#and I need escitalopram

[kirk-goes-to-gallifrey]

.

[kulliare]

tagged by @shrips for 9 books you'd like to read in the new year! ty for the tag-- i tag @halfagod @albatrossisland @eponine119 @tru-lyly

[daughter-of-sapph0]

I know it's medical student syndrome. but like, looking at the symptoms of bpd I can't help thinking "damn it would probably be easier to make a list of all of these things that didn't apply to me"

[emcant]

I want my unmedicated years back

[ilynpilled]

going to the hospital in like 20 minutes🫡

[macgyvermedical]

My Experience in Inpatient Psych

So I know a lot of people on here have talked about their experience in inpatient psych facilities, but I'd like to add mine just to give all you writers out there a writer-focused one. It's below the cut just in case you have to sit this one out for your own reasons.

To give you some background, I am 30 years old and have had hallucinations since about 16 and bizarre intrusive thoughts (someone living in my house that wasn't supposed to be there, somebody poisoned my walls, etc...) for about a decade, as well as very severe anxiety since I was about 3 years old. This is something not a lot of people know about me, even people I am friends with IRL.

The only thing I am actually diagnosed with is anxiety, which I'm starting to think is a failing of the psych systems I have been a part of. I have had counseling off and on and prior to this hospitalization I took escitalopram, aripiprazole, and gabapentin prescribed by my primary care doctor- all for the severe anxiety.

Quite frankly, I should have been in inpatient psych at least a few times before this, and it's by sheer dumb luck that I've survived to continue this blog.

On Friday, I was at home alone and made a few pretty bad decisions. I wont say what they were because frankly they're embarrassing, but they have to do with self-harm. I was scheduled to work Saturday and at about 9pm I realized that if I drove myself to work I would crash my car. Since my wife drives me sometimes, I figured I would just ask her to.

I told my wife and she asked- even if she drove me to work, since I was a nurse, would I be able to keep myself safe around insulin or other potentially dangerous drugs? I couldn't answer that question. We talked for a couple hours and came to the conclusion that I probably needed to go to the emergency department.

At this point I figured they would evaluate me and release me because I couldn't possibly meet the criteria for inpatient. I was wrong in this assumption. After telling them the decisions I had made that day, the feelings of wanting to die in a car crash, plus about a previous attempt, they recommended inpatient. Turns out, when you're a nurse, you can make some really bad life choices with the knowledge you have, and they didn't want to take any chances.

I was given paper scrubs to wear (so I couldn't hurt myself with my clothing or a hospital gown). I was also given a patient companion (someone who sits in the room and makes sure you don't hurt yourself).

They gave me the option of signing myself in voluntarily, or putting me on a writ of detention. A writ of detention is a piece of paperwork that allows a medical professional or law enforcement officer to hold someone for 3 days in a psychiatric facility against the person's will for the purposes of psychiatric treatment. Whether you sign the voluntary or get placed on a writ, you cannot sign yourself out. You need to wait until the psychiatrist taking care of you thinks you're ready to go.

I didn't believe at this point I needed to go inpatient, but I took the voluntary option because there are some perks, like being able to leave within 3 days if appropriate. At this point I was convinced I was probably going to have to call off work Saturday and Sunday, probably be out of the hospital Monday, have a few days to rest and be back at work on my next scheduled shift after that, which was Thursday.

Well, that's not what happened.

Because of some of the decisions I had made, along with bed availability, they wanted to keep me in the observation unit overnight before they sent me to psych. I stayed overnight in a unit that shares staff with the unit I work on, so I was taken care of by my coworkers. This was surprisingly not that bad. I like my coworkers and they were really professional about it.

Saturday I felt like I was in a fog all day. I couldn't watch TV. I couldn't color or write. I worked out some in my hospital room and paced the halls once or twice. Mostly I hung out with my wife and occasionally talked with my companion, but even talking was difficult. I had refused ativan because I felt like I had no hope of finding a medication that made me feel better, and I figured I didn't want to take the one medication that might actually work and then not be able to get it ever again.

