What a nefarious twist of fate. Nearly exactly a year after boasting of giving up on antidepressants, I confess my brain carried on without them just for a year. Given that I had been through a few episodes in my lifetime, the risk of a relapse was relatively high and it materialised. It could have been most likely prevented by staying on a smallest therapeutic dose, yet my psychiatrist and I decided I would take a chance.
Despite headwinds in several areas of life, my mood was roughly positive until late spring. Around then, bout of overwhelming senselessness and void began to encroach me (they were reflected in this post). I was putting my feeling down to imminent or commencing middle-age crisis, but as I was still full of energy, though with no idea how to make use of it, I shrugged it off as a signal of depression. But frustration, irritability, anxiety and early wake-ups were, with hindsight, a set of indications another episode would be in the offing.
All of this was accompanied by a haunting conviction odds of long-lasting good times ahead of me were shrinking.
Around the end of August I began running out of energy. The feeling of meaninglessness has intensified and negatively impacted what psychiatrists call a drive. Less drive meant more fatigue, subdued appetite and libido, being less decisive, worse quality of sleep.
The picture which emerged was a familiar one. It kept me company for a fortnight, so there was no other choice, but to seek medical aid. As of now, a few days after first uptake of medicines, I only feel mild side effects, but an improvement in mood and drive is (hopefully) a matter of a few weeks.
The episode reminds me how complex a human brain is and that willpower is limited. It will not defeat the flawed chemistry in your brain. In the meantime I hope my lust for life returns and in a few weeks (and coincides with the most depressing month of the year, November) life will again be full of colours and prospects of future in my head get brighter.
* to learn what a "black dog" stands for, refer to Winston Churchill's memories.
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