READ THIS FIRST: If you are visiting this page, please also read my follow-up blog, “Having said all that ...” which significantly updates the perspective shared on this blog. If you are choosing to withdraw from antidepressants, please do so with professional support if you are able to find a sympathetic physician. Before looking for one, you may wish to visit the website of The Withdrawal Project, which provides excellent resources and peer support.)
Our unfamiliar world
It has been a challenging couple of years for all of us. COVID has driven us insane, personally, communally, and politically. I am fortunate to be able to be bubbled safely, to have all the resources at hand that I might need to keep myself occupied, shelves of great books, and a library app that delivers audio versions of more. I have a basement full of materials for crafting, sewing, and beading. I even made a loom out of an old cutlery box, a few pencils, and a couple of elastics in order to teach myself to weave beaded bracelets. And I’ve been knitting, unravelling, and reknitting a sweater for my niece as I try to decipher its pattern. I have lots to keep my mind and my hands occupied so COVID’s challenges have been manageable if irritating. I am lucky.
My new and frightening world
My experience of lockdowns and zoom meetings, however, has been exacerbated by a much needed withdrawal from an antidepressant I was initially prescribed, long ago, as a migraine prophylactic. Its long-term use and slowly increased dosages ended up causing me significant and frightening cognitive decline. After a year of growing alarm at my mental losses, exaggerated by knowledge of my genetic predisposition toward Alzheimer’s, I was seen by a neurologist at the Sunnybrook Memory Clinic. Among other things, like diagnosing me with ADD (I so could have benefited from knowing that a few decades ago!), she identified the drug I was on, amitriptyline, as a potential contributor to my cognitive decline and recommended I taper off it as much as I could.
The withdrawal took eighteen months. For fifteen of them, I’ve been unable to work. I’m only beginning to stabilize emotionally - the withdrawal has been overwhelming and brutal. For most of my time off work, it wasn’t clear that I would get anywhere near where my brain used to be, that I would ever be able to write again, or speak publicly and expect to make any sense at all. Sometimes, it wasn’t clear whether or not I’d live to see the end of the process, so traumatic was the depression. To complicate matters, agoraphobia, which had been a challenge when I was a young adult, came down like a cage over my life and I rarely left the house, only venturing out with my husband, if encouraged by a friend, or out of extreme need.
But my brain, a few months ago, began to slowly, and noticeably, improve. Despite the ongoing, sporadic but crippling depression, I was able to see progress in my cognitive health. I still sometimes forget what I’ve just done, get mixed up if I don’t follow the order of my morning ritual (likely an ongoing ADD reality), can’t find words …. But I don’t use the completely wrong word (aphasia) anymore. And, for the most part, I can remember what I’ve done all day though I am much more diligent about making lists for everything that needs to be done tomorrow (a newly learned ADD tip). Whether just the withdrawal from the medication or the combined effects of a demanding brain health protocol I have been also been following, I now feel encouraged and believe that I might, one day, be able to set aside the terror of oncoming dementia.
The world I love, but different
Recently - too recently - I have also begun to realize a fragile stability I hadn’t dared to hope I’d find. It is the result of my recognition - and acceptance - of the fact that an antidepressant is going to be an ongoing necessity if I am ever to be able to be me again. It has been a hard learn, assisted by a lot of intense work with an outstanding therapist. Acceptance of that has been challenging, so strong is our belief that any breach in our emotional health is a sign of weakness. I know that isn’t true but my refusal to accept my own need for antidepressants belied the assertion I had often made to others. I’m past that now. Being able to do something like begin this blog is proof that I believe being me is more important than the “integrity” of being depressed, rational though I believed that depression to be. It is still a journey in progress, of course, and my confidence continues to wax and wane, but my hope is that the way forward will become less challenging and clearer over the coming months. And, truth be told, I’m only two and a half weeks out of my last major depressive episode. It is a piece by piece journey.
So, here we are. This newsletter, or blog, if you prefer - which will be published with incredible irregularly - is a creep back into the world I love. Life is made up of the tiny, broken pieces of relationships, experiences, wins and losses we are left with and the not quite healed wounds created by its shards. We crunch our way along its complicated landscape and try to find beauty, love, the thrum of possibility. I hope that some of the pieces about which I write will resonate and that, together, we can embrace whatever “whole” might yet become for each of us.
(Please note: My next post, written months after this, shares further information - learned serendipitously - that updates this and provides new perspective. Please see “Having said all that …”)
Gretta, I am so grateful that you are doing what you need to do to take care of yourself AND for sharing yourself and your process with us/me. God! I love you, Gretta. I thank you for being you.
As a old and retired psychiatric NP I look back and just wish I'd known what you now know and are sharing about Rx [antidpressant] withdrawl. There is so much that we knew and DIDN'T or don't know.
Greta, when I read the words “last major depressive episode”, I’m reminded that my depression isn’t curable; it is chronic. Managing depression is hard work, lifelong work. The stigma attached is painful and is present even in the healthcare field. Many assume it’s a situational condition and if it lasts too long (whatever too long is), it’s due to some character flaw. Please continue your blog as you are able. I applaud your courage.