Muddles: desperate

[Addax]

Hi both. Would they be better off without me - no, but this is destroying them either way.

It's not destroying them. It might cause them worry, but it's absolutely not destroying them. As their mom I'm sure it's hard thinking that your kids might be worried or even sad. But they love their mom and don't want her to be in pain, just as you worry that they're in pain. We worry about those we love, but we're not destroyed by it.

 

I blame myself for ever touching these drugs. When developed Akathisia on Citalopram why didn't I just stop there and then? Why when I started mirtazapine and suffered suicidal depression, Akathisia and delusions and god knows what else - why didn't I stop!?

You are not to blame on this. We can't blame ourselves for not knowing what we didn't know. We also all thought we were making informed choices based on what we were being told by "experts". You are not to blame. You just aren't.

 

 

Totally failed my family and my children. This drug has took their mother away.

You haven't failed anyone. The drug and and withdrawal is currently causing their mother significant pain and is making her FEEL that she can't be the mother she thinks she should be. She hasn't gone anywhere. She's there, with them, loving them and worrying about them.

[mammaP]

What do you do when you want to take your own life so bad? Hospital is not an option.

You take a look at this post, print it out and stick it on the fridge or even frame it!   That day was an amazing window Muddles and more of them are heading your way. Just hang in there, this is a nasty wave that has enveloped you after a period of feeling just a bit better but it will pass.  You are not destroying your children and it was not your fault you took those drugs. We trusted those doctors who were supposed to know what they are doing.  This is all the drug that is talking not you.  Every day that passes is one day closer to being better, your body is working on healing .  This will pass and I hope it is very soon.  Mamma hugs. 

First window today for a very long time.

 

Managed to to get up, shower, and take the kids to school....something I haven't done in a long time! Also cleaned downstairs and did some washing....go me!!!! Oh and cooked the tea.

My husband was very happy....not having to cook tea for a change.

 

This is a big achievement for me. So strange how one day can be totally different from the rest. I'm praying for more days like this. At least one more day so I can at least manage to clean up-stairs.lol

[Muddles]

Thank you guys. I'm really trying so hard. None of us asked for this..so cruel. Not sure if I should make a cut in the hope I may feel a bit better?

 

Feeling very toxic and strange. Sorry not able to write much else...other than that I appreciate your support so much.

[bubble]

Dear Muddles,

 

I'm so happy I knocked at your door and thank you so much for getting back to us although it's not easy.

 

I see this as labour pains. Try to clench your teeth and wait for this storm to pass. It's just a nasty wave, pull down your sails and don't change anything until things clear. They will, you've experienced this already and will again.

 

Big hug

[mattinsmom]

flyby hug

[Muddles]

Why when I look at my children why do I get a doom feeling? Does this doom feeling replace that love feeling? If it does it's so cruel. How can a mother live with such torture day in day out?

[Rhiannon]

Muddles, I can relate to the feelings. Those kinds of feelings are definitely associated with withdrawal.

 

It looks like you just made a cut to 10 mg. You've been making big cuts fairly close together. Now that you're down from 15 mg to 10 mg, I would seriously consider a longer hold. For me three months seems to be the magic number, but of course everyone is different. Still, I encourage you to consider trying at least a two-month hold at your current dose. I know you have bad effects from the drug as well as from the withdrawal, but it sounds to me like what's really tormenting you right now is more withdrawal, so it might be time to let that balance out for a while.

[Muddles]

Thanks Rhi. Just keep thinking that this poop-out is killing me and holding anywhere is just greif.

 

Will hold here for a while and see what happens.

 

Grrrr....not having any life is getting me down. The future scares me and my husband is at his wits end with worry. He is basically my carer whilst trying to work and care for the children. Not long before he has some kind of breakdown. What then!? ANTIDEPRESSANT's suck.

[Muddles]

Please help- advise. I am 24 hour suicidal and can't cope at home or care for my children. My friends want me in hospital because they think that they can treat my total loss of emotions and apathy. They think they can help.they don't get it and I don't blame them because if I were them I would be doing the same thing.

 

What do I do? They will take me off this drug too fast. I can't cope at home and suicidal urges are so strong.

[Muddles]

Sorry for the multi quote's

[mattinsmom]

I am so sorry that you are feeling the way that you are, and so proud of you for reaching out. 

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Hang on. Don't make a permanent decision based on a temporary experience and I assure you, this withdrawal experience is temporary. 

