Medication Side-Effect Roulette

There is just so much sleepy in my life right now. Fall weather, working out hard, and a medication change have all combined to make me one blink away from a long nap at all times. And I am not enjoying it.

Now, we’ve previously discussed the topic of medication changes and how frustrating they can be, but I’m a bit forgetful (it’s one of my more charming qualities) so I’ve decided to just write about it again if so.

So, medication. For mental health purposes, medication is supposed to lessen symptoms of mental illness and help those of us with issues to lead a “normal” life. (Although, come on. Is there really such a thing as a normal life? Do you know anyone who is truly “normal?”) And yet, for all the normalcy and healing it offers, somehow medication can end up destroying all semblance of normal life entirely.

It goes like this: you’re depressed; you have trouble focusing and you feel sad. You see a doctor and they prescribe you anti-depressants and you want to feel better so you start taking them. Three days in you suddenly not only want to die but you’ve also gained three pounds. Six weeks in you have more energy but now your nose is starting to turn red for some reason? And then eight weeks in your nose is back to normal and you’re feeling better but every few hours it feels like someone is electrocuting your brain. Then you go back to the doctor and they ask you a series of incredibly difficult-to-answer questions like, “Is the medication helping? How do you feel on a scale from blue to spaghetti? Do you want to double your dosage?”

You try to answer these questions honestly and find a way to decide whether or not the medication is helping when you have no idea if you feel better or worse because it took you three months to stop looking like Rudolph and wanting to run off a cliff.

Then if you decide the medication isn’t helping enough or you can’t live with the electric shocks to your brain, they wean you off (a process not unlike coming off illegal drugs, I’m pretty sure) and start you all over again. Except with new drugs you’ll probably have new side effects so it’s like playing Russian Roulette with the guy who wrote the Pepto-Bismol commercial.

And then repeat and repeat for all eternity until you die.

Alright, that was very dramatic. But I’m serious. This is really frustrating stuff!

And I know it’s not limited to medications for mental illness – all medications have the list of side effects at the end that sound like an auctioneer trying to sell off the contents of a CDC report.

But, somehow, in all of that, we still take medications. Or at least I still do. Even though the drugs that are supposed to help me sleep at night are just making me sleepy during the day, I’m still taking them. Because I want to get better. I want my life to be my version of normal.

Have you ever played medication side-effect roulette? What are your thoughts?