AGlassDarkly: hello fellow travellers!

[AGlassDarkly]

@Momiki Thank you! Wishing you freedom and success in your journey also! 🙂

[AGlassDarkly]

This discussion from the Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal shares some genuinely encouraging life experiences from individuals who have come out the other side of withdrawal and post-withdrawal, and made a successful recovery. 

 

 

A quote here from Brooke Siem about how we may have first been introduced to medication really resonated with me: "Most of us were medicated probably because we were feeling some big feeling that we couldn't articulate and this made other people uncomfortable." 

[Comecloser80]

@AGlassDarkly hi, I am having a same wake up pattern since last 5 months, waking up at 4:00am every single morning. 
Do you continue to wake up at 4:00 am ? Or your sleeping pattern has changed lately? How many hours do you get sleep? Is it interrupted or uninterrupted? 

[AGlassDarkly]

Hi @Purae Yes, I'm afraid I'm stuck in the same pattern of sleep at the moment. I wake – abruptly – at around 4am and cannot really return to sleep. I, also cannot nap during the day. Feels like a cortisol or adrenalin issue to me – but my bloods were tested recently and seemed normal. The quality of my sleep feels like being semi-conscious; like a light half-dream state. 

 

But if I look back to this time last year I note that my agitation level during sleep was far greater then. So there has definitely been a gradual improvement over a year.  

[Comecloser80]

@AGlassDarklyThank you for replying. Looks like we both are stuck on same pattern. I can’t nap at all . Hope it will improve with time for both of us. 

[AGlassDarkly]

@Purae I have faith that both our current sleep(less) states will improve – given the passing of enough time. I wish you well!

[Comecloser80]

How are you doing? Any noticeable changes in sleep/wake pattern? 

[AGlassDarkly]

Hello @Purae I'm afraid there's no change at present. The brain wants to heal in its own time I think – whilst we just want it to hurry up.  We must keep hope alive though. All the best. 

[AGlassDarkly]

For the record:

The waves and windows pattern of recovery continues – with more waves recently. I have observed that for me a very clear warning of an imminent wave is that I get mild but persistent tinnitus upon waking, and in the early evening. 

 

Wishing courage to endure to all here. 

 

 

[AGlassDarkly]

Hello all

 

An update as I approach the two-year marking of my final dose of SSRI & SNRI.

 

Time (just as is often mentioned here) has continued to heal. Two months ago I noticed that the terrible sleep disturbances and cortisol-flooding wake-up calls of a year ago were becoming more infrequent. I was now consistently falling asleep within 30mins of bed time and sleeping overall more like 6hours of total sleep. The terrible churning of energy within was also lessening. 

 

I no longer felt sedated and insulated from the world in the way that we know SSRIs produce. This, however means being more in touch with reality! – and all the things that now need fixing in my life that were being delayed or masked by the medication are revealed. 

 

This has produced a feeling – completely different to recurring depression – and more like one of mental exhaustion and intense frustration – even anger, at the 30 years of progress I ceded to the drugs. But I now know that this is simply the human state of existing! No one can escape it until death finally frees us. At least now I know for certain that my problems are my own to fix – and I can see them clearly, not through the distorting lens of sedation. 

 

So that was the good news – now the inevitable bad, and a caveat! Life (as it does) has thrown at me several curve-balls in quick succession that have seriously reset the progress described above: Death of a beloved pet; loss of work, and an unplanned house move – all within an eight-week period have wreaked havoc with my CNS and sent me back to a very dark place reminiscent of the early post-withdrawal period. Sleep disturbances; cortisol-flooding, and dark anxiety have become an unwanted companion again. 

 

What exact physiological mechanism has produced this reset? This is unknown – but I see it as a stark reminder that long after the drug has completely left our systems, the CNS is in a very delicate state of balance as it repairs.

 

As I approach my two-year anniversary I celebrate my lived experience that progress is possible – and I have confidence that it will return; this setback is a temporary state (a wave!) that will recede in time. 

 

So wherever you are on your own road to freedom I say: Yes, it will be incredibly hard – but day by day however you need to, just keep going. Ride the waves – bask in the sun from the occasional windows – and just wait it out.  And be encouraged in the certain knowledge that the immense strength that this whole process will build in you is going to be reward in itself for all those lost years – wasted by the damn pills.