Drug test

Soooo....I am potentially in the midst of doing something very, awfully, fantastically, monumentally stupid.

As the large majority of you readers know (yes all two of you - and the twenty webcrawlers periodically visiting), I'm the not-so-proud and definitely not-happy-about-it receiver of an affective disorder (the unipolar kind, not the rollercoaster kind).

My own personal brand of insanity comes in two flavours:

1. I tend to see life rather in a negative outlook, and people, the outside world or everything requiring effort is actually requiring MASSIVE amounts of effort everyone else is casually shrugging off. This is a permanent effect, called dysthymia. 
2. If there is a sufficiently bad trigger (a loved one dies, a workmate from hell, a dark and cloudy winter, or just many small things cumulated over a longer period), I get hit by a depressive episode on top of that dysthymia, also called double depression. Which has all the symptoms of the former, amplified a lot, and simply makes your waking hours akin to living hell. Not that you can escape by sleeping, because either a) you can't sleep at all or b) you want to sleep all the time - which also falls in the direction of bad ideas, since hypersomnia can worsen your symptoms (though on some days, you'll do it anyway, since flopping down on your bed or couch is literally the only thing you can manage. For the non-depressive people - it's simplest to imagine a fate like this. (Warning. This link goes to TVTropes, and will spawn numerous tabs and murder your freetime.)

My worst episode was back in 2014 and actually put me in a hospital for a few weeks. My last episode (a mild to medium one) started in about October (it was, sadly, of the "dying relative variety and thus kinda justified), and has been gone for a few weeks now. (Sunny spring weather certainly helped with that). And on Friday morning, I realized - I accidentally went off my meds for two days.

Well, whoops. Usually, I get withdrawal symptoms fairly early in the evening, telling me I'm supposed to take my mirtazapin / remeron. Said symptoms include twitching, vertigo, and a heavy inclination to stuff your face with carbohydrates - it takes quite a while to figure out the connection "if getting the munchies --> take your sleepy meds". In my case, this "a while" took me about 10 kilos of body weight. And that? Is on the LOWER end of the spectrum with this drug, so I'm thankful it didn't went further.

Not so this week - I was on a chain of business trips, which all took longer than expected - and I fell facedown on my mattress on Wednesday and Thursday. Which apparently distracted me from any probable drug symptoms or the first withdrawal shit. And this is probable the first time my hell-job was actually doing me a favor.

So I took the Friday afternoon to look around the Net for anything resembling "discontinuation of mirtazapin", or NASSA (this is the class of antidepressives I'm on). Mainly, the educated response on the internet for stopping your meds suddenly is broadly categorized as "Just don't", "No, Never do this" or "YOU GO TO HELL. YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE! AND YOU WILL BE ASS-RAPED BY GIANT PORCUPINE PENISES!!1!1!!"

There's just that one thing: So far, I'm coping quite well. Sure, I have the sniffles, and I didn't sleep so well last night (since I stopped a drug that mainly has antihistamine and sleep-inducing qualities, I'm not surprised much). So, I went to my parents and my sister, told them what I had in mind, and to watch me if I'm behaving episodal. Also, I made myself big honking post-its on my monitor to remind myself every night to watch my own behaviour (that's trickier than it sounds, but after years of psychotherapy, I'm getting better at it).
I do know that mental drugs aren't that simple and the good mood I feel now can quite probably be a ghosting effect with an abrupt crash at the end. But if there are any clouds on the horizon, I will turn back to my dosage (that means 1-2 days of running into walls and doorframes, but hey, at least I can sleep afterwards) and will patiently endure my doctor's 'tsk-tsk'-noises, and all the horrid side-effects that goddamn crappy stuff makes me go through. For now, for today, though - I enjoy being free for a few hours or days.

So, Teshik - let's see if you survive a) the 3 weeks of flushing out the drug, b) the 6-8 weeks of adaptation, and most importantly c) the goddamn putrid shit life will throw into your face to drag you down again when you least expect it.

Let's also see if I'll be able to post about my progress in, say, a week... And anyone who has seen my posting habits can now safely expect my very next post somewhere around September 2019.