My current cycle of depressive episodes started with lack of motivation, I remember becoming less and less involved in my employment, followed by isolation from my colleagues. Meanwhile my sleep started to deteriorate too. That went on for nearly a year before I finally twigged I was in the grip of a fairly serious depressive episode. I started up with anti-depressants after 8 years med free and that's when the numbness and anhedonia kicked in, maybe it was the meds, maybe just coincidence.

It took three changes of meds before I found one that worked, then I became rather "too" happy, over-excited, hyper-stimulated. Then I crashed big time into a far more "typical for me" melancholic depression. At the time I was taking Effexor and my doc kept pumping up the dose, eventually to 375mg, each increase of dose brought about a small improvement but it never lasted and at that dose I was pretty much a zombie, I didn't feel sad, I just couldn't concentrate, had no interest in life and felt completely hopeless.

Another change of meds numbed me down again to the point where I felt I was actually dead and then some other meds that I was prescribed for a different problem triggered paranoia and suicidal urges. During this phase I was not really able to self-care. I think I've only changed my bed linen three times this year, normally it would be once a week, even when I did change the linen I didn't launder it, I just left it on the bedroom floor. I felt huge shame about my slovenliness. Somewhere along the line I started getting anxious too, that's a pretty new symptom for me and it absolutely floors me when it kicks in.

Finally, I seem to have found a bit of stability with my latest med and I've lost the anhedonia and feel alive and thankful to be alive, it is early days yet and for a few days I've been triggered back into an anxious, irritable and weepy low mood by hormones.


So as far as I'm concerned, and it seems from the stories other people have shared, there isn't really a norm for depression, it is a cluster of symptoms that change in combination or intensity or both. The symptoms vary both within episodes and between episodes and cycles.