Last year (2019) I ended up visiting my doctor around May with the suspicion that I was anaemic, as I was struggling to do the simplest of tasks at work. I was constantly exhausted, sleepy, drained and could barely get out of bed in the mornings. My efforts at work were consistently below par, and I was feeling more and more useless because of that.

After updating the doctor on my change in energy levels, and my suspicions, she asked if I had ever tested low for iron levels in the past, and I confirmed that no, I’d been fortunate enough to have consistently good blood iron levels. I am sure you all see where I’m going with this. She then had me answer a serious of 7 questions, asking about how I’ve been feeling (a mental health self-test which many of you may be familiar with). Just to be clear, I was struggling so much with cognition at this point that I couldn’t even process the questions she was asking. My working memory was at an all-time low. I had to ask her to turn the screen towards me so that I could read them for myself. Suffice to say, my score was shockingly low ( or high? I don’t remember how we got the result). I was so surprised that my depression has come back because I hadn’t felt particularly gloomy (from a mood perspective).

All the pieces were starting to come together, along with the realisation that depression doesn’t have to mean gloom and doom feelings, like it had been for me, before this instance. I was prescribed with citalopram, along with a handful of diazepam tablets, commonly known as Valium, for my frequently occuring anxiety attacks.

A few months passed, and I went back to the doctor around July for a check-up to see how the meds were working. I updated her to say, the diazepam had definitely relieved the anxiety when I had taken it, but I had taken it extremely sparingly as it had zapped me of much of my connectedness/associatedness with my body. The citalopram too, had worked wonders to alleviate my depression, however, it too was affecting my ability to connect with my body. It had been making me feel as though I was permanently having an out of body experience (OOBE). When I looked at my hand, it would seem as though it was someone else’s hand. I was dissociating quite significantly. After this discussion my doctor decided it would be in my best interests to change to a different anti-depressant medication called fluoxetine. And it is this medication that I continue to be prescribed with to this day.

I resigned from the job I was in, effective end of September 2019.

The only other account I feel I need to add to this is that of what happened when I chose to go off the fluoxetine between mid November and early January. I could feel that the meds took roughly 1-2 weeks to clear out of my system, but once that had happened, though my depression wasn’t noticeably worse, my anxiety skyrocketed and my appetite went up a lot as well. I had trouble ordering at a fish and chip shop, and had to cancel plans to go swiming, twice. Though it was an interesting psychological experiment, it gave me enough information about how the medicines were helping me, to convince me to go back on them and stay on them for an extended period.

I still sometimes feel a bit OOBE-y/dissociated in the mornings, but overall, I am a much mroe content, happy and healthy person, who is eating because I my stomach is hungry, and not my brain. 🙂

I hope that this account helps others going through the same or similar journeys.

Kindness and love to all,

Janine.