Posted by zinya on June 14, 2003, at 12:29:01
In reply to My Story Day 13, posted by Rickey on June 13, 2003, at 5:12:58
Hi Rickey,
A couple of things in your post really resonated with me in particular... I've been posting a while so maybe you're familiar with me but i dont' think i've read you before, so first of all, welcome!I'm doing this twice as gently but when i moved up from 18 mg to 37.5, i had the same initial reaction as you mention at 75 - sudden overwhelming grogginess and sleepiness and sense of 'fog'... but for me too it passed and i'm letting myself stay at this side-effect-free stage for quite a while before moving up again. A part of me is impatient for more of the positives that are potential, but a bigger part of me is concerned enough to keep to my plan of taking each step twice as gradually, and i'll probably even try to go from 37.5 to about 55 before moving up to 75..
The other thing I reacted to which i'd never seen mentioned and which i find curiously almost embarrassing to mention and so i'm so glad you did: Namely, my aversion to music when i'm depressed. I LOVE music and have the most enormous rich collection of music and the "old me" loved nothing more than to fill my home with brazilian samba or to drive along with music filling my car and singing along when i knew the song... But for years now, and realizing it coincided with periods of depression, i can only listen to "talk" -- meaning tv (mostly news, i'm a fairly politicized person--although, granted, i do wonder sometimes if this world isn't too depressing itself -- although rightly or wrongly i don't think that, for me, compounds my depression and in fact at least mentally energizes me and gives me a focus outside of myself when i can't muster energy for much else) or newsradio like NPR ...
But it's always been a bit baffling and a sense of almost a helpless loss to me that i just can't "do" music in these states. I try every once in a while, but it isn't the same - the instinct to respond to it with gusto isn't there, and I suspect that i avoid the music in part to avoid feeling the lack of gusto that would feel "normal" to me ... Or maybe because music really does tap my soul whereas the news stuff is a mental activity, and maybe my soul is on hiatus? ? or too vulnerable to be tapped into right now? I don't know what it is but i've tried and it's not a matter of "will" ... The very same music i adore feels almost like something i'm 'allergic' to when i'm depressed. As if hearing it now just makes me miss more what is missing. I'm not doing a very good job of articulating this, but I was so glad in a way to read of someone else expressing a similar experience even while you're now doing so as part of celebrating a sign of recovery. I know exactly EXACTLY what you mean and know that for me too that will be a glorious sign of 'resuscitation' of my spirit.
thanks for writing!
zinya
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030614/msgs/233957.html