Around 7PM I took a 45 minute ambulance ride to the facility. Getting my blood pressure taken is a big anxiety trigger for me, but my brain felt so scrambled that I couldn't express this well. They took it every 10 minutes on the ride there and by the time I got there it was in the 170s/100s (BP goes up when you're having severe anxiety). This was not their fault of course, but no matter how much I thought about telling them or refusing the BPs, I just couldn't do it.

When I got to the facility I was greeted by a tech who took my BP again (150s/90s this time), showed me around and looked through my personal belongings (basically just the clothing I came in with since my wife took my phone and wallet knowing I wouldn't be able to have them on the unit) to make sure I didn't have anything I wasn't allowed to on the unit. She showed me around my room and was really thorough with telling me how things worked, what the rules were, etc..

The rules included:

No patients allowed in other patients rooms

No personal belongings that had strings, belts, or laces, or that could be used as a weapon

No caffeine after lunch and no free access to caffeine

No personal electronics (including eReaders and watches). There was a TV in the day room and 2 phones mounted to the wall for patient use

A little later my nurse came into my room and asked me a ton of questions. Here's the thing about any hospital- you get asked the same questions over and over. By the time I'd gotten there I could give my story in under a minute. Or at least, that's what it felt like. There were only 2 clocks on the unit, at the nurses stations.

The unit itself was laid out in a "T" shape. There was a main nurse's station at the place where the two hallways intersected. At the end of the long hallway there was another smaller nurses station, a cafeteria/day room, and a "comfort room" which was a small room off the day room that had a collection of the oldest and worst donated books that have every come together on a bookshelf.

I did some pacing that night and then went to bed, but didn't sleep particularly well.

On Sunday morning the tech woke me up to take my blood pressure, which was, not unsurprisingly, still high. It was about 5 AM so I got up and paced the longer of the corridors for about an hour. Breakfast was served at 8 and the food wasn't that bad. The coffee was about the worst I'd ever drank, which I suppose helped with the no caffeine goals.

Just after breakfast I met with a psychiatrist on an iPad for about half a minute, and I'm not exaggerating there. The only questions he asked were whether I was suicidal and whether I would be fine with tripling my dose of aripiprazole in light of the hallucinations. I had had a 50-lb weight gain in the last year so I asked to switch my med. He switched the med to cariprazine. That was all.

I had a much longer meeting with my nurse later. All the nurses did an excellent job of assessing me, asked tons of questions, and it seemed like they really tried to figure out what was going on. That day I also met with a social worker, and a therapist, and a nurse practitioner. Each of them did an assessment to see what my needs were while I was there.

There was also a music therapy session where I cried my eyes out to Because of You by Kelly Clarkson.

I was really tired by the end of the day but I also didn't think I could sleep so I asked for trazodone. I should clarify that when I say "I" in this piece I really mean my wife convinced me to ask because I legitimately didn't believe I needed or deserved any of the things I asked for at this point. To my utter shock and surprise, they gave me the trazodone.

My first night on trazodone was amazing and I realized I hadn't slept well in a long time. With trazodone I fell asleep and stayed asleep until the blood pressure cart came rolling down the hallway at 5am. The second I got up on Monday morning I was wide awake.

I paced a lot Monday. I went to a goals session in the morning where I gave a goal to write 3/4 of a page. I didn't know if I could do it or what I was even going to write about, but I know I like to write and it might be a reasonable introduction to getting back to life.

I also was having kind of a rough day brain-wise. My brain was coming up with all the ways I could hurt myself in my room. There weren't a lot of them, but it was trying. I told the nurse during her assessment and she asked if I felt I could keep myself safe. I asked her what she would do if I said no. She said they could move me to a more secure part of the unit and give me more supervision. I knew what part of the unit she was talking about, and I didn't want to go there (no space to pace, and pacing was keeping me alive right then). So I told her I could keep myself safe (if anything, the idea of moving was good motivation to do stay safe in itself). I hallucinated some black and white blood cells falling from the ceiling and music coming out of my vents.

