Sticky post: I may be well

Hi, I haven’t been keeping up the blog partly because things are going so well for me. If you have been diagnosed with a mental illness and/or are taking psychiatric medication and stumbled across this blog take heart, you can recover. Your life can be fun, productive, calm…whatever consider as good. You can also wean off psychiatric drugs.

I started this blog to share my experience with others. I am at a good place in my life. I still am not ready to go public and I have other projects where I need to spend time. So I will not be posting as regularly.

The meds I now take

The Anti-med Naturalgal DOES use some medications.

Hmm, It seems it’s been over a year since I last posted. Well I will tell you the medications I’ve been taking for almost 2 years now. I’m not a big fan of medications. I used to be anti-medication. Now I’m anti-medications for those that the medications don’t work well. After my mother died and I had lost my job, I started having panic attacks and feared being by myself. I was ready to check myself into a psychiatric ward, but my brother urged me not to. He did recommend a medication similar to Lexapro.

These are the medications I now use: Escitalopram 10 MG tablets (Generic for Lexapro) — for anxiety and depression. I also take hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg capsules. And Clonidne 0.1 MG tablet. This used to be twice a day, now I am wearing a patch. These two medications are for high blood pressure.

At night to help me sleep I take Trazodone 50 MG Tablet and Clonazepam 1 MG tablets. Clonazepam is the generic of Klonipin. I was taking 1 Trazodone with 2 Clonazepam at night. Recently I wean of one of the Clonazepam.

I’m baack

I chose this graphic to symbolize back to blogging.

Hi, I’ve haven’t posted since 2015. A lot has happened since that time. I quit my job, which put me in daily contact with prestigious people and the movers and shakers of our community.  I sunk into a depression. I  dug myself out of that depression, took care of my elderly mother, whom was my best friend. While I was taking care of her I was mentally fine. After she died I came home to no job, a lost of contact with the outside world and because of a car accident — no transportation.

But I’m here today to tell you that even if you do relapse, you don’t have to totally depend on psychiatric drugs to get well. At several points I felt that I needed to be stuck in a psych ward, and I was desperate to take any psychiatric drug. It felt like my heart was outside of my chest and pounding violently. I felt like crying or screaming, but no tears would come. I was super lonely. I felt normal only in the presence of others. I visited with our parish nurse, she suggested grief counseling.  I used my husband’s EAP (Employee Assistance Plan) to find out what they had to offer. After phoning the number a nice voice asked me some gentle questions. One of them was, “Are you thinking about joining your loved one?” No I wasn’t. I was just going nuts. She gave me the names of approved providers that the company would pay for three sessions with. I don’t know why, but first I made an appointment with a psychologist who had a good reputation in town for grief work. My husband drove me to the appointment. which was inside of a hospital. I met with her, took an inventory, I think it was Beck’s Depression Inventory.  I scored as severely clinically depressed. That physiologist urged me to call my medical doctor who worked for the competing hospital in town.  He wanted to put me on Prozac of Zoloft. I said, “No,” because I had taken both of those drugs in the past and they did nothing to help me. I also couldn’t sleep. I would lie awake at night, not daring to get up and do something as I didn’t want to spur a bout of mania.

I did decide to take some psychiatric medicine. I will elaborate on that.

(To be continued tomorrow)

 

 

Taking the challenge

I’m taking the challenge to write my memoir. I see that Gianna Kali is still keeping her blog up. Now it is Beyond Meds and she is using her real name, Monica Cassani and is still blogging. I’m too chicken to go public with my real name.

Making lunches for work

My daughter prepares healthy foods for me to take to work so that I am not tempted to grab junk food.

Every week my daughter prepares lunches for me to take to work.

Tonight she is making humus wraps for me. She is using Romaine lettuce for a wrap. If it was a tortilla it would problem have gluten, prepared with the lettuce as the wrap they are gluten-free.

She says gluten is not good for people who are pre-diabetic. She says that gluten affects brain chemicals. And that their can be a tie in depress. Gluten affects the gut and that’s where all the hormones are made. That can affect your mood and how you feel.

Everything in the wrap she is prepping is an anti-oxidant. Anti-oxidants are important because they help rid your body of free radicals which can damage cells. And anti oxidants help cleans the body of toxins.

Free radical damage can cause cancer.

• Romaine Lettuce
• hummus
• onion
• green or red pepper
• alf alfa sprouts
• avocado

A total break from psych drugs

Well, here it is Nov. 2014! My husband and I are doing very well. In 2008 I was doing most of the cooking to make sure we were eating healthy food. Food good for our brains. Now, he is doing most of the cooking for me. He doesn’t pay much attention to whether or not the food is organic, but he does include lots of vegetables.  We went a couple years without really taking any drugs. But recently we had some changes. He got a new job … so I was careful to give us both vitamins, natural sleeping aids and very small dosages of Lithium. You can purchase small does of Lithium over-the-counter. I think we are home free now, as far as staying stable, but I wanted to make sure the changes didn’t upset our stability.

I’m Thankful for my drug-free mental health

It’s now the day before Thanksgiving 2014. I am thankful that i have been successfully weaned of psych drugs for many years now. I’m working on a first draft of a book about my journey.

People missing the point

A retired nurse wrote a letter to the editor to say that she thinks the side-effects of the psych-drugs should be looked at when looking at all the gun violence. She cited all the side-effects of these drugs. She added that people needed to turn to Jesus.

Now people are focusing on the turn to Jesus aspect and not hearing what she has to see about side-effect. They say she is marginalizing mentally ill people. I wish she would have left the “turn to Jesus” out of her letter.

Sometimes I’d like to write what I really think, but who would believe me?

Why would I want to write what I really think? Who cares. Do I care if others have to suffer the way I did.

January 2013

Hi, I haven’t blogged in so long that I forgot my username and password, but I finally figure ti out.

 

So much to tell, so little people to trust.

Vegan eating

I don’t think I’ve posted much about my decision to eat vegan. I’ve done it for a few months now. I do believe I feel better.
We recently went on a holiday and I was able to find vegan food wherever I went. Sometimes it was a matter of asking for it.