 

I've been where you are, I return there from time to time, but not once have I regretted choosing to live. When I look at my kids, knowing full well that I have not been and still fail to be the mother I want to be, I remember what it is like to not have mine. I remember graduating from college, walking down the isle, having my children, being sick, being happy, and not having a mom to share these experiences with. I don't care how f*-up she would have been, I would have rather her been alive.

 

I will tell you that you are not alone in what and how you are feeling.

I will tell you that this will pass. There will be good moments and they will get closer together and last for longer periods of time.

I will play the guilt card - meds have already torn your life apart and left you to pick up pieces noone ever should. Do you really want to pass that on to your children? Do you want your kids to have to pick up the pieces of mommy's suicide?

I will tell you that I will listen. I will make a commitment to check in here more often to see how you are doing. 

 

And I will tell you that, if you do truly believe that you cannot keep yourself safe, then do whatever it takes to stay alive. If that means a hospital then go. This is only my opinion. I wish I could offer you more. 

 

I haven't given up on you. 

[Addax]

I am so very sorry your are going though this, Muddles!

 

I am also so glad you reached out. I wholeheartedly agree with what mattinsmom wrote!

 

This, what you are going through, is temporary and not something to base a decision that is permanent. And if you don't feel safe or that you can keep yourself safe then there is nothing wrong with going to the hospital. Do what you need to do to stay safe and alive. Both for yourself and for your family.

 

You're not alone. And while your friends may not "get it" most of the people here really do.

[bubble]

Thank you so much for sharing. We are here for you. I can't add much to what Amy and Addax wrote. I hope this passes soon. Don't worry about the things you temporarily can't do. Just focus on one moment after the other. You are doing the best you can and you are doing it greatly. 

 

When I'm really very, very bad I imagine myself as a small child that I have to comfort and reassure. You are there for that little frightened child and taking a good care of it and soon it will calm down.

 

Please keep us posted.

 

big hug

[mattinsmom]

I'm just checking in. 

Don't give up.

[Muddles]

Thank you. I would never have thought such things before this mess. Drug induced thoughts/urges are just so hard to just 'ping' out of. I'm not sure what to do. My kids would have got me through any bad times in the past. When a drug strips you from feeling any kind of human emotion possible its cruel. My children have been robbed. If I could feel love I know I could fight this. It's just trying to survive one day to the next.

 

I appreciate your words of encouragement - it means a lot.

[Muddles]

If I were off this drug I think I could look forward somehow, but I'm still on 10mg and it's hell. I wish there were a place for us - those who have been damaged and struggling to be together. I just don't know what to do. I'm so god damn desperate for some relief from this.

[bubble]

I'm thinking about you a lot. remembering your good moments that made us all so happy. I know that much more of those good moments are heading your way and I sooooo wish they would move faster.

 

You are putting in an enormous fight and the drug is decreasing from month to month. And more importantly, you are on the right way and although it doesn't seem like this at the moment, you are healing. Relief is just round the bend and you are doing everything right: just staying put and as a sailing boat caught in a storm, pulling your sails down, huddle and wait for the storm to blow away. Your kids are fine and you have every right to focus on yourself only right now. That;s the very essence of this beast: that it robs us of the very core of what being human is: feeling love and feeling in general. But it's just temporary so we should try whatever we can to ignore it.

 

have you been reading about neuroemotions lately? A lot of us find comfort in reminding ourselves of the true cause of how we think and feel. This makes it at least a bit easy to survive it. http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/137-neuro-emotion/

 

I admire you a lot and know you will make it.

 

big hug!

[Muddles]

Thank you bubble. Your words always step me away from this torture if not be for a few minutes. It's so very hard for those around me - they want this broken mother, wife and friend 'fixed'. For some of them to think this is some kind of depression that could be fixed with a drug is just frustrating beyond belief. It's the numbness of the part of the brain that keeps you alive - the feelings of love, joy, hate, determination, sadness, fear and grief ....it's died. To try and explain this to anyone is just so hard. I even feel like my heart doesn't beat anymore...I have to check.

 

I WANT TO LIVE so bad. And I truly think I could if I could just feel that love. It would keep me going I know it would.

[mattinsmom]

It will come. I think the analogy of a sailboat in a storm is perfectly fitting. Yes., buckle down the hatches and wait. This will pass. You are decreasing rapidly, even if it doesn't seem like that. Let this last drop stabilize awhile.