I also had another meeting with the social worker to figure out discharge plans. I voiced in the meeting that I wasn't sure that I could trust my wife, since it felt like at the time she was the one who exaggerated my symptoms to get me in here. The social worker said we had really good communication skills, since this was something I felt needed to be said in front of both of them and we both stayed really calm through the whole thing.

I finished the day with an art therapy session that really helped me turn a corner. The prompt was to draw the emotion(s) you felt right now on one side of the paper, and to draw the emotions you wished you could feel on the other side. For the first time I realized that my emotional state was actually really bad and that the suicidality hadn't come out of nowhere, and that I needed help.

When my wife came to visit later that night I was able to tell her about my breakthrough, even though I still felt a little bit like she had done something to get me in here and I still wasn't sure I needed to be inpatient.

Tuesday was a lot better. I felt like I had woken up out of some kind of fog and I had no idea how long I'd been in it. I went to goals group, a spiritual group, and group occupational therapy. My goal was to be more social and I made a friend and we paced together and worked out. I read a quarter of The Martian by Andy Weir (my wife brought it for me because the best thing on the bookshelf was Louis L'Amour). I wrote about how good I suddenly felt. Turns out, I thought, a few days of good sleep, lots of therapy, and a new medication or two will really change things.

A quick side note about The Martian. I highly recommend it to anyone who is chilling in a psych hospital but has the ability to read while they're there (I sure didn't the first few days). I don't really know why, but the first few times I read it, I felt like they had created this superhuman character in Mark Watney just so they could throw a ton of wild things at him for the story. This time reading it, as a suddenly not suicidal person, I realized anyone with Mark's skill would have done the same thing and not just died on Sol 7 to get it over with.

Wednesday I woke up not feeling nearly as good as Tuesday, but still like the fog had lifted. I was a little disappointed (I hallucinated my cat (thanks for coming to visit me, Corina), some spiders, and just felt kinda meh. But I remembered how good I felt the day before, and that really kept me hopeful about going home.

I saw the psychiatrist again and asked to go home. He joked a little about me staying till Christmas, but ultimately he said as soon as his note was in I could go. I ended up leaving at about 12:30 with my wife.

In the time since leaving I have required a lot of support from my wife. The medications are all locked up, so are the blades and anything I could use to hurt myself. My wife has me in eyeshot at all times. I can't drive due to intrusive thoughts, so she does all the driving now. I quit my job because I feel like it was a big part of why I ended up as bad as I was. As someone who has been a pretty independent person this is a big change of pace, but something that is really necessary to my healing.

Ultimately at the end of my hospital stay, I was prescribed escitalopram, gabapentin, trazodone, cariprazine, and then a few days later propranolol. I'm currently on a total of 5 psych meds and honestly I don't care one bit because its so much better than being not on them at this point in my life.

[vickyyyescoolv2]

GIRLS OMG IM SO HAPPY

I went to the psychiatrist today and I told her I wasn’t eating because I was scared of binging/purging so she decided on changing my SSRLS (escitalopram) for fluoxetine FOR APPETITE SUPPRESSIONNNNNN (with the condition I need to eat and gain weight)

Only if she knew I won’t be eating nor gaining weight

I hope she can forgive me for this lost of trust

[actualbird]

thoughts on nxx as antidepressants please

weeping at this ask. i see my blog has reached INCOMPREHENSIBLE levels of nxx headcanons. im so honored....

that being said, i dont have much experience with antidepressants actually, so to honor the "write what you know" adage, i will be veering outside of antidepressants to anxiety meds and mood stabilizers that i do have more lived experience with. that being said, im not a doctor, but a patient. take all this with a grain of salt.

without further ado

the nxx boys as psychiatric medications ive taken

luke = pregabalin (used to treat anxiety, but ALSO used to treat nerve pain. i was prescribed this not for psych reasons actually but to treat a neurological issue i had, and i wouldnt be surprised if pregabalin was included in luke's list of treatments for his own neurological illness. the anxiety bit also seems fitting for luke because hes the type to endlessly worry himself with all the worse case scenarios, sometimes to his (and others') detriment)

-

artem = escitalopram. (baby's first antidepressant!! it was my first, and i think it fits artem well cuz it's used to treat both depression and anxiety, two things i think he has an abundance of. artem gets prescribed this and immediately goes into a self-worth crisis for even needing to take medication. "im really faulty, arent i..." artem thinks. chin up, artem, it aint all that bad!)

