I flushed my entire collection of antidepressants.

I started medication when I was a junior in high school. So, that was almost five years ago. My brain has been medicated for five years. The first medication I was on was Prozac. This is a very common drug to start people out on for depression or anxiety. I started out on 10mg and by nine months later, I had gradually gone up to 40mg. When I started on 40mg of Prozac, I noticed that I began to get heart palpitations and my heart ended up having an irregular heart beat. That resulted in me having to get a heart monitor put on my chest for 24 hours. Well, they found nothing wrong with my heart. It was the medication. So, I immediately stop taking 40mg of Prozac all at once. The withdrawal from that was awful. But then once the medication was out of my system, I was put on another antidepressant to replace the Prozac. That drug was Lexapro and I am still on that now. So, I have been on Lexapro for four and a half years. I stared out on 10mg but I am now on 30mg. Lexapro worked for a while. That was until I was hospitalized on suicide watch during the spring of 2016. While I was in the hospital, I was put on Abilify. Abilify is an antipsychotic drug usually used for schizophrenia BUT it can also be used to help with depression. I am currently on 5mg of Abilify. Shortly after I was out of the hospital, my psychiatrist put me on another drug called Hydroxyzine also known as Vistril. This drug helps calm you down if you are having an anxiety attack. This drug is also used as a sleeping pill with some people. Well I was put on 20mg of that but I don’t take it regularly. I only take it if I am having a really bad anxiety attack. During the fall of 2017, I was noticing that over the course of the past year I had lost my ability to focus, concentrate, and sit still. So, my psychiatrist thought I had developed ADHD. She in turn put me on Wellbutrin, 100mg of Wellbutrin. This drug is used to treat ADHD and also bipolar disorder. Here is the thing… that psychiatrist would put me on a new medication or she would up my dosage every time I told her something was wrong. She never even tested for ADHD and that was almost one year ago. Then she left the practice this past spring. (That was probably for the best). I got into see a new guy and he basically told me that I am on way too many medications at too high of doses. (Shocker). Now I am on 30mg of Lexapro, 5mg of Abilify, 100mg of Wellbutrin, and 20mg of Hydroxyzine. I am very medicated and it is stupid. So, last night I got fed up and flushed them all! Yay. Empowerment.

The decision for me to flush came out of some research and some conversations with friends. So when I was hospitalized two years ago, I was put on Abilify to help boost the Lexapro. That is when my issues with school started. It caused to me to lose focus, not be able to sit still for more than an hour at a time, and also not be able to fully engage in conversations with people. I have failed every single class since the fall of 2016. I couldn’t figure out why I kept failing those classes. It didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t able to sit still for class so I didn’t go. I couldn’t sit still or focus on assignments for more than an hour a day. I couldn’t retain new information in my mind. This all started to happen when I was put on Abilify. I have been researching it for the past few weeks and I have discovered that this is very common for people on this drug. This drug causes cognitive deficits and I rather not have cognitive deficits.

My closest friends have noticed that when they tell me something, it looks like I am not there. I am physically there but mentally I am not. I honestly feel numb to many things. Including my emotions. It is almost as if I don’t care about anything. I am a very laid back person but the medications have made me almost too laid back. I want to be able to care about things but it is very hard for to do so because I don’t really feel anything. I can’t engage in conversations like I used to. I want to be able to process what people tell me but I literally can’t. This is something that I have realized over the past few days and it has become more aware to me. So yeah… I flushed the Abilify, the Lexapro, and the Wellbutrin. I don’t want to be dependent on them anymore. I don’t want to be numb. I want to be able to feel my emotions again.

I am in a very hard stage in my life. I lost the most stable adult figure in my life to lymphoma and I broke off an engagement with my fiancé. I should feel a lot of things but I literally don’t feel anything. I know I am sad and hurting but I can’t feel those things. I want to feel those things so bad but I can’t. I want to cry but I can’t. I am willing to go through an awful few weeks of withdrawal and I am willing to fight through that because I want to feel something again.