#when will my antidepressants actually start working lol its been a month and a half and all im feeling is apathy :(

[4byun]

O-(-<

[rivangel]

changes i’ve noticed now 2.5 months in since my last post. some one off posts w individual updates also compiled here

- i’ve gotten a lot more confident (which i’ve talked about before but this is different now that i’m more visibly masc). i’m really not as shy or softspoken as i thought hahahaha (i just have multiple anxiety disorders).

i’m just much more paranoid about how ppl perceive me. all anxiety disorders can cause various types of (minor) hallucinations (auditory, visual, somatic) and i think that has to do with why it always feels like people are looking at me. but i’m probably visibly trans at this point too so some really are

- my mental health has improved beyond what i thought was possible (contrived/cheesy to say but it’s true). i actually give a shit about what i look like day to day / how my body looks, i bother to actually choose outfits instead of pulling on whatever is baggiest, etc.

- acne on my NECK!!

- my nails grow back faster and have gotten thicker in general

- body hair has progressed past the point of hairy, now when my legs are wet it lowkey looks like i have fur (/pos). hair is everywhere and has gotten thicker on my arms legs and torso up towards my chest. it’s so great

- i’m getting more facial hair but also hair on my neck😑so i need to learn how to shave LOL

- i started working out like 2 weeks ago and it’s felt really good. its impossible to see a visible difference atp i think, but i definitely have more endurance and strength than before

- i don’t really have anything new to report about my voice🤔it’s been raspy and cracks sometimes

- i am gay now. i was pan/male-leaning before but yeah it’s only men

not sfw and psychotropic medication infodump under the cut

- bottom growth is 1.5-2? inches which is a lot on average LOL

- i think i’ve very lightly covered this before but orgasms feel so much different hahah,,,

- i’ve been feeling pretty amazing emotionally in general, but this has less to do with T and much more to do with my medication adjustments

T severely destabilized me mentally so i did a massive overhaul with my doctor of my medications. (i doubt anyone would want or would ask for this but idc im infodumping. it’s the psych major in me:)

- i’m on a low dose TeCA antidepressant which basically means that it doesn’t mess with the rate of release of serotonin, but causes the production of MORE serotonin and norepinephrine.

moderate/high dose antidepressants don’t work on me and my bipolar disorder so i took it for sleep. i tapered off it, had some crazy vivid nightmares for a few days, but that went away and i slept much better, less anxiety

- went up to a high dose on my anti-epileptic (for bipolar disorder) which has never done me wrong and continues to be a lifesaver❤️❤️❤️❤️

- went down on my antipsychotic. i was on a relatively low dose to begin with which functions mainly as a sedative (basically quieting my brain lol).

specifically it’s seroquel. i learned that tapering is VERY important. when i split my regular dose in half, i got major nausea and slight symptoms of rebound psychosis. did it MUCH slower, and it made me feel like a zombie for a couple days but that went away.

- on an antihistamine for anxiety/sleep but i haven’t changed that. after stopping the others i’ve listed, i’m much less drowsy in the morning and less spaced out in general

- a low-dose TCA antidepressant (the difference between that and TeCA doesn’t rly matter :3) for sleep again. stopped that rly recently with slight withdrawal symptoms but still feel good. the most good it did for me recently was give me really really bad shakes.

my memory is better, i get less vertigo, my balance is much better, i have better blood flow to my legs and feet, i’m much less anxious, sleep much better (shocking), and some other rly good things

9 WEEKS ON T :D

(it’s aot memes for this month hahaha)

[benis413]

meds rant lol

i am so fucking grateful for my meds working. i started taking adhd meds like 1 1/2 yrs ago and it sucked ASS but i essentially got diagnosed, felt pretty fucking pissed at my shitty brain and got stimulants shoved in my face by psychiatrists and ig i kind of thought that would fix me? idk i was really excited and heard other ppl with adhd talking ab how amazing it was to get medicated bc everything “went quiet” and holy shit i would give several toes and a foot for that, but the meds just gave me a shit ton of anxiety and uncontrollable energy for like an hour. i tried just about every adhd pill under the sun and some weird non-stimulant that lowered my blood pressure so much that i passed out lol, and i honestly should not have stayed on the meds i was taking for that long bc the side effects i got were ass, but i was kind of in denial ab them not working. 

