I've been slowly tapering down my antidepressants for several weeks now (in a doctor-prescribed manner, calm down), and I'm down to my last four days of pills. Four days! My old-person pill organizer is emptying out, and I don't have pills to refill it. So strange!
I'm making an attempt at an antidepressant-free life for a number of reasons, the main one being that I just want to see if I can do it. Two and a half years into this particular chapter in my particular story and I'm doing pretty damn awesome. Yesterday I was walking outside in the sun and I noticed I was just...happy. Not about anything in particular, just a nice, peaceful, comfortable-in-the-moment kind of happy. It sort of blew my mind. That is more than I ever thought possible.
None of the chaos and fear and darkness in my head is actually gone, mind you, but I've found the volume knob and can mostly turn it down to the level of background noise. And I while I believe I needed the medications to find that volume knob the first time, I don't believe I need them as a daily tool to keep from losing track of it again. At least not right now. And so I'm trying to go without.
My only real worry at this point is physical withdrawal, because OF COURSE one of my meds is known to have one of the worst withdrawal periods of any antidepressant (and they all suck royally). So far I'm managing - just a little dizzy-constant-headache-body-ache-owie sort of thing and difficulty sleeping. The real test will be next weekend, after my last pills. Based on the mini withdrawal I had a few months ago when I switched meds around, I fully expect to see little aliens soft-shoeing around the bedroom in the middle of the night, so that should be fun.
Hopefully I'll come out the other side of this okay - and I can head on into the next chapter of my life pill-free.
