Depression - Medicated (part 5)

The first time I took the pills, I wasn't sure what to expect. I was started off on 5mg of Lexapro and was told it may take a few days and a full two weeks to get the medication saturated in my system.

I felt as if I needed help now, not 2 weeks from now.

I swallowed my first pill and waited for the results. I really didn't feel anything at all. 1 hr....2hrs....3hrs...1 day. Nothing. The shortness of breath was bugging me though, and I knew that was seperate, yet related to the depression. Panic attack? Smothering? Don't know and don't care, I just know I was in pain. Not the type of pain like getting pinched or breaking an arm. Not really a headache either. More like an imaginary rubberband just under my sternum getting tighter and tigheter and tighter. I wanted to take deep breaths, yet they did not work.

So I took the Clonzapen. 1mg I believe. This I did notice. Within 20 minutes or so, I was a little light headed. Almost like being buzzed on alcohol without the hangover. It was a surreal feeling. A weird dichotomy of being sober and lucid at the same time. Being alert, yet emotions and feelings and thoughts lightly floating about my skull. The chest pain subsided.

I took two of these a day for a few days....yearning to feel relaxed...to be somewhat numb. My motivation was to rid my pain and to unfocus my irrational thoughts. By the time two weeks rolled around, I can honestly say I don't think I felt much one way or another. I remember that the negatives feelings were indeed disapating, and yet so were the positive feelings as well. Even though I was still me, I wasn't. I became a walking mortal shell....a clone of my fomer self.

It's when I would forget to take the meds on occassion my moods would swing. Missing one day required that I be on track again for at least 4 more days straight before I evened out again. During my moments of cohesiveness, I was (and still am) ashamed and embarrassed that I was regulated to drugs and fought it. "I can get through this without the pills', I told myself. Well, I did carry on...just not very successfully. One day things were good, the next seemed to to plummet. I was very sensative to my surroundings and what people thought of me, especially my parents. At first I didn't tell them. It was months before my parents discovered my orange RX canisters about my house and inquired what was wrong. Already 'outed' by my clumsiness, I told my parents about my depression.

Surprisingly my father was more understanding than I ever would have gave him credit for, and my mother, who thought would support me from the outset, had the exact opposite reaction. She told me I didn't need the drugs, that I would be worse off in the end. Instead of the support and warmth I would have liked from my mother, I felt belittled and chastised and inferior and lectured. Like I had dissapointed her. As if I wanted to be caught. As if I wanted to wake up everyday swallowing a pill and not understanding why or when this all started. I began to doubt my own credibilty in the manner....Do I really need these pills? Is it all a farce?

For the next few weeks I placated my mother and her constant badgering about the pills, always wanting to redirect the conversation elsewhere. I was already struggling with it myself and already concerend what my wife and father were saying and thinking with out my mother chiming in every other day.

to be continued....