I listened and stopped

My experiment of trying to live a "normal" life these past several weeks has been a complete failure. I tried not letting the depression I felt building keep me from doing the things I needed to. I took on more responsibilities with NAMI and have been helping my sister get her home business up and running. And while everyone was busy complimenting me on how well I seemed to be doing, including my therapist, I was quickly unraveling on the inside.

I was becoming more depressed and lethargic, so my pdoc upped the dose of Cytomel I was on to a level he was unfamiliar with and wasn't sure how I'd respond, hoping it would give me more energy. It sent me into a horrible mixed state. I was just as depressed, only my mind was running 1,000 mph, so I wasn't able to sleep. I finally stopped taking it after about 5 days of almost no sleep.

Once I stopped that med, I became practically bedridden with depression. I didn't want to see anyone, hear anyone. I didn't want to see the sun. I didn't want to know I even existed. I was sleeping 12-16 hours a day and I wanted to continue sleeping until I wasted away into death.

When I was awake, I couldn't help but think, "why am I swallowing all these pills every day just to feel lousy?" Apparently the selves (as previously described here) inside my head, which when they aren't drugged into submission love to battle over control of my brain, heard that question and started repeating it over and over. "Yeah? Why are you on these drugs that aren't working?" So I listened and stopped taking them.

It has been a free-for-all since. Without the drugs to numb my brain into silence, it never shuts up. I had gone several days without sleep, but yesterday was so exhausted, I finally did get a few hours. Most of the time when I can't sleep, it's because the selves are bringing up toxic memories from my past, or they are fighting over who's really in control.

The one thing I've learned from quitting my meds this time is that they don't do anything to fix whatever's wrong inside my head. They don't even relieve the symptoms most of the time, they just mask them, all the while doing irreparable harm to my brain and memory. What's the point of that?