I was very surprised the first time I took an antidepressant 21 years ago and it helped. I felt calm and also had some energy; Prior to taking imipramine, I hadnt been sleeping well and although I kept eating, nothing tasted right. I also had all the hopelessness and helplessness that are so emblematic of depression. About a month after I took imipramine for the first time I started sleeping better and food began to taste right. The problem was that about 2 months after that I started becoming manic, or rather hypomanic where I didn't want to go to sleep and needed to talk all the time. That's when I had to add Lithium to my antidepressant.
Although I didn't identify it until much later, I started rapid cycling back and forth with a few days of normal mood, and then hypomania and then severe depression. I was actually worse off with the meds than I was with the chronic mild to moderate depression I regularly had before I started on the imipramine. If I had thought more about it then, I would have tapered off all the meds, which also included xanax for panic attacks and anxiety. Of course that's what I say now but then I lived to have those normal and hypomanic days, because I thought they were better than the chronic dysthmnia, or mild depression I had had since I was 13.
Now I take 20 mg Paxil and Focalinxr and clonazepam and sometimes topamaxx to nip the hypomania in the bud. I have still not started to taper the clonazepam per my pdoc's suggestion as I am still reluctant to disturb my mood. I did get a great suggestion from someone at this site to not take the focalin everyday, so I won't develop tolerance.
The focalin is for my ADD but I think it also supplements the antidepressant effect of the Paxil which I
will probably stay on for life because I have gone to very bad, suicidal places about 4 times in my life and paxil seems to keep the bottom from dropping out.
I also go to therapy and 12 step meetings for adult children of alcoholics or any 12 step meeting if I need one since no matter which 12 step group you go to there is about 90% of the same material that is applicable. Even though I am not an alcoholic and are in fact the daughter of an alcoholic I get strength and support from the AA meetings I attend. My preference is for Adult Children of Alcoholics, but those meetings are hard to find, as not many people are aware that even if you grow up and are not an alcoholic, you may very well continue dysfunctional patterns from your childhood. I have a tendency to overeat and also if anyone has ever read the laundry list for adult children of alcoholics, just about everything on the list applied to me before I started the program. Slowly but surely I am ridding myself of the remnants of a dysfunctional childhood. My parents did the best they could but my father was an alcoholic--probably medicating his own anxiety and depression. I believe my mother was bipolar.