A Response So Fast

Tomorrow, it'll be a week since I started taking medication again...

My first depressive episode took a long time to set itself. In early 2001, I started losing all interest for things. Slowly, life became darker and darker. I didn't really know what to do. I had dropped out of school and was working almost full-time in a videostore, doing shifts from 5 to midnight. It was planned that I was going back to school in autumn of that year. As the year progressed and summer came, I found that I enjoyed nothing. I was shying away from friends, always feeling rejected and paranoid. Then autumn came. I became almost mute at home. I found I had a hard time speaking, I had nothing to say. At school, I couldn't focus. I didn't know what was wrong with me. It escalated to the point where I felt a sort of crawling in my head. I wanted to scream and rip myself open. Yet, no one ever noticed a thing. Friends said I looked really energetic and focused. I just didn't understand.

One day, at school, I had decided that it was enough. I was walking up the stairs to the third floor in order to start inspecting what would be a nice, efficient way to jump out and crash in the parking. Arrived to the third floor, I saw a friend of a friend. She just said to me: "Oli, you are sitting down and telling me what's wrong." I just started crying. She told me: "you can get help you know." That shook me up so much. Someone I didn't really know actually knew how I was feeling.

I left school and walked to the hospital, where my mother works. I entered her working room and she immediately became pale. I motionned her outside of the room and I just said: "mom, I'm not fine" and started crying again. She cried too, telling me she had seen it for months and didn't know how to approach me with it.

I went to a clinic, waited for hours, ended up seeing the doctor that was on guard that day. He didn't really seem to believe that I wasn't feeling well. He set an appointment with the emergency psychiatrist at the hospital for the next morning. I went home, tried to sleep, half succeeded. The next morning, I go to the hospital, wait, get to see the emergency psychiatrist. I get the usual interview, she prescribes antidepressants and sets an appointment for me to be followed by her.

It turned out that this psychiatrist was quite homophobic. She was positive I was having a major depressive episode until I mentionned I was gay. From that point on, she tried to make me say that I actually liked girls and was denying it, which was causing my breakdown. She also accused me of faking, just for attention. After a couple of sessions, she told me to come back a week of two before my prescription ends, to decide for a final plan. Turns out I couldn't get an appointment and I was forced to stop taking the medication abruptly. I got quite a bad case of withdrawal (just google "Paxil withdrawal" to get a nice idea of what it was like). Finally got an appointment for a last session with the psychiatrist-from-hell. She was angry at me and told me to just stop thinking about life too much, that way I'd stop wasting my time and hers and I would be happier. That was in June 2001.

Summer passed, I was not really balanced, but I made it through nonetheless. The meds had helped a bit, I could at least focus and function. School began again and about a month in, I relapsed. After a couple of weeks I knew it was wrong. I had lost focus, I wanted to sleep all the time, I didn't enjoy things, I felt frustrated. The whole thing.

My mother managed to get an appointment for me with our family doctor. He interviewed me and actually believed what I was saying. Prescribed me medication again (a different one) and proceeded to follow me for a couple of sessions. That was a friday. The following sunday, my mother took me for a car ride. We went to a beautiful small town about 40 minutes from where we lived. I had never been there. We walked, then went for a coffee in the cutest coffee shop. We took our coffee outside, on the terrasse, on a windy day of october. I caught myself smiling and actually talking. Then my mother said something that I'll always remember: "Oli, I think you're coming back!" A couple of days after, I was indeed almost fully back. Wondering if this was normal, my mother asked the pharmacist she works with if it's standard to get a response so fast to that medication. The pharmacist answered that yes, indeed, if the patient taking that medication was to be responsive, he would most probably start feeling better within 72 hours.

I took that medication for a year, then, with my doctor, we decided that it was time for me to stop taking it. It all happened very smoothly. I had recovered, quite incredibly. That was in June 2003.


Thankfully enough, this time again, I responded quite fast to the medication. Two days after I was already feeling better. Right now, pretty much a week in, I am almost fully back.

I thought a lot this week about what it all meant, about why I need to take a little yellow pill for me to function without the crawling in my head and the darkness covering everything. I realised that it was alright, that it didn't make me a weaker person or a bad human being. That if that's what it takes, then it's worth it.

And that life is much better when I'm actually able to smile for real.