 

I have faith in you.

[mattinsmom]

Just checking in. 

prayers to you

[mammaP]

Muddles you remind me so much of what I went through. I remember in the hospital

I was telling them that I was dead already, that 'I' no longer existed and all I had to

do was get rid of the flesh so my family could grieve. I wanted to disappear without trace,

and in my head my family would have been much better off. It was all down to the drugs,

just like you.  I was given drug after drug and it was years before I felt any relief. 

 

I look back now and think of the devastation if I had succeeded in my suicide attempts.

My kids are all grown up now and tell me that they knew I was ill, that they still loved me 

and that I didn't ruin their lives.   I know it feels like this has been going n for such a long

time, and that but will never end but it will end. I understand why your friends feel you

need to be in hospital, it is very scary when someone you love talks about suicide, and 

they want you to be safe.  I have no idea what the staff at your hospital would do but

I do know that at the hospital I was at there was always drugs and more drugs and I 

never ever want to go down that route again  .

 

Do you still have the mental health team in contact with you?  I had a very good CPN 

who helped me a lot just by listening to me. In the end I stopped telling people how I felt 

because they couldn't understand it and they were scared but I could offload to the CPN

once a week and it helped. 

[Muddles]

I'm still here just about. Thanks for the support.

 

It's not a depressed suicidal feeling - it's a total loss and love from life. Like I'm a dead person walking. Not able to do simple tasks and watching everyone else care for my children when I just want to do it. Looking at them and feeling absolutely nothing but doom. Looking at those out there - getting on with normal life. Just general day to day stuff like taking a shower. How can a drug rob you from that? I was the least selfish person out there.

 

I'm seeing a pychiatrist on Tuesday. That should be fun.

 

Again - thank you.

[Muddles]

I'm so depressing - I'm sorry.

[Wolfhound]

Muddles

I am thinking of you.

I know where you are.

Just het through it minute by minute.

I will hopefully write more tomorrow

Hugs

w.

[mattinsmom]

Glad you are still here. 

You are not alone. I watched my friend practically raise my children for a time. I simply did not know how to get over that emptiness. Cooking, cleaning, playing, driving, you name it - I did not have the energy or the desire to do anything. And I felt so guilty. Empty and guilty. 

 

I'll be honest, I still feel that way from time to time. I still watch myself not doing the things I want to be doing, or watch myself not even wanting to do anything. I still get that dead feeling but it isn't all the time. It feels like it when I am in it. We forget the good times too quickly (except when we are using them to point out how much we suck now). Things do get better. You are in an ugly place, and it will change. Keep holding on. Your kids will thank you for it one day. 

[Muddles]

Someone please take this away. Akathisia is killing me.

[Muddles]

And I've lost the ability to cry. That's all my emotions gone - every single one.

[mattinsmom]

Keep holding on. I'm guessing that you are probably more than sick of hearing it but you will have better days, Try to get outside if you can, even if only for a minute or two. And, if you can do it in bare-feet, all the better. 

 

Deep breath!

[Muddles]

Pychiatrist appointment today (families wishes).

He had read through dr Healy's report and didn't seem too interested - until he acknowledged the 'profressor' title.

 

He realises that all my symptoms are drug related and wants me to come off sooner rather than later...over 3 months, as he thinks the suicidal thoughts are the drug side effects and not withdrawel. Doesn't know anything about the 10%rule (raised big bushy god damn eye brows).

 

What ya think? Too fast for me?

[Muddles]

Thanks for cheering me on mattinsmom.

 

He also gave me lorazepam for Akathisia.

How often is too much? I've had one when I got home and it's helped with akathasia and SI.

[Muddles]

Mamma P - the Cpn is rubbish. She thinks I have my original anxiety disorder back. Jeez - I would do anything to just have that back.

 

Sound like you had a horrendous time whilst your kids were growing up. It's difficult because I am so different with them. Madison has gone off on camp for the week and jut like - 'bye' usually it's tears and craving for her the minute she's gone.

So strange - I am living on the outside of everything just looking in. Not wanting to be part of it and the apathy prevents me from doing partially anything. Was always a busy bee.

 

I hope you are ok mamma P. I always look foward to reading your posts.

[Muddles]

Thank you Wolfhound my dear friend. It looks like you have come a long way. It may not seem like it but I really can see this ordeal slowly disappearing until one day the healing will have done its job.

