My Mental Health - A history to December 2009

I have struggled with my thoughts and how honest I have wanted to be on this blog about my mental health status.  The more that I have thought about it, the more that i have felt that i want to be as honest as possible. I have not held back in the past.  Hell i have probably over-shared, you lucky readers!  I also think that at some point, when i am feeling better (god willing) this will be some sort of good way to look back and see what the heck was going on in my brain, or not going on, as the case may be.  So I am going to be completely honest about my mental health diagnoses, drugs I take, analysis of what I feel that is doing to me, side effects etc. 

Please know that these are my thoughts on my mental health, drugs, ecetera  I am not a doctor, i am a patient.  I am writing about my care.  Not about someone elses.  I am not advicing you on what do to with your care.  I am only reflecting and talking about my situation. That being said, please feel free to ask me any questions, questions what I am doing ectetera. I do not have all the answers for my self and want to break down the stigma of mental health. Talking about it is the only way.

A bit of history:  I think that I have always suffered from depression.  I had thought that i was just chronically depressed up until a yr ago.  For as long as I can remember I had been sad.  I look at pictures of myself in school when i was a teenager, or even younger, and I know that I am sad.  I spent a number of years in University depressed and continued that way through my adult years depressed.  I also started in university to speak to a therapist on a regular basis.  I would spend an hour a week talking about my feelings.  I drank a lot, too much in university.  It helped to feel better, or at least numb the feeling bad.

When I started working in my 20's I stopped talking to someone regularly, but I didn't stop being sad.  It wasn't there always, but it came in waves.  I was also the person that could be relied on to often hold the conversation at a dinner party, entertain the guests, work a number of hours without stopping occasionally, party for hours on end, drink the boys under the table, all this was part of who I was.  The sadness in the background.  What people did not see, or do not remember are the months that I would disappear from the "scene" and not be social for months.  Hibernate in my parents house for months not being social, not communicating other than work. 

In my late 20's I started to see a therapist again and the Cipralex Adventure began.  I started to take a new anti-depressant on the market, Cipralex, and began talking to a "Life Coach" who would later become my Psychotherapist.  I have written on this blog about Cipralex and my experience with it and my migraine drugs that i take.  It served me well for 6 years, although I continued to increas the dose I was taking until I was taking 30 mg a day, the maximum does and was still depressed.  I also was working in a high stress job and thriving on the stress while managing the unhappiness through talking and the Cipralex.

I had at this point after 15 years essentially of being sad and depressed, thought that this was my fate for life.  I was what some psychaitrists call, chronically depressed.  Some people are just like that.  There depression never breaks, they are never truly happy, they are always in a dark cloud.  That is not a terrible thing, it just is what it is.