No More Chemicals

First of all I'd just like to say bloody hell, you write one blog post about introversion and your page hits go through the roof. Seriously that one post got more than twice as many views than all the rest of my posts put together. So now I know what you like. Especially Americans it seems. They apparently love a bit of the introversion. So yeah I will probably talk about that more in the future but for now here's something else...

Regular readers of this blog (ha, I say that as if I post regularly) will know that I have been very occasionally keeping you up to date on my adventures through depression. I haven't really blogged as much about it as I thought I might but I guess that when the medication is working and you're feeling normal then there isn't much to say other than "Yup, still feeling normal today." So what has changed? Well I've now been off my medication for a week so I thought I'd let you know how things are going.

I've got to say I was a little bit worried about what would happen given my experiences on the hand full of occasions that I'd gone a few days without them when I hadn't ordered my repeat prescription in time. As mentioned in What Happens if You Miss One I really felt it, or at least thought I could, and people who know me well could see it in my face or in fact one person could see it in my walk! It effected my sleep as well. I've always had problems sleeping and have been plagued by nightmares for as long as I can remember so the tablets the doctor put me on had the advantageous side effect of helping me sleep. They really did as well, after a couple of months of trial and error getting the dosage right where they very nearly sent me to sleep at work (luckily my manager at the time didn't notice, or if she did she very kindly kept it to herself) they have given me nearly a year of the best sleep I think I've ever had with the fewest nightmares I've ever known.

So how am I feeling now? I'm feeling good. I've noticed the effect on my sleep - it's taking me longer to get to sleep at night so at the moment I'm feeling a bit tired but I think it's really just a case of getting used to not having chemical help for it again. One thing I have noticed my brain doing is that I dwell on things for much too long. One little thought gets stuck in there and goes round and round and round. The medication must have stopped that happening, which is weird when you think about it, that a chemical can change the way you think about things. The good thing is now that  I'm healthy and have some CBT tools to use i can spot when it's happening and stop it, changing the way I think by myself without chemical help again.

So there you go. I might do another one of these in a week or so's time to see if anything has changed (I've said that sort of thing before haven't I?) and if I don't then I'll probably do another introversion post  because damn if I do a few more of them and keep the post/view rate up I could probably start getting some advertising on here!