Brain Candy - The Antidepressant Diary (Entry #1)

I've been moderately depressed for years. A decade, possibly more, I honestly can't remember when it started.

Around the age of 19, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and thought hey, maybe I'm just missing thyroid hormones! This will fix everything!
And while certain things did get better, I was still depressed.

I learned to cope with it, my anxiety pushing me to stay productive. Healthy food, exercise, friends, activities, self-care, therapy. All those things helped me keep my head over water until - well, you all know what's going on in the world right now.

Ireland (where I live) has had very strict lockdowns over and over again. At first, I could handle it, but since January 2021, my mood has been dropping consistently until I was definitely severely depressed. I didn't have a single good day in months and it just kept getting worse.

That's the time when you start considering antidepressants, and consider I did. For years I have rejected medication because I was convinced I could "push through". And I did, most of the time. It wasn't pretty, and I definitely would've liked to use that energy for other things.

But this time I had reached the limit of how much I was able to do through sheer willpower.

Today is my 7th day on fluoxetine. It hasn't technically been long enough to definitely know if it'll work for me, but the past week has been the best and most stable in ... I can't remember, honestly.

The first three days I had so much energy, it was ridiculous! I just wanted to laugh and do things.

Then I had a day where I felt like I was going to throw up any moment now - but my mood was still good! Luckily, this symptom only lasted a day.

I feel like it's balancing out now, I don't feel particularly energetic but I'm also not back to being horribly depressed. My anxiety is down, which is a nice side effect. But as a result, I also can't be arsed to do any work (good thing I decided to take it easy this week).

I'm taking my time to settle into this new state of mind.

Something I have noticed today is that I am finally able to actually face all the things that I'm missing. It's no longer a feeling of "everything is horrible and I should just die", it's much more nuanced.

It's been over a year since I did anything with friends that wasn't just an outside lunch meeting between two or three labs on campus.

I didn't have a graduation ceremony for my MSc degree.

I didn't get to hang out with my classmate/friend who's now back in Canada.

I'm in the 7th month of my PhD and it's terribly lonely because every interaction with my lab mates is between experiments - we can't hang out at the end of the day.

I haven't seen my family since Christmas 2019.

I had to move my wedding to 2022 because obviously, I can't have it this summer.

Now that I don't feel horribly depressed anymore, I feel grief, I feel sadness, I feel apathy because I won't get vaccinated until late summer (earliest).

But it's nice to not be depressed, to not be enveloped in a constant brain fog that numbs every happy emotion.

I enjoy actually feeling joy again because hell, I haven't really been feeling that in a while.

I really hope it sticks, maybe I'll update you a few more weeks in.