-

vyn = aripiprazole. (im currently taking aripiprazole as an adjunct medication working together with another thing im taking, and that seems to fit vyn's role as a psychiatrist/psychologist well; somebody to help you along the way in ur mental health journey along with other treatments. plus, aripiprazole is similarly hard to say just like adjudicator)

-

marius = lamotrigine. (this is an anti-epileptic medication thats also used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder, and this one is marius primarily because it's the meds i have the hiGHEST DOSAGE FOR, THE PILL IS SO BIG, IT IS MAKING ITSELF KNOWN, just like marius' general 'in your face' facade. my reasoning for this is weakest among the boys, yes, but who knows. marius could have bipolar disorder like me. actually, all of the boys and mc could be bipolar. they all found each other like manic depressive magnets. sorry, what was this part about? i seem to have meandered. oh right. MARIUS. LAMOTRIGINE.)

-

thank you for this ask, anon. it gave me a hearty laugh

[weirdpersonifiedpills]

What animal you have in mind for Ritalin to be?

Ritalin has been a hard one for me since Concerta and Ritalin are technically the same medication, but I feel like they need separate characters. They’re names for the same medication, methylphenidate, but they’re different in doses and release. I switched from Concerta to Ritalin when I needed to up my dose since the next dose up of Concerta was too high for me. The stimulant meds are squirrels!

(Pardon the old art and older art here)

Ritalin came first name-wise. Methylphenidate was synthesized in 1944 in Germany, and the man who synthesized it named it after his wife, Rita (full name Marguerite). She used the drug for her low blood pressure. It was sold by Novartis, which was known as CIBA (Company for Chemical Industry Basel) at the time (Novartis came about in 1996 after two Swiss companies, Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz Laboratories). An extended release form of methylphenidate was approved by the FDA in 2000, known as Concerta, marketed by Alza Corporation. I almost feel like, lore wise, this would mean that the chemical got a second personification. This older medication, marketed with similar tactics to big names like Valium and Miltown (that being the “Mothers Little Helper” flavor of advertisement), has been used for so many different things. Ritalin was only approved for hyperactivity in 1961, and I love this ad from that time:

Very similar to what happened with Valium and the benzos, Ritalin became controversial despite the newfound blockbuster status thanks to treating hyperactivity. Both Ritalin and ADHD as a disorder were placed on the chopping block as people compared it to illegal amphetamines (we’ve all seen someone make that “well it’s basically meth they’re selling meth!” claim, it’s been around forever). Of course, Ritalin was being used a street drug as well. Ciba was against reclassifying Ritalin, worried about stigmatizing their patients. Ritalin ended up getting banned in its parent company’s home county of Sweden in the 1970s. Even back then, ADHD was criticized for being “overdiagnosed” and stimulants for being “overprescribed.” Jump to the 2000s and now here comes Concerta, a new, young, hip take on Ritalin, now with a fun new shape and a longer duration. Look at these pills!! Fun shape!!

Give it two years and now here comes Focalin, DEXmethylphenidate. Ritalin has a sibling, a twin. Just like Celexa and Lexapro (Citalopram and escitalopram), where Celexa is a racemic mixture of its two isomers and Lexapro is a pure formulation of the active isomer only (the s enantiomer), Ritalin is a racemic mixture of its two isomers, and Focalin is a pure formulation of the active isomer only (the d isomer). It was developed to try and reduce side effects and adverse drug interactions. Focalin ALSO got super fun shapes for its pills, going the benzo route and getting a letter shape, with a D for D-(dex)methylphenidate

How cute is that?? Hell, Novartis was even gonna name it Ritadex, but the FDA was like, “come on guys that’s too similar to the other one” and they went with Focalin instead (side note but I love how all of the ADHD drugs got funny names. Adderall, like ADD, what ADHD used to be called. Concerta, like concentrate. Focalin, like focus. Speaking of which, can we tell that MY Ritalin has worn off for the night?).

