Medication

So tomorrow I will be calling Dr. O'Connell, the psychopharmacologist that everyone seems to be recommending to me, to set up an appointment. I'm a little worried about this whole medication thing, despite being very amenable to the idea of being on medication again.

You see, I've never had good experiences with medication in the past, though much of it was due, I suspect, to the nature of the people prescribing it, and how my parents deal with me when I'm on medication. I was on a few SSRIs, all of which ended up making me extremely depressed. I was also on various stimulants such as Ritalin, Adderall, etc, which did essentially nothing for me. I was also, I think I remember, on some other stuff, but I can't really remember what all there was, and/or what the effects were, except that nothing seemed to work enough to keep me on it.

Now, this doctor, according to the various people I've talked to, is very good about listening to the patients and working with them to find something that actually works, and taking them off of things that don't. Hopefully this means that he will also listen to me when I explain what I would like to get out of being on medication, which is a little complicated.

One of the things that Liza and I talked about is the fact that while anxiety is a huge part of my problems, it really doesn't feel to me like the whole problem. It feels like one chunk of a puzzle, but not all the pieces connect to it. I feel that my emotional problems are largely overlooked, and moderately unrelated to my anxiety. While I feel that if you got rid of my anxiety, my emotional problems would lessen, I don't feel that they'd go away. I do, however, feel that if you were to get rid of my emotional over-reactiveness, the anxiety would lessen even more considerably, or at least be far easier to stamp out. So to me, what I need, first and foremost, is something to lessen that over-reactiveness, and something else, probably weaker, to work on the anxiety. I mention two drugs because I suspect that such a magical drug that does those two things does not exist yet.

This brings me to the next point, which is how I deal with medication. I don't mind being aware that I'm medicated, in terms of feeling zombie-ish (though only to a degree), but at the same time, if I'm too aware, I start trying to resist it, and then it simply does no good whatsoever. So being able to find something that will straddle that line would be wonderful, but it's not likely to happen. Granted, part of what I need to learn as I go through this is some behavioral change, such as not resisting the effects of medication, but still, anything that will help me not feel the need to would be extremely helpful. Perhaps what might be good would be to be on two medications, one stronger, one weaker. I'd be on the stronger one right now, and for the early part of the semester, while I'm still settling into therapy and my new patterns, and then as I get better about things, the stronger medication could be weaned off, and leave me with just the weaker, as a little support. Anywho. Just a thought.

So yes, I will be researching my options so that when Dr. O'Connell (who is apparently a delightful Irish man) suggests something, I can at least have some idea of what he's talking about. I like to be an informed patient.