medications

the other day i was thinking about when i first met my old psychiatrist back in boston, and wondering what it was i liked so much about him right from the start. i came up with a bunch of things, but the one thing i'm thinking of tonight was his response to hearing about all the meds i had tried in the past to deal with my mood and anxiety problems. after reading the list of meds i'd taken, the side-effects i'd experienced, and the lack of results all around, he looked quite puzzled. his question to me then was why - with such bad experiences with psychiatry in the past - i was still trying, why i was still giving psychiatry a chance.

i didn't really have much of an answer, except for the knowledge that i'd never seen a good psychiatrist for any significant period of time and i hadn't ever had anyone really try to find something that worked for me, beyond trying one or two meds. and i'd avoided meds and pdocs for years and figured it was time to give it a shot again.

but there was something i appreciated about the fact that he recognized i'd tried and tried, but hadn't given up. he was surprised, but respected that i was seeking help even after such bad experiences with meds.

so, three years later, i'm still trying to find the right 'cocktail' of meds for me. 90% of the time 90% of me doubts that there's anything out there that will really work for me. but for some reason, i keep trying. just enough of me hopes that something can help me enough to make it all a bit more bearable; to at least serve as a crutch through the roughest times so that i can deal with all the shit that gets me there; to serve as a bandage to hold the painful wounds for even just a little while. but most of the time, it seems like such bullshit to even think that such a pill (or combination of them) could exist for me.

over the years i have taken: prozac, zoloft, effexor, trilafon, luvox, lithium, paxil, xanax, wellbutrin, depakote, effexor (again), clonazepam, celexa, lithium (again), risperdal, ritalin, concerta, lunesta, and now lamictal. of those, xanax chills me out quite nicely (but i use it too infrequently for any real help as i fear becoming addicted to it) and ritalin lets me focus and gives me the ability to sit still for longer than 15 minutes at a time (but i use that rarely as well, because of how much it messes with my moods and how much more i want of it each time i take it).

so, the newest of the bunch is lamictal, added to the other two currently in my daily cocktail. in the week and a half since starting it, my mood has fluctuated to the extremes and i've had migraines or headaches each day. the headaches should get better (until the next dose increase, then they'll get better again, and the cycle continues with each change in dosage), and they seem to be as i actually made it through my last dose without a migraine. and though lamictal has failed many drug trials (it's been approved - why???), some say that it has made them hypomanic at first, and then eventually at a higher dosage serves as a mood stabilizer (makes no sense to me, sounds like it should work the other way around).

so, if i give lamictal a shot, i should expect headaches or migraines most days for the next eight to ten weeks.

my other meds don't seem to be doing a damn thing, so if i drop lamictal, i have to find something different, and in all honesty, i'm running out of options as far as meds go, but really needing some sort of working crutch right now.

so i guess i'm stuck with headaches for a while.

there's really no point to this post. i just wanted to whine about my headaches and sucky meds.