So imagine you’re Ritalin. You spent your life jumping from career to career, treating depression in the elderly, exhausted housewives, helping those locked away in asylums for YEARS, then transitioned to helping children with hyperactivity issues. You become a blockbuster, huge new responsibilities are placed on your shoulders, but you’re getting recognition finally. Then, people start to criticize you, your parent company, they want you rescheduled, but even when you’re made schedule III in 1970, and then schedule II in 1971, predictions continue to rise. The movement against you expands in the mid 1970s, spreading to the diagnosis you now mainly treat, ADHD, resulting in the American Academy of Pediatrics coming to your aid, basically saying “hey guys cool it, you can use non-medication therapies if you’d like, but there’s a place for stimulant drugs in this treatment.” 1980 rolls around, the DSM-III comes out, and ADD is finally included. The text revision in 1987 changes this to ADHD in 1987. Finally it seems like things are calming down, but then another company decides to basically release a new version of you ‘toy animatronic from FNAF’ style in 2000. Hello Concerta. Then in 2002, your parent company hops on this and now you’ve got a twin. Hello Focalin. On top of that, the first non-stimulant ADHD treatment is approved that same year, and here comes Strattera.

Basically, I think Ritalin is a tired older guy who, after half a century of turmoil, was suddenly handed like, multiple children he did not ask for. “Here’s your clone, here’s your twin, and heres Strattera they’re here too enjoy!!” A big part of the reason why I think Ritalin and Concerta need separate characters is because of how I’ve already characterized Concerta; it doesn’t fit what I’d wanna do with Ritalin. Concerta is nearly hyperactive herself, she’s fast and quick witted, headstrong and incredibly extroverted. Ritalin is the opposite, he’s calm and more serious, he grew up in a completely different time than Concerta would have. Ritalin is a boomer (technically he’d be part of the Silent Generation since he was 1944 but still) while Concerta, Focalin, and Strattera are Gen Z. I wouldn’t wanna do something like I did with Prozac and Sarafem, since Sarafem was literally just a recolor and rebrand of Prozac, nothing about the medication or its duration, function, or makeup was changed. I’ve struggled with the Ritalin/Concerta thing for a while but typing it out and reading it back it helping it come together more. Anyway, Ritalin would yell at Concerta and her friends to get off of his lawn probably.

[deathlygristly]

So I've seen all sorts of discourse about That One Post going around. If you haven't seen it yet: a dude said he got into the alt-right because he saw weird people online being weird about dudes and it made him upset and the alt-right was like hey bro we got you. It was very much written in the style of someone who perhaps had not completely left the cult. It made everyone upset in all directions.

Most of the basic positions have shown up on my dash, and I've only unfollowed the people who get really mad about other people being like hey I see people being weird online all the time and it hasn't made me a fascist, and/or who get really demanding about how somehow we are all personally responsible for controlling the language of all the trolls in all the various leftish leaning cults online but trolls from rightish cults can say whatever they want and that their existence is our fault for not controlling the posts of every single leftish troll on the internet.

My biggest takeaway at the moment is that deradicalizing strangers online is not a job I can do. I guess it's the autism or maybe the growing up without ideology but I really don't get...well, any part of the discussion I've seen.

Like I texted the spousal person earlier about how neurotypical people talk about gender and how it makes me wonder if they're a different species from a different planet. What do clothes and hobbies and interests and emotions have to do with gender?

But then I am married to a guy in his 40s who happily and autistic special interest-ly watches Korean romcoms and who knew all the kpop girl group songs they were playing at the grocery store and who once said he doesn’t feel like he has a gender.

