Since the fall of 2001, I have been dealing with true clinical depression. If I recall correctly, it usually has to last for a couple weeks to be a clinical depression since low times are natural if you can link them to situation but if you fail to bounce back then life becomes horribly bland and unbearable. For those who have not dealt with it, some of the symptoms are a lack of interest in most activities and constant tiredness that sleep can't remedy. The closest I can explain to a person who has not felt true clinical depression is to think of a time when your nose was so congested that it made it hard to taste food. In clinical depression, all your senses become numbed, so with your vision you may feel everything looks like a shade of grey and colors don't pop as much.
It was post 9-11 that I started to downward spiral and by Feb 2002, I could not even bear to even go to work and concerned friends and coworkers intervened to get me help at the hospital after I stopped going in and refused to answer the phone for a week. Fortunately, I my employer had a good mental health policy so I was able to keep employment then return to work after I got treatment and started taking the anti-depressent Effexor. However, I only took this for a few months until the summer and then the doctor took me off them. The following Sept 2002 I started to feel the depression coming back so I went back to the doctor to get back on Effexor but it seemed to not bring me back up but kept me from dropping any further. By the end of March 2003 I was back to my old self but then in the next few months I started to become manic. After a couple of hospital stays between June 2003 and September 2003 I came back down and was diagnosed as bipolar and given some drugs for that as well. However, I fell into a depression again by the end of September 2003 and my family. For the next years, I lived with my parents and the long term disability payed the bills. I have been taking various medications and doses but seem to remain stuck in a depressed state even through the summer months. I finally started feeling better in December 2006 and started online grad school and a working a bit by fixing computers as my own business. Things were going well but the medications have more negative side effects than benefits so by the summer of 2007 I was put on a medication holiday by my doctor so I was taking nothing but had to report every 2-3 months to see how I was doing. I am glad to report that I doing better since stopping the medications and will be complete with school in May and have found a special girl and will be getting married in May.
Congrats if you read all of that. My point is that many of these drugs ar hit and miss so it take trial and error for each patient to find what works and what can actually make the problem worse. I think the Effexor may have even made the manic episode come on stronger. The other meds that I have taken the past few years may have initially helped but then became an inhibtor to actually getting to the normal range and left me in a semi-depressed state. I was fortunate that I had a good employer and the foresite to take a long term disability insurance policy so I still have income and since I am on a medical unpaid leave of absence and still get medical insurance from that employer.
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Since the fall of 2001, I have been dealing with true clinical depression. If I recall correctly, it usually has to last for a couple weeks to be a clinical depression since low times are natural if you can link them to situation but if you fail to bounce back then life becomes horribly bland and unbearable. For those who have not dealt with it, some of the symptoms are a lack of interest in most activities and constant tiredness that sleep can't remedy. The closest I can explain to a person who has not felt true clinical depression is to think of a time when your nose was so congested that it made it hard to taste food. In clinical depression, all your senses become numbed, so with your vision you may feel everything looks like a shade of grey and colors don't pop as much.
It was post 9-11 that I started to downward spiral and by Feb 2002, I could not even bear to even go to work and concerned friends and coworkers intervened to get me help at the hospital after I stopped going in and refused to answer the phone for a week. Fortunately, I my employer had a good mental health policy so I was able to keep employment then return to work after I got treatment and started taking the anti-depressent Effexor. However, I only took this for a few months until the summer and then the doctor took me off them. The following Sept 2002 I started to feel the depression coming back so I went back to the doctor to get back on Effexor but it seemed to not bring me back up but kept me from dropping any further. By the end of March 2003 I was back to my old self but then in the next few months I started to become manic. After a couple of hospital stays between June 2003 and September 2003 I came back down and was diagnosed as bipolar and given some drugs for that as well. However, I fell into a depression again by the end of September 2003 and my family. For the next years, I lived with my parents and the long term disability payed the bills. I have been taking various medications and doses but seem to remain stuck in a depressed state even through the summer months. I finally started feeling better in December 2006 and started online grad school and a working a bit by fixing computers as my own business. Things were going well but the medications have more negative side effects than benefits so by the summer of 2007 I was put on a medication holiday by my doctor so I was taking nothing but had to report every 2-3 months to see how I was doing. I am glad to report that I doing better since stopping the medications and will be complete with school in May and have found a special girl and will be getting married in May.
Congrats if you read all of that. My point is that many of these drugs ar hit and miss so it take trial and error for each patient to find what works and what can actually make the problem worse. I think the Effexor may have even made the manic episode come on stronger. The other meds that I have taken the past few years may have initially helped but then became an inhibtor to actually getting to the normal range and left me in a semi-depressed state. I was fortunate that I had a good employer and the foresite to take a long term disability insurance policy so I still have income and since I am on a medical unpaid leave of absence and still get medical insurance from that employer.