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Side Effects

Side effects are ever so much fun, aren’t they?  Yeah right.  They’re about as much fun as hemorrhoids or unwanted facial hair.  I have a long, sordid history with side effects.  I have had gagging, nausea, headaches, body odor, sweating, increased Appetite, weird popping sensations in my head, and the ever fabulous major weight gain.

The first three times I was on Medication were an exercise in enduring and managing side effects.  I wretched and heaved but somehow seemed to misplace the bottom of my stomach, so I ate endlessly and got fat in very short order.  The third time, I gained 56 pounds in eleven months.  When I went to my doctor, puffy and bloated, to say that something was really wrong and I couldn’t stop eating and never felt full, she smiled kindly and said that my appetite was simply returning to healthy levels and depressed people usually don’t eat enough.  I wanted to throw my prescription bottle at her head.  I had never been overweight in my life, and by that point I was so fat that I had purple stretch marks around my knee caps and people who hadn’t seen me for awhile were totally unable to disguise their shock at my appearance.  During that appointment, the doctor also told me that medication was doing good things for me so I had to choose between what was more important: being thin or being well.  This was such a horrible prospect, I took myself off my medication and started drinking too much.

I stayed off medication for a long, long time.  I became very anti-Big Pharma, very pro Thomas Szasz.  I wrote my MA thesis attacking the disease model of depression on SSRI websites, how it outlined chemical imbalance and therefore pointed to chemical solutions.  If I had been powerless over my body, and powerless over my prescriptions, at least I could attack the narratives and the systems that had made me so powerless in the first place.  And I did that.  Very, very well.

But unfortunately, my desire to avoid side effects took itself way too far. I tried to convince myself and everybody else that I was healthier than I was and for a time, I was really good at it.  I was smart and educated and brassy and I knew all the right things to say to convince doctors I was just fine.  Most of them believed me.  Until one day in July of 2009, when my family doctor had had more than enough of my smoke and mirrors and articulate bullshit, and my jig was officially up.  I sat in her office, all shaved legs and mascara, in such a bad way that I was shivering with cold during a heat wave.  She listened to me go on and on with circumstantial explanations for why I was so down and out, and then finally interrupted with the sentence that changed my life.

“Your life is no different than anyone else’s”, she said.  “It’s just that you’re not coping.”

She persuaded me to accept a referral to a psychiatrist, and counselling.  I proceeded to piss her off royally by going back to our walk-in clinic and asking for a new antidepressant by name, without her knowledge.  I asked for it because it seemed to promise that it wouldn’t cause the horrible side effects that I so feared, like weight gain, and it was the only one I was willing to try.

Since then, several medications have been introduced, and dismissed.  Three others have been added to that initial antidepressant.  All four, I will have to take for the rest of my life.  There are some side effects.   I am always thirsty.  Like, ALWAYS.  The mood stabilizer changes the body’s capacity to sweat and can cause overheating, something I have to be mindful of a runner.  (I never could deal with heat overly well in the first place.)  But my weight and appetite are stable, and my stomach stays settled, and I smell just fine, thank you very much.

I wish I could go back in time and sit my younger self down and talk to her.  But that’s impossible, so I will say the things I wish could have said to all of you:  You likely do need medication, friend.  Your brain chemistry challenges are too big for you to battle on your own.  I know you have tried.   Taking medication doesn’t make you a failure; it makes you bipolar.  But you absolutely have the right to decide what side effects you can deal with, and what side effects you can’t.  This is not your doctor’s decision.  It is yours, and yours alone.   When your doctor prescribes you a medication, take it as instructed.  It’s not safe to do anything else.  But if it doesn’t work for you for some reason, GO BACK AND ASK FOR SOMETHING ELSE.  A different dose.  A different time of day.  A different medication.  You are allowed to be the captain of your own ship.  It’s so important that you feel in control.  If you hate what your medication does to your life, you won’t keep taking it.  Medication should feel like it makes you be the way you were always meant to be, not like something you have to survive.

Your meds should work for you.  Work with your doctor to MAKE them work for you. You deserve that.  You are entitled to that.  You are totally, absolutely, completely, utterly, worth that.




This post first appeared on Bipolar Steady And Strong, please read the originial post: here

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Side Effects

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