I don’t know, having really weird and esoteric rules about what you and other people can do and being vicious about enforcing those weird made up rules is just….alien to my life and experiences. Why would you care about what other people do if they’re not hurting other living beings?

I guess that’s the main thing. As far as I can remember, my brain has always thought, “Hurting others is wrong.” I don’t think I can recall ever thinking “I should hurt these others because a group of humans told me to.” Or needing to never encounter another human displaying common human behavior like being angry and hateful online in order to not become angry and hateful myself.

Also everyone is saying that it’s about feelings and group membership and that just stating facts won’t work, so that’s me out then. I don’t understand group membership at all and I really don’t understand choosing to believe things that aren’t true because of emotions. I don’t mean that in a rightish cult “Facts don’t care about your feelings” way. I mean it in a “My feelings desperately care about facts” way. In a “It took years and years of work plus an escitalopram prescription for me to not hate myself to death if I found out I had said or believed something that was false” way. In a “Perceiving the best approximation of reality that humans are currently capable of is a core moral tenet for me” way.

Don’t hurt other living beings and do your best to understand reality as clearly as possible are the rules my brain came up with in the absence of rules imposed from outside. Those rules feel like…Me. Like What I Am. I don’t think I can phrase things in words that will change the beliefs of people who are so different from me that I would need a universal translator to have any hope of communicating with them.

Like I’ve said before, all I can do is accept and not judge people for their pasts if I see sufficient evidence that they truly have changed and are doing things to repair the damage they did. Getting them to the point of doing that, as opposed to accepting them afterward…that’s not something I can do, no matter how much people scream angrily online and judge and shame others about it.

[the-beccaria-cage]

Dear internet community…

Heads up that if for whatever reason you need to wean off Lexapro (aka escitalopram oxylate, a common SSRI anti-anxiety med) …

Don’t do what I did.

I misunderstood my doctor (who is lovely, if a bit straightforward) and weaned off my meds entirely in the month between appointments.

You know what you’re NOT supposed to do with lexapro?! Wean off them as quickly as that.

“What are you supposed to do?!” I hear you ask…

Weaning off it supposed to take about 2-3 MONTHS. NOT WEEKS. MONTHS.

It has some pretty gnarly side effects as you come off. For me, I’ve now been dizzy for a month solid, and the random crying episodes can go to hell.

I’m 6/6 with this checklist 😅😅😅

[aspd-culture]

Hey, so my doc prescribed depakote and escitalopram for me in order to treat aspd and ocd. Did u ever take them ? Any past experiences, good or bad ?

Disclaimer: medication works different for every single person. I cannot know which response you will have to any medication. I am not a professional, nor do I know anything about your medical health specifically. Therefore, I firmly stress that any and all advice you take on medications either come from your doctor or at least be taken back to your doctor BEFORE you make any changes. Especially for psychiatric medications, it is imperitive to follow your doctor's instructions exactly.

If you disagree with your provider's decision and they won't help you change medications, continue using what you have been given unless you have a reaction that would warrant an urgent care or ER visit and find a different doctor. Your doctor should ALWAYS respect your legal right to refuse a certain medication as long as you are still willing to get some alternative treatment for symptoms that cause any risk to yourself/others.

If you need to go to the ER or urgent care, explain that you believe this is a reaction to your medication and ask for them to prescribe you an alternative and/or give you instructions on how to safely get off that medication. They'll be able to tell you if that is likely a side effect or not, and give you safe medical advice on getting off that med.

All of that said, I can give anecdotal information on this and it's good news!

I have been given Depakote in crisis (in the "danger to yourself" way) before. It definitely helped then, but for me, it only worked with the acute dose they'd give for crisis-level severe flares. For a lot of people, it works though! And the medication I'm on is similar - it's still an anti-epileptic, just a different one, so I can definitely see it helping. My family members just have a better reaction to the one I've been put on.

Escitalopram is one I have not personally used, but I have heard many other pwASPD specifically mention that as the only antidepressant that helped them. Whilst that doesn't in any way mean other ones won't work for you, it *does* mean there is a strong chance it will help!

