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So this is not what I'd expect my first blog post to be but here I am talking about it. I've been a little hesitant to talk about this online because I dunno, it feels kinda weird to talk about what medications I'm taking? At the same time, I want to speak on my experiences and maybe someone can relate.

The beginning of my mental health recovery journey started with Wellbutrin. My PCP prescribed it to help with anxiety and ADHD, come to find out later it has been reported to be terrible for both those things. For some it works great, for others, it's counter-productive. I fall under the latter category. I'm not mad at my PCP for this or anything, you can only expect so much for someone who isn't specialized in this particular field. Even looking at stories on Reddit, things looked like they'd do well for me.

At first it was doing well for me from the moment I started it. I had more energy, I was feeling good, motivated. But that wore off quickly and I went to a steady okay normal. I wasn't thinking negatively for the most part and while it wasn't making me as energetic and motivated as I wanted, it seemed to be doing me good. Eventually the bad thoughts crept back in, it didn't feel like it was helping so much. Thankfully I already had another appointment with my PCP a month later, so after talking with her, she upped the dose.

This may be where the problems really started, it's hard to say. I think the side effects would have crept in with enough time anyway. At first the dose uppage helped, but it wore off quicker than the last time. My new normal was "mostly better but still some negative thoughts". It was definitely a more stable feeling than before I started taking the meds, so I was accepting of it. I had plans to find something else in addition to this.

After well over a month of waiting, the psychiatrist took me on as a patient, my appointment was scheduled, and he started working with me. I went in with the plan of treating ADHD (not formally diagnosed) but he saw the high anxiety score on the packet I had to fill out before this. He explained to me how the anxiety could be causing attention issues and how he wanted to start by treating that first. I didn't entirely agree but I wanted to be open to at least trying his methods first. I knew myself but also wasn't confident enough in myself at the time to advocate better.

He started me on Citalopram on the lowest dose. I quit taking it six days in. I realize that doesn't seem like a fair shot but it didn't start well to begin with. Day one had to be the worst day because the sensory overload was unreal. Best way I can describe it was that my body was the sensory overload and there was no way to escape it. After that I just turned into a zombie for the remaining five days that I took it. I could hardly get any work done, tasks that would have taken me 30 minutes before the meds now took an hour or more. I could barely stay awake at home, and even driving felt a little weird. I didn't feel dangerous yet, but who knows if it would have gotten worse.

For those who don't know, Citalopram is an SSRI. I had not heard great things about SSRIs and I was skeptical when I first got it, had even voiced to the psychiatrist that I was weary. However he explained the side effects were not bad for most and I wanted to give it a fair shot. So far, the stories I had heard were right.

After stopping, I had called my doctor and left a note. The assistant was able to call me back and move up my original appointment to try and find something else. Again with the anxiety as the focus, he suggested another SSRI, Sertraline AKA Zoloft. While I had hoped for something different, I felt like I needed to give it another shot. However I wouldn't start taking the medication for another week as I had a vacation starting the next day, I needed to be able to drive comfortably.

Before the vacation I'd been doing my own research on things as well as talking with a friend about these meds. I was beginning to think that Adderall might actually be my answer. However with it being a controlled substance, I knew it would be harder to get. I'd also seen a loved one struggle with having to go into withdrawls because of the restrictions, so I was weary.

Also starting around this time, I had started to notice a little...quirk with the Wellbutrin. I was beginning to feel less sharp, my short term memory was becoming worse and worse. Which for me was extremely unusual, I am considered "the memory" of the family, always remembering appointments and other things. At work I was finding myself spacing out a lot more, work was taking me longer to get done. It was definitely making my attention span worse.

During and after vacation is when I really put things together and became more frustrated. The Wellbutrin wasn't just messing my my attention, it was making me straight up dumb. That's kind of an exaggerating, but it was true. My sense of logic had just become off. The way I'd approach tasks was often the least logical, most difficult way. I'd be slower to respond to someone getting my attention, many times I just didn't even hear them.

One day I'd entirely forgotten where our rice scoop was, something that has been in the same spot for well over six months. I went looking in the wrong drawer and then part of me was panicing after I realized it wasn't there and I couldn't remember where it was. The breaking point was when my partner told me "you know, I do hear you when you tell me stories", because I'd been repeating myself so much. Sometimes it was days but there was a few times where it had just been a few hours since I told him about something.

