I've had generalized anxiety disorder and depression since a teenager. I didn't take any pills, I'd just drink to forget it. My mom would give me valiums when I had an episode. They'd go and come. Then they got worse and worse. So bad I had a nervous breakdown in 2005. They put me on a bunch of different pills and they only made it worse. I tried the natural thing, the raw food diet, different natural supplements, whatever I could. I had Reiki done and other spiritual stuff. I'd do well for six months and then I'd crash harder than before. More drugs, then I'd get sicker. Psychiatrists told me to call them if there was a problem. I told them there were problems, and they got mad at me and just told me to take the drugs. I was deemed a difficult patient because I wouldn't take the meds. Some of the meds made me suicidal. Like I'd be driving down the street and want to drive into a brick wall. The others just made me feel like Night of the Living Dead, plus I was still depressed. One drug they put me on, I felt like a heroine addicts, slurring and stumbling. I told her the pill made me high. She told me to take it anyway. I dumped it in the trash. I got yelled at for refusing to want to get better.
I tried a new fresh food, raw foods diet. I was doing great but then this time, my depression tried another thing on me. It will make me sleep deprived. I couldn't sleep for like five days in a row. I was so loopy everyone was ready to lock me away.
Here's the thing about depression. It's goes far beyond just feeling down. You feel ill. Like you took some drug that made you loopy, there were times when I actually felt my brain moving in my head. I had really bad heart palpitations. Have worn a heart monitor twice. You hurt physically yet all the medical tests reveal nothing. You feel like you've been buried in a dark pit where you feel nothing. You can't get out of bed some days. Someone could have pointed a rifle at your head and blown your head off and you wouldn't have cared. You refuse to be around knives and other metals because there's the voices telling you to do some of the most horrible things known to man. At least my spirit guides had louder voices. Then you lose the friends. You get the "well I've been down and I got over it."
Sorry Phil, it does not take a year to get over depression. For some people, it can be years.
Can you get by without the drugs. Yes, I believe you can. In the right setting, with the right therapies you can survive to not even need the stuff. But that's stuff for rich people. Honestly, if you didn't have to work, have the stress of paying bills, kids, a marriage, you could spend like a month up in the mountains and come back a whole new person. But again, unless you have no responsibilities or you're rich, ain't gonna happen.
I finally get a really good doctor. He let me sit there for 90 minutes and tell him everything. I'd never seen my old doctors for more than 15 minutes before they were throwing pills at me. I told him how I hated my doctors, the meds and so on. He looked at all my medical tests, my mental history and everything. He told me I needed to be on something because for so many years, it was obvious that I had a problem. There were only like three left I hadn't tried. I opted for Cymbalta. Then he put me on a sleeping pill, Tamazapam so I could sleep.
Where the hell were these drugs when I first got sick? My first week on Cymbalta I began to feel like my old self again. Happy like I was before I had my first breakdown from like five years before. I felt euphoric, happy even. And the sleeping pill, I could sleep again. I lost like 20 pounds of weight that I'd gained five years before because of my depression and the meds. I had 0 side effects and I feel normal. For five frickin' years I felt like a walking zombie because of the drugs, twitches, mood swings.
It's been 1.5 years and I'm still on the lowest dose. I've hadn't had one episode with my anxiety or panic.
Meds aren't all bad, you just have to look at the severity of the problem. If it's minor, some people could change their diet, make lifestyle changes and that might be a fix. However, if you find yourself getting worse, it may be worth it to look into getting a health workup to find out if a medical condition is causing the problem, a lack of supplements and so on. Then if you've done all that and you still aren't better? Then find a psychiatrist who will listen to you. Sorry, I hate to say this, but most of my doctors were foreign. They were the most likely to have an overload of patients, had no time for you and would just throw pills at you. I found an American doctor and one that would listen to me, take into account my medical history, not hand me a questionnaire to fill out and diagnose me from that. People have to realize that they have to be their own best advocate and not just accept what these people say because they're doctors.
Chaeya
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