My biggest piece of advice: Make sure to ask your doctor if your medications are time sensitive. Some, like birth control, are tempermental if not taken at the same time and may cause a reaction or intense flare if not taken at the same time. If your doctor says that isn't the case, but you seem to find anecdotally that it does for you, I'd advise prioritizing taken it at a set time anyway as it shouldn't hurt as long as you're taking it as instructed.

Plain text below the cut:

Disclaimer: medication works different for every single person. I cannot know which response you will have to any medication. I am not a professional, nor do I know anything about your medical health specifically. Therefore, I firmly stress that any and all advice you take on medications either come from your doctor or at least be taken back to your doctor BEFORE you make any changes. Especially for psychiatric medications, it is imperitive to follow your doctor's instructions exactly.

If you disagree with your provider's decision and they won't help you change medications, continue using what you have been given unless you have a reaction that would warrant an urgent care or ER visit and find a different doctor. Your doctor should ALWAYS respect your legal right to refuse a certain medication as long as you are still willing to get some alternative treatment for symptoms that cause any risk to yourself/others.

If you need to go to the ER or urgent care, explain that you believe this is a reaction to your medication and ask for them to prescribe you an alternative and/or give you instructions on how to safely get off that medication. They'll be able to tell you if that is likely a side effect or not, and give you safe medical advice on getting off that med.

All of that said, I can give anecdotal information on this and it's good news!

I have been given Depakote in crisis (in the "danger to yourself" way) before. It definitely helped then, but for me, it only worked with the acute dose they'd give for crisis-level severe flares. For a lot of people, it works though! And the medication I'm on is similar - it's still an anti-epileptic, just a different one, so I can definitely see it helping. My family members just have a better reaction to the one I've been put on.

Escitalopram is one I have not personally used, but I have heard many other pwASPD specifically mention that as the only antidepressant that helped them. Whilst that doesn't in any way mean other ones won't work for you, it *does* mean there is a strong chance it will help!

My biggest piece of advice: Make sure to ask your doctor if your medications are time sensitive. Some, like birth control, are tempermental if not taken at the same time and may cause a reaction or intense flare if not taken at the same time. If your doctor says that isn't the case, but you seem to find anecdotally that it does for you, I'd advise prioritizing taken it at a set time anyway as it shouldn't hurt as long as you're taking it as instructed.

[toointojoelmiller]

Personal (tw: everything lol don’t read seriously this is an emo self indulgent trauma dump bummer I just need to vent)

Also this has nothing at all to do with Joel so I’m doing tiny font

Since February / March I've been stuck in the worst depressive episode of my life. I'm so fucking crazy and it feels like I’m not getting better. Probably have been low key dissociating for at least half of the time. Started a new antidepressant in April and had a lot of hope for it because when I started escitalopram when I was 24 I had the best response and literally a very fun and nice and pleasant several years. DIdn't last though, unfortunately, and this newest one hasn't really helped me that much other than letting me get out of bed in the morning and I feel so insanely stuck.

I worry sometimes that I have fully snapped this year. My brain just doesn't feel like it used to and I barely recognize myself sometimes. I've isolated myself so much from family and friends. Sometimes even from my boyfriend (we literally own a house together aka I have been isolating myself to like, my office and bed).

I lost a pregnancy and it completely broke me, I feel like I've been permanently shattered by it, and I don't see the world the same way anymore. It’s truly like part of me died. And now it is legit so painful for me to be around babies and kids. And that is especially hard at this age because there is pregnancy and baby news literally every fucking day.

And there is so much fucked up background trauma I’m struggling with. Since 2019 four of my former patients who I worked with when they were teeangers have died terribly between the ages of 19 and 21. I have nightmares about it, see them in my sleep all of the time. Plus numerous of the adult patients I have bonded with over the years have died recently, mostly in extremely upsetting ways. Sometimes it feels like working in the mental health & addictions space has destroyed my soul. And before that I did palliative nursing and watching people die scarred me so much. I am way too sensitive of a person for this sort of work but financially walking away is impossible right now. I wish I never went into nursing. And yeah I’ve done lots of trauma therapy.

