Messed up

My mood and general feelings have been all over the place this weekend. I finished venlafaxine/effexor for good on Wednesday night and I honestly felt much better to be off the damn stuff. On Friday and Saturday night though, I began to feel energised and restless but not in an entirely unpleasant way. I’m not used to having energy and wanting to leap out of my chair and up and down the stairs, I even went into town on a Saturday to buy a few things, something which I never normally do.

Being on such a high (225mg) dose of effexor wasn’t doing me much good, in my layman’s opinion. Last night I started the first of my 2 week supply of seroxat, but not without a struggle. I went to purchase them on Thursday from Boots, where I always go when I’m in Nottingham but even though the script was only for 2 weeks worth and they had to cut a blister pack up and repackage the pills for me, they somehow ended up giving me prozac instead. The pharmacist did not notice this either and signed off on it, leaving me to discover their mistake on Saturday morning. It’s a good job I checked and I don’t just unquestioningly swallow everything they hand over, being on 3 ADs in 2 weeks wouldn’t have been much fun, I imagine.

I went back and caused a minor panic there, the manager even came out and took me to one side to apologise and assured me they would do an investigation into how it happened. I hope no-one gets into trouble, after all I am ok.

Nothing to report about the new meds yet, I still feel reasonably ok for now but things still lurk in the back of my mind, as I fear they always will.

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CBT Session 1

I managed to drag myself out of bed and into town, catch the bus and get off just about in the right place. I’m not feeling good at all, my emotions are all over the place and I keep wanting to cry, I think about the long road ahead and hope that it’s not too late to recover, enough to be happy anyway.

The appointment was yet another hour where I had to tell my tales of woe all over again, I swear no-one in the mental health services communicates with each other at all. I managed to get through a lot of it though, it’s becoming easier with practice I guess. I told her about my bullying by so called friends and year+ long depressive episode that I am currently in and how it’s been as bad as I’ve ever known. We talked about my suicidal thoughts and plans and agreed that has to be worked on before anything else. I was honest about everything, having a plan, going to the place etc. She was understandably concerned and I even admitted that in an emergency I would probably not be able to ring the crisis team (I hate phone calls and I couldn’t just ring up and say “Hello I want to die”) but we talked about other ways I could handle it. I told her about when I went to A&E at Nottingham and she said that if I get into a situation where I might harm myself, I could go to the hospital here and maybe I should do the journey so I know how to get there in case the need arises. She also took the Lincoln crisis team phone number and is going to ring them and explain what happened today, and said that if I really need to ask them to visit I should ring them, say I have been visited before, tell them my name and that I’m having suicidal thoughts and am scared.

It might sound stupid but knowing what to say has made me think that I can do it if I get into that situation again. I don’t know what my issue with phones is, but if I don’t know exactly what to say I get into a panic very easily, I think it’s because you can’t really pause or rely on people reading your expression or whatever.

I have another appointment for next Monday, and I should be able to see them on Mondays in the future which is good news because I won’t miss any more lectures.

Things are very stressful at the moment, I don’t want to feel like I did on Saturday and Sunday, it terrifies me thinking about it now and what the consequences could have been (they were bad enough as it is). I don’t know if the medication change is messing me up even more, venlafaxine is notoriously hard to come off, but I didn’t feel fully in control and my memory is hazy. I didn’t eat for 2 days and didn’t even notice. I wish I had someone I could talk to who could stay with me and keep me company/sane. I feel lonelier than ever, can’t possibly let my mum know because she just gets upset and makes me feel guilty. I can’t really tell my flatmates what’s going on or they will think (perhaps justifiably) that I am nuts. I’m going to try and rest for a bit now, spent half the night unable to sleep and checking my email every 20 minutes.

Also: updated my old “About” page.