it's only life

navigation & faq;

well for context i've already experienced periods of.... idk if this would officially be considered mania, but periods of time where i become paranoid about being watched/persecuted (long time softpine readers know my biggest fear is being arrested for a crime i didn't commit) and i hardly sleep. on the flip side, i've had depression for what feels like my entire life with all the typical lethargy, apathy, suicidal thoughts, etc. so none of those symptoms would have been surprising to me

i had never tried any kind of psych meds until last year (and i actually started them for anxiety, not for any of the above reasons lmao). also i do impulsive things like travel alone without telling anyone where i'm going, spend thousands of dollars in the name of love, and try to become a plumber with zero qualifications.... so my baseline is already kind of crazy if i'm being honest. but anyway

zoloft (an SSRI) was the first one i tried. it instantly fucked me up. i didn't sleep for a single second for the first 4 or 5 nights, then i only managed a couple hours max for the rest of the time i took zoloft (a few months). but the strangest thing was that i wasn't tired at all. i would get the physical symptoms of being tired, like the headache and brain fog, but i was still WIRED. i would sleep for an hour and then my eyes would shoot open and i was ready to start my day. sometimes i could tell i was acting strange but i couldn't stop myself, other times i felt normal until my coworker would ask me if i was on something. and oh my god. i've never been sooooo horny in my life 😭 i can't be mad at that part because it lead me to meet one of my favorite people but i feel i should mention it lol. one kind of nice side effect was that i physically couldn't get drunk on zoloft no matter how hard i tried, which made it easier to quit drinking. anyway the reason i stopped taking zoloft was not for any of those reasons, but instead because my hair started falling out in clumps

then i switched to effexor (an SNRI). i was a zombie for the first couple weeks. i still wasn't sleeping, but this time i actually was feeling tired, so i just spent every day lying awake in bed feeling nothing, so they increased my dose. that's when my thought patterns started to scare me. i felt so scattered and like i couldn't think straight because my mind was racing. and i was SO irritable. i had no patience for anything, i was so angry about shit that doesn't matter, so jealous and possessive, i took everything as a personal offense even if it had nothing to do with me. if someone didn't text me back within a few minutes it genuinely made me suicidal, like life wasn't worth living. but when they did text back i was all sunshine and rainbows. i was also pretty horny on effexor too lol. i did a lot of stupid risky stuff because i didn't care if i lived or died. my doctor told me to give effexor time to work so i did, but it never got better so eventually i just stopped taking it cold turkey (DO NOT RECOMMEND!! holy fuck it was miserable. be smart and taper off under a doctor's guidance)

all that i am, all that i ever was

Finn manages a half smile. “What if I don’t know who I am or what’s pretend?” Asa smiles back, much bigger. “Then you get to find out.”