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Depression, Anxiety, Psychosis - The story so far
As I’m new here I thought I’d write a bit of a more detailed introduction about me and the issues I’ve had/have. For anyone who’s interested this is my life so far. Sorry if it’s a bit long but maybe someone else can gain some greater insight into their own illness or find some glimmer of hope from reading how things have gone for me.
I’ve been diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, OCD and “increasing psychotic symptoms” over the past decade-plus of being on medication for these various conditions.
As I child I was physically and psychologically abused by parents, as a result had major self confidence issues and depression. I didn’t really feel any self confidence to establish relationships with people, I hated myself and I could never remember a time when I’d been happy in my life. After things broke down with a girlfriend at 19 I hit rock bottom in the form of a breakdown at Christmas and ended up sitting in front of a doctor telling him I wanted to kill myself. I later found out that I’d also had urinary incontinence issues whist growing up which was attributed to stress after tests failed to find anything wrong with me.
I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression and started on Antidepressants (Citalopram) then which helped quite quickly and things started to get better however some deeper issues hadn’t yet been resolved. A few years off the meds, this depression started creeping back over me. I took it upon myself to find a private psychiatrist who added OCD and Anxiety to my diagnosis and started Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with a private therapist.
The private psychiatrist recommended I try Clomipramine, a Tri-cyclic antidepressant which would help more with the OCD/anxiety side of the issues and I found it very effective. Between this and the CBT I started to make progress towards getting better, eventually I got married and started a family and things seemed to be good mental health wise for a while.
More recently, workplace stress caused my Anxiety levels to skyrocket and something seemed to break inside me, I was constantly terrified and paranoid issues which had been lurking in the background since childhood started to overtake me. I became unable to control the paranoid thoughts and started seeing conspiracies against me everywhere. Following another breakdown over another Christmas my doctor prescribed an anti-anxiety medication Buspirone.
Although truth be told I was already quite depressed as I was terrified all the time and didn’t want to go on like that Buspirone seemed to make things worse. It numbed my emotions to the point where I couldn’t feel any positive emotions anymore, and was no longer scared about the thought of ending it.
At this point with the benefit of hindsight I didn’t realise at the time but I was suffering from Paranoid Delusions, was unable to feel joy from life (anhedonia) and started experiencing tactile and visual hallucinations however I didn’t realise these things weren’t really happening at the time. I had sensations of things crawling on my skin and saw insects flying around or on me in my peripheral vision. I also became aware that derealisation is a thing and that I'd had derealisation since childhood.
I have had lifelong issues with my knee joints and as a child my parents didn’t take me anywhere to get it looked at. My Doctor got me an MRI a while ago but it was unable to find the source of the pain so he prescribed codeine based painkillers.
I did go back to my doctor and confessed to him that I was starting to feel suicidal again, he put me back on Clomipramine which helped for the depression and anxiety and I stopped taking Busprione. Unfortunately at this point I changed job, voluntarily, leaving a job of 14 years to go to a “better” one which was further away from home but with much better pay and more responsibilities, more staff, etc.
The job turned out to not be all it was cracked up to be, the boss was a total nightmare, a bully just as my parents had been. Being under a probationary period with a new boss who was a bully was hugely stressful as well as more time away from home traveling for work and my paranoia started to intensify. I’m not sure how much of the bullying was real and how much was imagined because again I was seeing conspiracies around me at work.
Eventually I lost the job after trying to tell HR about my boss’s bullying attitude and once again was very close to the edge. I went to see the doctor and he increased my Clomipramine prescription in an effort to keep me going. With some time away from work whilst looking for a new job I started to realise that the hallucinations and paranoia were symptoms that might bare mentioning to the doctor. I didn’t even realise they weren’t real at first but when my wife was telling me she couldn’t see the bugs I was trying to get rid of I started to worry that something was up with that.
I was referred to the Community Mental Health Team, where a doctor started me on an Antipsychotic (Quetiapine) and raised the dosage on the Clomipramine, the combination seems quite potent for anxiety, paranoia, and the hallucinations are gone. The appointments with the Psychiatrist there were unnerving as they were inside secure areas of the local hospital. My first visit to the CMHT was the day after I lost my job and I didn’t feel I could be completely forthcoming and truthful about how bad I was feeling at the time as I was sure they’d lock me up. I was trying to decide if I should kill myself or not at this point. My life insurance would provide for my other half and kids as I couldn’t anymore. I felt like I was in a hole I’d never get out of.
With the new meds and higher dose antidepressant things seem to be more stable now. I’m still taking the Co-Codamol for my knees, I recently weaned myself off them to see if they were still needed. I felt like hell and my knees were still hurting. I might have some dependency issues there but it’s not like I’m exceeding the recommended dose by the doctor and they enable me to do my job and play with my kids without excruciating knee joint pain so I don’t really have an issue there.
I’m currently taking 200mg Quetiapine 225mg Clomipramine a day and co-codamol 3 times a day and things seem fairly stable at the moment. I still have the occasional bad day emotionally but generally things are the best they’ve ever been. At my last visit to my Psychiatrist last month he upped my dose of Quetiapine to the 200mg level. I visit him again in November so who knows what’ll happen to it next.
I do worry that one day the meds might stop working. Throughout this journey my other half has been amazingly good to me and supportive. She confessed to me a couple of years ago that she expects to lose me to suicide one day and that made me feel terrible to hear that I’ve made her live with that. I’ve promised her that I’ll keep taking my medication as long as it takes to keep that from happening.
One of the big frustrations I’ve found along the way is how long it takes to get medication when you’re in crisis. Even with the CMHT they write to your doctor to ask them to prescribe the medication and you may get that prescription at the chemist a couple of days later if you’re lucky. The chemist may or may not need to order your meds in which can take another half day. When you’re just holding on in the hope that something can make it feel better it feels awful that you’re waiting for no good reason to start the last ditch hope meds that might save you.
I’m now in my early 30s, and still happily married with two kids going to school. I found work again before the money ran out from the last job and got through a probationary period without problems. I use a mood diary app called In Flow which helps me stay aware of my mood and hopefully catch things before they slide too far down hill if the medication stops working. No-one at my work knows about my mental health issues and I’ve just about managed to keep everything from anyone finding out.
If anyone wants to ask any questions about this or talk about any issues like this you might have had yourself in this thread or in a PM I’m open to discussing it. I find discussing things helps me to understand what’s going on in my own head sometimes and would strongly encourage anyone who’s not been feeling good to discuss their problems with loved ones if you’re lucky enough to have people who care about them, their doctor, forums like this that people want to help others on. It’s a tragedy that our society is such that you can’t talk about these things without people attaching the stigma.
Last edited by keep_it_together : 07-10-2014 at 03:22 PM.
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