It's so upsetting for me being in my thirties and struggling like this. Worse than ever. When I was a mentally ill little teen I would tell myself things would get better with time and it feels like that being true is getting more and more far fetched.

The other thing about getting older obvi is so many loved ones getting diagnosed with health issues. My dad's Parkinson's diagnosis in 2020 was like a fucking bomb going off for me and it’s progressing fast and sometimes it just hurts to be around him and watch him struggle.

Sometimes I seriously just fucking hate life. I don’t even know why I’m posting this on tumblr of all places lol but I feel like I have absolutely no one to vent to so I guess that’s why.

[wanderer-of-nature-and-dreams]

Nbd just spending hours lately researching medication for me to try, since my body didn't react well with fluoxetine, and I need more anxiety relief than buspirone on it's own can give. Hydroxyzine has been great for relieving body tension but it's short term relief and tolerance builds from taking it often.

Considering asking my doctor about trying escitalopram or venlafaxine...

[kuoringankalmo]

ok ok ok so finnish psychiatirst/psychologist really like to change my medication around huh

i just got ketipinor for sleep/when you need it

and now im changing my escitalopram to venlafaxing

yikes

and i have to seek out for psychiatrist for this supported therapy and i cant go to my workplace psychiatrist before i have that going

[numbknee]

you think kyle needs meds for anxiety?? what’s ssri’s??? elaborate 👀

Sure! SSRIs are "selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors" and it's a class of medication commonly used for anxiety and/or depression. Some brand names for SSRIs are Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft (or the generic names fluoxetine, escitalopram, and sertraline respectively). there's a bunch of other ones but those I think are the most commonly used at least in the US.

I kind of go back and forth with myself about this, but I can see Kyle as the type of person to develop chronic anxiety/generalized anxiety disorder, especially as he gets older and more stressors are added onto his life: school getting harder, relationships getting more complicated, needing to figure out a future career, etc. In the show, we've seen that he's already pretty neurotic to begin with, and he has a tendency to overthink and worry about things much more than his peers would, especially regarding stuff like morality.

He'd probably be really good at hiding his anxiety though, from others or even himself, and be in denial about it for a long time. In the back of his mind, he'd think "Oh well, I guess it's normal for someone to be stressed out all the fucking time like I am. Seriously, look at the world we live in! How could you not be worried about everything?" — all the while not realizing how bad his mental health has gotten and that the degree to which he's stressed out isn't normal.

It would manifest as worsening irritability, sleep problems, poor concentration, and his performance in school or at his job suffering. I feel like he wouldn't seek out professional help unless he reached a hard breaking point, like having a panic attack in public or failing a class because he couldn't sleep before his final exam. Whatever it is, it serves as a wake up call for him and he finally recognizes he needs to do something about it or else he's basically letting his own brain fuck himself over.

I think Kyle is so goal-oriented that once he does decide to seek help, he'd probably get his shit together pretty quickly all things considered. He gets a therapist, finds meds that work for him, and deals with the problem head-on because jeez man, he's got shit to do. He can't afford to keep feeling like shit all the time.

In the context of kyman, Cartman would of course be supportive because he cares about Kyle more than he'll ever admit. He's an asshole at heart so he does like seeing Kyle suffer to some degree, but not like that. And Cartman wants to be the cause of that suffering, not Kyle's own brain being a little shit and taking all the fun out of it. That's fucking lame. So he makes sure that Kyle takes his meds (albeit in the most obnoxious way possible à la my tags on this post) and talks him down when he's overstressed or overthinking and lets him know that he doesn't have to deal with everything on his own because otherwise that would be a gross violation of the bro code AND the boyfriend code. They're a team, goddammit!! "GOD KAHL, stop being a stubborn fucking dickhead and LET ME HELP YEEWWW!!"

Anyway yeah that's my take on Kyle and his anxiety! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