i also started taking zoloft in February 2021 and they did fuck all, but the doctors just kept telling me to try a higher dose so i went up to like 100mg and it still didn’t fucking work (shocking, i know) and then in September when i told them i wanted new antidepressants they literally told me to take more walks. i shit you not this bitch of a doctor told me straight up that “meds won’t fix all ur problems for you”. like i already go on walks at least once a day? i did everything they’ve fucking told me to, i went through hell and back and i still felt like SHIT. they eventually gave me cymbalta and oh my fucking god. i remember this one specific night a couple weeks after switching meds where i had just put up my mini christmas tree and i was eating ice cream and i felt genuinely at peace and happy and i just started sobbing bc it was such a fucking relief to finally feel effortlessly happy after months of having to constantly prevent myself from reverting back to my default mode of sadness/numbness. it hasn’t been perfect, i still am pretty unstable and get really low “dips” but for the first time in so long i feel like i dont have to drag myself through life. 

and whaddaya know, it turns out that if you switch ssri meds you can react differently to stimulants, so i recently started taking adhd meds again and they fucking work. i damn near started crying during a math lesson bc i realized that i dont actually hate math, i just cant focus! fuck my eyeliner im crying in the club rn and the past week of school has been so good, ive caught up(almost) with the rest of the class and ive been in school all week (which almost never happens). i didn’t even fall asleep after coming home from school or break down after the week was over! 

it feels fucking fantastic (obviously), but i still feel kind of suspicious, like it feels strange to not be behind on school and just life in general ig. its been so long since i felt so alive, and its fucking february. who feels alive during february?! 

im legitimately terrified that any day now im going to get worse and go back to feeling half-dead. i really fucking hope that this isnt just temporary bc i honestly dont think i could survive getting a glimpse of what i could be and then having it taken away from me lol

[wlwdjh]

hi. i think i might have some early fibromyalgia but the internet isn't helping me too much. how did you get a diagnosis? how did it feel for you in the beggining? please i need some help i have been struggling with health for a few years but lately its gotten worse and neither my mum (undergraduate in medicine) nor any doctors ive been to know whats going on. Ive been on antidepressants for a while but stopped them. i cant say they helped. do you have any experience you can share?

Hi hun. First I want to preface this by saying I am in no way a medical professional so all I can do is share my experience. I also am located in the United States and have health insurance, which is going to make my experience different than a lot of others. I’m gonna put the rest under a cut just in case anyone has trouble reading about medical issues.

Fibromyalgia is a weird diagnosis, in that it’s a diagnosis by elimination. Before I was diagnosed by a Rheumatologist (a doctor who specializes in diseases of the connective tissue like arthritis) I spent years working with my doctor to figure out the source of my chronic pain. At 19 I was in a car accident and my doctor checked me over and took x-rays, all of which came out completely normal. Slowly over the course of the next few years though my health started to deteriorate.

At first I thought it was only mental. I was having major anxiety, to the point where I couldn’t go to school, and depression severe enough that I couldn’t get out of bed. I was sent to a psychiatrist, who listened to my symptoms for 15 minutes, diagnosed me with a panic disorder, and prescribed me Fluoxetine (Prozac) and sent me on my way.

Here’s the thing with meds - they work, but it’s often a struggle to find the right one. A lesser known symptom of Fibromyalgia is medication sensitivity. While Prozac works wonders for millions of people, it was way to strong for me, and left me feeling like a zombie. So after a few months of this drug, I went back to the same doctor. He maintained his previous diagnosis but switched me to Buspirone, a medication that is used just for the treatment of anxiety. I definitely think that it helped, but it didn’t do anything for my depression or any of my other symptoms.

While I was trying to figure out my mental health I started having more severe chronic pain. I was a dancer from twelve to twenty, and was in the best shape of my life when I started having severe joint and muscle pain. I thought I was just pushing myself too hard honestly, and just tried to slow down on my classes. I went from dancing 8-12 hours a week to not at all.

I also was having issues with memory - I was losing gaps in the day and couldn’t focus on things I used to love like reading. I was also exhausted 24/7.

It’s around this time that I dropped my psychiatrist and went without medical intervention for about a year. I realized at 21 that my depression was getting worse and worse - that summer I spent an entire week in bed, and my best friend had to come and make sure I was eating. I started seeing an MFT, and going through my own journey to mental health.

