Depression Diaries: Intro

So I am going to be writing a diary about my life and the depressions and highs I go through.
Watch this space.

Mental Health: Coming Off Mirtazapine

I currently write this, while battling depression and anxiety and coming off mirtazapine. The anxiety is a strange one that has started about a week ago, I just feel scared. Of everything. And nothing feels real. I know I am dissociating as I have done it before and will do so again, I know the medical jargon and that does give me some comfort, to know it is a symptom. Not a state of being I will be stuck in forever. But it doesn't stop the feeling and I feel like I need to be near people, near walls, enclosed. I feel scared of the wide world. I am currently withdrawing from taking mirtazapine which I have been on since 3rd February. It has not helped me at all. 
It is different to an SSRI, the more common anti-depressants, such as as sertraline and fluoxetine, both of which I have been on. It is different in that it is an atypical antidepressant. I have found it came with the following side effects:

• Severe weight gain and appetite increase (I gained a stone in a month!)
• Constipation
• Tiredness in the day (I have been like a zombie the day after taking it as I take it at night, I have been slurring my words, unable to keep my eyes open, sleeping too much!)

I have spoken to my Doctor and my Psychiatrist and they have both agreed I can come off of it. I haven't noticed my low mood or anxiety to have alleviated at all while on the medication so there doesn't seem much point in staying on it and becoming fatter and more zombie-like.

I am hoping they will replace it with a different anti-depressant as coming off of it my mood has decreased. I take it at night to help me sleep as I was on a helpful concoction of sertraline 150mg daily and quetiapine 150mg at night and this together fought my OCD, anxiety, mood swings and insomnia. But now it is all up in the air again as since being hospitalised and taken off sertraline completely and quetiapine at night due to overdosing on it and being seriously ill, to moving onto Depixol injection (flupentixol, anti-psychotic, for mood stability, anxiety and depression) and mirtazapine as the anti-depressant (instead of sertraline) and sleep aid (instead of quetiapine) and Depixol as an added mood stabiliser.

I am weary about what meds they may or may not put me on and just want to go back to sertraline and quetiapine as I was on them years and they were my comfort blanket. 

I write this experiencing dissociation and wanting to run back to my Dad's house and say "Cuddle me til this is over!"

I am going to try and read or do something. I need to take 15mg mirtazapine (the lowest dose, which is apparently the most sedating, weird I know!) instead of the 30mg I was on until Friday when I have a phone call booked in with my psychiatrist and he will talk me through what I will try next.

Wish me luck as I don't feel too good, my mood is low, my anxiety is high, if only they were the other way round.

What Do You Have To Do To Get Help?

I really don’t know what you have to do to get help? How half dead you need to be, or dead.

I have Borderline Personality Disorder. Something that makes mental health professionals shiver when they hear. They can’t treat it, there’s no set medication for it. There’s no proof hospitalisation helps it. But what about when you are in a crisis, where do you go then?

I was and have been in a crisis recently and had an appointment with my care coordinator but her lips were moving all I could hear were the 4 voices in my head telling me to stab her. Obviously I didn’t want to so I said I needed the loo and ran away to the nearest railway crossing where I sat on the train tracks like a nutter. The train stopped as it saw me in time and I ashamedly climbed over the boundaries. I was sectioned by the police and taken to a 136 suite an hour away. I was kept there overnight in a prison cell like room only to be told after the assessment I wasn’t ‘psychotic’ enough or I had capacity so I didn’t meet the criteria to be sectioned. So I was sent home with no follow up support. And that night I cut myself and ended up in the general where I was sent home again.

What is going on? I have been nearly hit by a train and I still don’t meet criteria for inpatient help.

It feels like people with BPD are being ignored, let down and mistreated. I am currently in a low episode and feel like overdosing or cutting. What do I do? Who do I speak to? I want to hold down a good job but I’m sick of feeling low and not knowing when I will do.

BPD patients are recommended not to be institutionalised but what do we do in a crisis, how do we get help? What more do you want from us!?

Psychotic Catatonic Night Out: My Trip on Weed

So it was my second night in Amsterdam and after an embarrassing fake ‘hemp chocolate bar’ we decided to try the real thing and went to a coffee shop and ordered tea and a ‘space brownie.’

Waiting for the effects to begin was quite nerve wracking. I suddenly started to feel odd. I felt like everything was spinning and my girlfriend’s face was moving and blurry. It wasn’t like being drunk, it was like nothing I had ever felt before, and not in a good way. It didn’t chill me out, I wasn’t high I was psychotic. The last thing I remember before my episode began was clambering onto my girlfriend’s lap to feel safe. Then I spaced out. I didn’t speak for 6 hours. I took my clothes off in public and started touching myself inappropriately, I was talking to people who weren’t there, and whispering song lyrics. I was off my rocker. It was like I had taken cocaine, not cannabis.

I remember coming round in the hotel lobby with a plate of food under my nose. It was funny now I look back at it, but at the time it was terrifying. I remember feeling like my heart was racing so fast it would stop and talking to people in my head.

Not everyone reacts the same to drugs and weed did not chill me out. I have mental health issues and am on strong medication and it may have reacted to my meds but I can’t imagine what I’d be like on anything stronger than cannabis, considering even on alcohol I’m a demon.