[bubble]

I'm following you closely and wish there was something I could do. Something more. What you describe reminds me so much of one very, very distressing period in my life when my emotions were also dead. 

 

To make things even more painful, I was only 19, studying, all my friends were having fun and I was so dead inside that I would just shift around in painful emptiness, totally devoid of any feelings. I had a kid brother who was 6 then and I loved him more than anything in the world before and after  and yet I couldn't feel anything for him then. I was an automaton, looking at everything in total disbelief, like I was dead. I remember how I was thinking in horror that if all my family was to die I wouldn't feel anything. And this lasted for 6 awful  months until a talk therapy ignited a spark of life in me again. So I can totally relate. I knew nothing about anhedonia then and had no idea what was happening to me. i would always recommend talk therapy with a sympathetic no pill pusher, preferably a psychologist. What you are going through now is great trauma in itself and I've always found therapy to be very helpful. it was always my gravity center. I so firmly believe it would do some trick for me. And it did.

 

Reading about your meeting with your psychiatrist I think I would completely disregard his "advice". What does he base it on except on misconceptions about these drugs? I forgot  to ask you if there was any difference in your symptoms after your last cut 2 weeks ago? Is it possible that what you are experiencing now is in any way related to that?

 

I hope some other people will give their opinion on whether you could try a very controlled larger cut to see how you react to that. Now I'm looking at your signature again and I see it doesn't say when you were put on Mirtazap. As you will agree, now in June currently doesn't mean much so if you have time, it would be good to improve it in that way.

 

I hope somebody will be able to say more about Lorazepam. All I know is that benzos are very addictive and Rhi wrote somewhere how infrequently you can use them to avoid forming addiction. I understand how huge relief it is to see that beast of akathasia release its clutches on you...

 

I still remember your window and wonder what you did then to make it happen so that you could do it again? A long hold? 

 

 

big hug

[Addax]

Swung by to see how you were doing.

 

I was prescribed Ativan (Lorazepam) when I first started feeling the anxiety associated with withdrawal. At the time neither I nor my doc knew that's what was happening, or that the anxiety was actually Akathisia. I was wary of taking a benzo as I'd known people who had taken them to help them sleep and developed some pretty significant insomnia and when they stopped taking it. Their sleep went back to normal after several weeks, but I was still cautious about taking it.

 

I started at 1/2 a tablet, then quickly jumped to a full tablet when I didn't feel it was effective. I took it to help me fall asleep but it had primarily been prescribed to help when My anxiety (Akathisia) felt overwhelming. It really did help with the anxiety and Akathisia in the moment, but it made me a bit droopy sometimes. Unfortunately, I found that on the nights I took to help me fall asleep I would wake up the next morning noticeably more anxious than the mornings when I hadn't taken it. I remember thinking of it as like rebound anxiety once the Ativan wore off. It was a hard decision to make because it really did help with the anxiety, but I stopped taking it because I felt like a cycle could easily develop and I would become dependent on it given the increase in anxiety when it would wear off.

 

Obviously we're all different but I thought I'd share my experience with Lorazepam as Bubbles had suggested.

 

I also wanted to mention that I understand how strange and terrible it feels to feel so blunted and not be able to cry. I felt that way for years while taking Prozac. Not even the death of a close family member could make the tears come. I felt like people thought I was cold and didn't care or something. I guess you could say I felt ashamed. I just couldn't feel the sadness I knew I should feel. I finally force some tears at the memorial service, but they were short lived. At that time I knew pretty well it was a side effect of the Prozac, and that experience was one of the stronger motivations for wanting to come off it.

 

It wasn't until I got down to 10 mg of Prozac that I could feel that I could feel sad and that I could cry and even laugh more easily than I had in years... Not including crying spells brought on by attempts to withdrawal in the past. Those were extreme and never felt normal. I guess what I'm getting at mostly is that whether the result of being on an SSRI or withdrawing from one, the blunting and apathy passes. It may take some time, but from my own experience and from what I've read and hear from others it definitely passes.

[mattinsmom]

Hi

 

I have to give my 2-cents on Lorazapam. I take it, I've taken it for many, many years, and I wish I had never taken that 1st one. Yes it does calm a panic attack/high anxiety for me but so does walking away, holding ice cubes, and breathing. Please look up Rhi's information on Benzos. Benzos cross the blood/brain barrier and (imho) carry a particularly nasty ability to cause fast addiction to "low" doses.  

[WinningThrough]

Massive hugs muddles x