Depression Sucks. Cymbalta Didn’t Help – BandBackTogether BlogAThon

Oh God…sorry…see? It gets  that  bad.

Entire days devoid of motivation, years of therapy, more issues than the newsstand at Barnes & Noble and the meds. Can we just talk about the meds for a minute?

I feel like it’s a science experiment and we’re guinea pigs. This one stopped working? Try that one.   Aches and pains with the soul crushing pangs of despair? You can take this one in conjunction with that one. It was enough to make Ozzy Osbourne cringe.

I used to go to a psychiatrist who was like 100.   It was nearly impossible to get an appointment with anybody and this was my only option. He was old school, so he didn’t just prescribe meds, he’d give me fifteen minutes to ruminate first. Then just because he was feeling generous, he’d share one of his own life stories. It was always something about a puppy his mother forced to live outside all winter that froze to death or when his parents moved to Europe with his kid sister neglecting to tell him.   And my personal favorite – that all his friends and family were dead and gone.   Talk about perspective. Problem was, I’m too empathic and I always came away more emotionally drained than when I went in.

When it came to the meds, he’d just ask me what I was taking and how much I needed.   At first it was irritating that he hadn’t even bothered to read my chart. But I figured maybe his bifocals weren’t focalizing.

That’s when opportunity dawned on me.   I could tell him I needed a double dose of Ativan.   He wasn’t going to know the difference. But that’s just wrong on so many levels, not the least of which is that kids, you don’t mess with prescription drugs.

But by the tenth session when he still didn’t know my name, my set of circumstances or which dosage or what I was taking, I decided to turn the guinea pig tables on him.   I wanted to see if Ancient Freud was paying attention.   So I told him that I’d recently had surgery and the oxycontin my doctor prescribed really calmed me down.

Here’s a peek into his process for prescribing anti depressants.   He’d consult a dog eared drug bible that looked older than the dead sea scrolls. I always wondered if the last updated edition was B.C. or A.D.   On that particular day, after researching my request he said to me…

“You know, oxycontin is habit forming.”

Me: “Uh…is it?”

Ancient Freud: “Yes, it is. And we don’t want  that  do we, young lady?”

Because that’s what he called me. “Young Lady”.

Me: “No! No  we  don’t!”

He passed the test. Thank God. That really restored my faith in the professional mental health community.

Then he suggested an alternative. “You can take this  with  what you’re already taking.”

Me: “Okay, I guess I can give it a try.”

He calls to his receptionist. “Get her the samples.”

Receptionist: “What dosage?”

AF: “Oh, I don’t know…just give her all of them.”

She reaches into a cabinet behind his desk and pulls out several samples of varying dosages – enough to kill Michael Jackson at least two more times – and dumps them on the desk in front of me.

I found a new psychiatrist. It was all getting a little too Courtney Love for me.

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