn out psychologically as I write this.  I spent today largely in bed again. It took a while, but eventually I found the motivation to get up, first to go to the bathroom and again to eat. My last real meal was two days ago, and I hadn't consumed any water in that span either, so I was kind of dizzy and lightheaded for a while.  A plate was set aside for me from breakfast today - bacon, sausage, black pudding, baked beans, some sort of amazingly chewy bread, Portabella mushrooms, and a fried egg. It was good, save for the mushrooms, which I didn't touch on principle. I wished that there had been more of the bread.  My immediate response to everyone returning to the house ...

Evening, nonexistent readership. I feel like garbage as I write this, but no matter the depths of my pain, I don't get to opt out of posting.  Day 98 on Lexapro. I took another half dose last night, and while I'm no longer experiencing withdrawal, the psychological symptoms came down hard. The thought of taking a double, triple, quardruple dose just to make my bad situation worse crossed my mind several times today. A massive dose of an SSRI won't kill me, but it will cause problems.  Mood: 2.5 - 3. This is the lowest that I've felt in a while. It's a dense fog of pain, with space for little else.  Today, I allowed myself to be bedridden. I left my room once, to go to the bathroom, and have consumed nothing save for a bag of crisps that happened to be in arm's reach. I was alone all day, under covers too hot and heavy for sleeping, miserable.  Parts of me wanted to reach out to someone, anyone , for some kind of comfort, and I did utilize the Crisis Text...

why is  everything  just  so LOUD breathing and sighing and turning, rolling  shifting so loud so loud  so loud   the sounds so loud the sounds sleep runs 1:29am so loud so loud can't sleep

Evening.  Day 97 on Lexapro. I took a half-dose yesterday, which went a long ways towards staving off withdrawal. The ibuprofen I took also helped, which I'll note for the future. For the potential to help, I truly hate the way that I can't just stop taking an antidepressant, at least not without causing myself discomfort/distress.  Mood: 5. Most of today was spent sleeping, so there wasn't a whole lot of feel going on. Thankfully.  Happy Pride Month, dear readers!  Today was another day in transit.  We boarded the ferry a bit before 11am. I ate too much breakfast there - a bacon roll, sausages, croissant, raspberry danish, chips, overly greasy mac and cheese, ice cream. Felt disgusting after a certain point, but I was determined to finish the food I'd purchased. The attempt was unsuccessful, and ended up resulting in my feeling a little seasick for the entire 90-odd minute ride. As usual, I hung by Favorite Person the entire time. At one point, while ...