the downward titration

i began taking depakote around november or december of 2004, and remained on a steady dose of 1000mg per day. when i got my bloodwork checked (a regular occurence when one is taking depakote) soon after moving to seattle, my levels were higher than usual. the doctor i was seeing at the time, Dr. N, decreased my dosage to 750mg around november of last year. for the past week and a half i've only been taking 500mg. this weekend, i'll decrease it again to 250mg, which i'll take for two weeks. as long as all goes well, at the end of those two weeks, i'll be off of the depakote - and so far so good.

my history with psychotropic meds began when i was 19 and first diagnosed with depression and then anxiety. the first antidepressant i took made me psychotic, so i didn't really have a good start to the whole psych med experience. but i continued to take meds until i was 21. for the next five years or so, i took a low dose of an antidepressant for a few months on several occasions when i felt i needed it, but i went unmedicated for the most part.

in the spring of 2004, several months after moving to boston, i began taking psych meds regularly. i started with an antidepressant until i added depakote towards the end of the year. sometime later, when increasing that antidepressant was no longer possible, i switched to a different one. i also added lithium for a short time, but couldn't tolerate its side-effects.

aside from the time of my original diagnosis with depression when i was 19 and the two years following, the most difficult times i've faced have been in the last three years. it's been these difficulties that have led me to try all these meds.

the only time i felt well during these few years (for more than a few days or weeks at a time) was last summer. but then we moved, i started grad courses, my grandmother died, my dad had a couple of strokes, and i fell apart in the midst of it all. so of course, since my moods shifted, so did my meds.

we switched my antidepressant from one to another, which made my moods more erratic. another doctor added a second mood stabilizer to the mix, which worsened my moods, killed my memory, affected my cognitive functioning, and gave me migraines.

finally, my new doctor took me off of that, and then off of my antidepressant. with each of those two changes, my mood has steadily improved. and even now, as i've decreased the depakote, my mood seems to be remaining on a path towards improvement.

some days it's hard to tell for sure though. some people complain that some antidepressants dull their emotions, and i know that certain ones have done that to me in the past. since i'd been on them for the past three years, i know longer knew if they'd been having that effect. but since i've stopped taking them, i've become much more emotional. i'm not normally a very emotional person, so finding myself tearing up during commercials and movies makes me wonder if it is shifting emotions or shifting moods (emotions being more temporary than mood states).

but so far, it seems that though i feel somewhat depressed some days, it's not to the same degree it was while i was taking more meds, and those feelings aren't lasting as long either. but i know i'm prone to depression, so i have to keep a watchful eye on my emotions and moods, to be sure that i don't allow a day or two of feeling down or overly emotional to spiral into a full-blown depressive episode.

in all, i guess it feels like i've been waking up from a dulled dream, where suddenly i can feel and experience things more fully. it's hard, because it means my emotions are stronger and i don't always want to deal with them. but it feels so much better than the depression i've spent so much of the last three years in.