When I finally (through tons of incredibly hard work) pulled myself out of that hole I stopped being emotionally stoic and started noticing hey, my body is getting worse. My IBS symptoms started around the age of 23, and I lost quite a bit of weight just by not being able to eat anything. I also, through the encouragement of my therapist, started going back to my primary care physician, and he started trying to puzzle it out with me. First we thought the symptoms were depression related, so he put me on Welbutrin (which I still take to this day). It was unlike the other drugs in that taking it actually gave me energy and cleared my mind, rather than fogging it up further. Then he sent me to Physical Therapy. The PT was horrified at the state of my back at this point and put me through 8 weeks of grueling therapy. I would leave in incredible pain every day and then have to go home and do more exercises. While it wasn’t pleasant I can say that it gave me some of the knowledge that I use now in trying to treat my Fibro.

I also went through an elimination diet to try to find my trigger food for my IBS. I had never before in my life shown signs of dairy intolerance and then here at the age of 23 I was developing a rash on my arm any time I tried to eat mac and cheese lol. Cutting that out of my diet made a big difference in my gut health.

This whole time I was doing lots and lots of internet research on my own. I remember coming across an article about Fibromyalgia and its symptoms and how my heart stopped when I read it. I took it with me to my next doctor’s appointment and he admitted that he didn’t know much about the disease but that he could refer me to the doctor who did. In the meantime he put me on Gabapentin for my pain (which just made me feel drunk and dizzy half the time, not my fav).

The first appointment with my Rheumatologist was terrifying. I kept thinking that all my symptoms were just caused by my depression, that I was faking, that here I was about to be laughed out of another doctor’s office as a liar and attention seeker. Instead my doctor sat me down, asked me about my mental illness, my family history, my lifestyle, my diet, how bad my pain was, where it was located, and never once suggested that any of my symptoms were in my head. I went home and cried that night - I had never felt more validated in my life.

Before I could get my diagnosis we had to run some tests. My Rheumatologist had access to all of my results from previous x-rays and tests but had to run some blood tests to rule out anything else. I also underwent a physical test where she checked for trigger points - they’re basically small points on your body that cause intense pain when pressed. Almost all of the points hurt me haha. After a few weeks, at 24, five years after my initial onset of symptoms I had my diagnosis. I was prescribed Cymbalta and told to stop eating gluten, start exercising more, and to take care of myself. That’s the hardest part of this condition for me - the only way to treat it is by living a healthy lifestyle, which is incredibly difficult to do on my own due to my mental health issues.

It’s been a journey for me, and I’m sorry to say that everyone I’ve talked to with Fibro has had a journey as well. It’s just not a condition that doctors are quick to diagnose patients with. I know it can be hard but self advocacy is going to be your best bet towards getting a diagnosis. Remember that even without one your pain is still real.

[ildivine]

between watching a lot of youtubers, losing a lot of sleep, and playing a lot of the off-peak games, i feel my creativity blossoming in the abstract way that i strive for.

i at least have come to understand how my creativity is dulled, and what i need to get it going again. its difficult, getting older, and becoming more jaded, and depression in the back of my mind is a noisy buzzing that can only be quelled with alcohol or weed. ive been learning how to deal without the prior, but, mm.

i dreamt about gavin and i think about a lot of people in ways that i don’t get to often talk about. its not like i talk to my therapist about this kind of thing. i havent mentioned the system to any since the last one i trusted treated it like DID, and thats fine for systems that need it, but we don’t work that way, and we never have.

alternatively i do think about myself ... and my past lives, often. i feel my limbs more often and it blends with the dysphoria; its strange to think i get so envious of just being spiritually Aware. ingesting mushrooms is the most helpful thing to me, and i know i mute my own sixth sense with doubt.

ive isolated myself from others quite a bit, as ive been mean again. im learning to appreciate the time i spend with dean and connor, even if it is every day. i miss connor every time i wake up without zem next to me, especially after weekends when i really get used to it.

our one year is coming up in july and ze thought aloud to me about marriage and we gently brushed over it. ze said something along the lines of “well, i wanted to wait for a better opportunity...” which, understandable.

one day ill be able to afford nice things like real rings and wedding ceremonies, but the last week of cleaning up my room, and throwing a lot of things out, made me realize what focusing on survival really means. i told myself that in 2021 i would focus on letting go, and its still hard. letting go of friends, and loved ones, and things, old stuff, its all the same, i have such an emotional attachment that it gets tangled in my head and my emotions. connors told me constantly to buy necessities and i brushed em off ... so im glad a friend helped us make up for it.