This started to effect my mood, which was probably not a great way to go into the Zoloft. The first day was only a partial day like with the Citalopram. This one didn't make me feel as awful, I felt weird but not so bad I wanted to escape my body. It did make my chest hurt though, to a rather noticeable degree. The second day was my last. I woke up feeling terrible, the drug would have still been in my system from the previous dose, but I figured taking the second dose would make things better. I got upset over something very small, so small I can't even remember what upset me. But that sent me spiralling on my drive to work, I was feeling overwhelmingly suicidal. To the point where I was planning on how to just end it, including thinking about which day would be the easiest to disappear.

I'd arrived at work when the second dose kicked in and made me more anxious than I normally ever was. Any task felt so overwhelming, even just responding to an email. The chest pain also came back and it remained for the whole day while I was at work. It was a struggle to get through the day and by the end, I'd told my husband that I was going to stop taking it. There was just no way I'd be functional and it didn't feel worth suffering through such vicious side effects just for the hope that it would eventually make me feel better.

Realistically, I just can't do that. Not only do I have to work, it is my busiest time of the year in accounting. There isn't time to wait, at least not in my mind. That's not even including the fact that I have my two kids. It was coming up on my daughter's birthday and I couldn't have myself wanting to or attempting to kill myself before that. My son is practically attached at the hip most days and no way in hell would I be able to leave him behind. I didn't want to just be a shell of myself, either via sadness or by feeling so drugged up I couldn't think normally.

That also meant that I needed to make a change with the Wellbutrin too. The time I waited for my next doctor appointment was agony. Knowing that it was messing with my head so badly made me feel absolutely horrible about myself, which was not productive at all. I couldn't just quit cold turkey, there wasn't enough of my old supply from when I switched doses to make it until the appointment, and unfortunately cutting them in half wasn't an option. But I was so ready to step myself down.

I had a theory about why this was happening though. When I first started Wellbutrin I had just recently quit drinking alcohol. I was drinking somewhat heavily (depending on your standards) for about a year due to my issues, and it finally got to a point where things got so bad that I just had to quit. But my body was still chemically a little weird, I knew I'd done some damage to my body, and while the doc confirmed I was in good health physically, mentally I'd degraded. So while coming off of that, the Wellbutrin really helped, it leveled me out when I would have been so much worse off. But by the point I started noticing the issues, I was four months, going on five months of being totally sober. My body didn't react the same to it anymore, so I imagine that I will eventually come off of it entirely.

I was also just ready to be done messing with SSRIs. I was tired of all the bad side effects. Especially the fucking jaw clenching!! Both SSRIs had this effect on me so I can only imagine that this would occur with others. I know there are many, and maybe there would have been one out there for me, but I wasn't willing to keep playing this stupid game. I needed to finally adovcate for myself, I knew the thing I needed treating the most was the ADHD. I knew it wouldn't make my depression go away entirely, and certainly would make my anxiety go away, but I knew it would help with both those things.

My doctor was more than willing to lower the dosage on the Wellbutrin, which was a small success of its own in my mind. I didn't think he'd disagree with me on that choice but it just made me that relieved to slowly start gaining myself back. The bigger success was that he really listened to all I had to say. I wanted to treat the attention, not the anxiety and he agreed to that. Which left us with a small number of options.

Now I knew the typical next step to trying to treat ADHD would be Straterra. Now, this was a drug I'd heard about from someone I follow. They said that while it helped the depression and anxiety, it made them dumb. Which is honestly what made me conclude that's what Wellbutrin does to me. Turns out there's a reason for that, the two drugs are very similar. My doctor said that since I didn't have good results with the Wellbutrin, the Straterra would likely be the same. So he put me on Adderall, and, wow. What a world of difference.

It has only been a few days but I have way more energy. Even with minimal sleep, the tiredness I feel is nothing like what it was before. Took that day for me to realize that I was not just tired before these meds, I was fatigued and exhausted. I'm getting motivation back for things, I'm becoming more focused at work. I suspect it'll only get better as my body gets used to things. I honestly wish I'd done this a long time ago. While my goal is not to be on these forever, I want to figure out how to stabilize myself and get into a good rhythm, and I could have done this forever ago!! But I'm glad it is finally happening, and that something actually worked.

Do not let my bad stories stop you from trying something, it may work for you! But these are things that could happen, some of the side effects I experienced are more rare and not as widely talked about. Others of course are well known I feel but still, maybe someone out there didn't. Best advice I can give though is listen to your body and advocate for yourself. Those things are so important and will make a world of difference.