Hi Sewerrats,
The fist time I took it was about eight years ago. After the initial 20mg dose I wasn't quite feeling the effects so my doc increased the dosage temporarily as I suffered no side effects. After a few weeks on 40mg I really did feel better. Yup, my doc advised a full year but I asked to be taken off the meds because I felt like I was making a lot of progress just working on myself. I don't think the relapse has anything to do with the first time I took meds since that was a long time ago. I don't even know whether I can call it a relapse as I'm nearly always depressed anyway, it's just that this time I can't even force myself to function. My doc intends to lower the dose as soon as it starts to kick in or if I experience really unpleasant side effects. She says it's to help me get a boost so I can squeeze out the maximum benefits from therapy and self-help and has also scheduled me for frequent lab tests so I guess she has a point. I want to be the one to pick myself up rather than rely on a pill or therapist or whoever to do it for me so anything that could help me with the negativity and lethargy sounds like a good idea for starters. While I think maybe I should've continued the drug the first time I was still monitored by a therapist and doing my best myself so it turned out okay, I was able to live quite normally for a long while then, apart from some dysthimia- but I've always had that. I do think it was a mistake trying to be med-free all these years though . Like ChangingMyMind said- it's a disease like any other, pills would've been in place and I probably would have been doing a lot better by now. I guess I've always had the idea that I simply need to try harder, that it's up to me, that I shouldn't rely on anything outside myself...I can see how that was the wrong outlook, we all need some outside help sometimes. I believe I finally did the right thing by agreeing to be medicated and intend to take the meds for as long as my doc and therapist deem it necessary. I do believe that this aversion to meds has something to do with the time I was prescribed paroxetine and it made me feel horrible and suicidal. That was when I asked for a different drug and although I did well with Prozac I guess I'm afraid of how unpredictable these meds can be. It helps with my worries that my doc seems to want to keep a good eye out on the effects of the drug and therapy so I have trust. Just wondering, how does being on it for a year feel? Does the effect change over time or does it sort of stabilize? I didn't feel like a zombie those two months but would I start to feel like a robot over time? Might sound silly but I can't help wondering...