its embarrassing and its frustrating to rely on my money for things that others dont see as necessary. alcohol quells my twitching but i do have an addiction to it cuz i simply like to drink til i cant anymore, n im still learning that boundary. weed, i cant really explain what it does for me, cuz it is unusual. simple things like helping my appetite and sleep, two major things i struggle with a lot, as well as giving me inspiration to get up in the mornings, or do anything at all. right now it is medical in new mexico and i have a PTSD diagnosis, and when i smoke, it quiets the voices in my head screaming at me about wanting to die. i dont know how common this is, but its one of the things i struggle with financially. to survive. even with all of my antidepressants and anxiety medications, mental illness still lingers, and i think the more i delve into new media as well as reflect on past lives and old memories, my brain is in a very strange place. but ive come to appreciate that it is strange, i am strange, and i have mental illness, and i probably wont ever be able to silence it. i can take out my desire to cut my own skin open by watching dissection videos, and then im also learning and absorbing new information along the way.

when im not absolutely drunk on a tank of heavy alcohol, i can focus. i appreciate that i lost the years of 2018-2020 mostly due to how much i was drinking, on top of a medication that was already terrible for my memory. but the other day i went through my mood charts over those years, where i wrote down how i was, and although i drank daily and felt guilty about it, my mood was generally stable.

unfortunately its very expensive and unhealthy, and the inevitable withdrawals make me worse off than i started with. my therapist considers me drinking as playing with fire, but ive learned how to consume responsibly; dean and i can stop after a six pack and itll put us to sleep, but ill always want another beer, even in the back of my mind. That slight buzz from the mimosa that Connor drank and melted into was likely most of the reason ze could actually start dozing off, and we were half craving another for fun and relaxation, but i thought “i probably wont be able to sleep tonight without another drink”.

and i was right, and i acknowledge that its a problem. so ive tried to find that sensation from other things like hops tea and carbonated water (ew, its still not good, honestly dsjfsdj) or kombuchas, because it triggers the same response in my brain without.. melting my organs. did u kno ur liver is FUCKING HUGE n its also the only organ that can heal itself?? the cells reconstruct differently than scar tissue usually binds together n i just think thats Neat.meme

jokes aside, i think its also why my liver is Fine despite the fact ive drank since i was 13 years old, minus the year of rehab sobriety. That was also my Only year of sobriety. Digging into my alcoholism ive done a lot of questioning as to why i rely on it, and i think it is a lot to do with being addicted to being drunk, and i think its also a lot to do with ‘wow, i can finally turn my brain off! the thing thats yelling at me all the time, feeling scared and sad,” but drinking is also essentially a boost of stress hormones, so when the endorphins wear off, u get sad or anxious all over again. ive come to learn that i only withdrawal or get hangovers if i drink more than, i guess the recommended amount by doctors. 3 glasses of wine will now do me in, dean can power thru anything regardless of what hes drinking, but it does affect the health in ways i cant ignore.

i enjoy drugs, i think is the bottom line. i look up how to get a hold of psychedelic mushrooms cuz u can just get em in the mail if ur in a country where its decriminalized (hint: we’re not) n immediately the results are between getting help for addiction or how magic mushrooms help depression in low doses.

i really have a theme here. im still mad that my parents induced my reliance on all these substances and i know i would be a lot better off if i didnt drink til i was 21 or never smoked cigarettes, and i accept im always gonna crave these things regardless, but i only feel creative when i drink or smoke, and thats another problem with addicts because u fry ur neurons hard enough it all dies down. ive appreciated watching videos and playing games when i am in the comatose, apathetic stage of depression like i have been in recently, where i cant force myself to do anything and even fronting someone else to do it takes energy that quickly dies down.

my energy has died quickly since i went vegan, as my nails have chipped since, so im experimenting with my diet. my taste pallet cant handle dairy anymore, and connor was only here to try it, and i think we all discovered we just... dont wanna do that. but eating fish again helped my energy and brought a glow back to my skin. too much, however, still gives me the greasy meat sweats, so... a lil bit of everything seems to be whats right.

i still crash a lot, but i think thats just a side effect of being 28 in this generation and feeling 68 instead.

anyway, now that my room is FINALLY clean and looking nice, i want to try to do art again. i miss art. i miss thinking in images, i miss my imagination, i miss roleplaying and writing and drawing and arting. conny wanted to paint too but was absolutely too tired on sunday lol n i respect that so maybe tonight we can get something together.

but its been nice to feel something in my brain stirring again that isnt just the gross black buzz of mental illness constantly telling me to die. i get used to it, i guess. i forget its not supposed to happen because i have survived it for so long. im on the max dose of antidepressants and medicine i can take and i still feel really bad sometimes, but i didnt realize it until other people brought it up. stress definitely kicks me into my big bipolar mood swings, but i havent shaken off the depression in months. im not sure what to do so im trying to expand my horizons.