Tip No. 1 for newbie psychiatric patients ... never, EVER suggest to your psychiatrist that you think your medications are making you worse! The mongrel may actually feel like testing your little theory and slowly start weening you off them.
Okay, so I see a psychiatrist (pdoc) on a weekly basis .... eek! I was feeling just a tad frustrated with the whole mental health thing a couple of weeks ago and mentioned to my pdoc that I thought that all the medication I was taking was making me worse (e.g. too out of touch with my emotions and way to much weight gain etc). In my defence, I had only been out of hospital for a couple of weeks after a bunch of med changes. In my stupidity (and perhaps retrospectively), the new meds actually had me feeling the most 'normal' I had felt in ages! What's with that?!
Anyway, in his infinite wisdom, my pdoc actually took into consideration what I had suggested and decided to start lowering some of the doses of my medication. The first week, I came off of 1500mg per day of Epilim with no problems. In fact, I didn't feel any changes at all. The second week, I dropped 10mg of Lexapro (now on just the base dose of 20mg) and 100mg of Seroquel (now only on 300mg). It's been 3 days since I dropped the Lexapro and Seroquel doses and I'm starting to feel like I could climb up the walls and zoom around the ceiling. Unfortunately at the same time (if that is at all possible) my general mood has really lowered and those wonderful urges to SH are back with a vengeance. Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!
So what is the moral to the story? Unless the meds that you are taking are giving you the funky bad side effects that some psychiatric medications are known for, and thus are really making you feel worse, DON'T, under ANY circumstances, tell your pdoc that they are! S/he has you on that level of medication for a reason! You just could find yourself on the rollercoaster of med changes before you are actually well enough to start coming off them.
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