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Not Ready Yet

I must admit that the last couple of weeks have been a little challenging for me. Together with my psychiatrist, I made the decision to go down on one of my medication, one that I have been taking to help me sleep as well as with my moods but which has been helping for a really, really long time. My thought process in deciding to decrease the medication was that I do not want to be one of those people who is on medication for the rest of their lives, who is so dependent on chemicals that I cannot function without them.

When I went completely off the medication I find myself in such a negative head space that I became fearful, worried, anxious beyond compare. I had gotten to a place which I had not been in in a very long time and I do not want to return to anytime soon. I had begun to have racing thoughts, thoughts of self-harm, re-occurring nightmares, and I had even began doubting my very existence.

After I was able to get back up to a spot where I am now comfortable enough and feel like myself again, I can’t help but think what might have gone wrong. I see many people taper off their medication successfully, some even quit cold turkey and do fine. In my case, however, I feel as if the moral of the story was more “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Nothing was wrong with my medication, I was not having negative side effects. I simply had had enough with consuming so many chemicals one day and decided it was time to go down on them. Maybe one day it will be time, but for now, I’m just not ready yet.