[degfreak]

Okay, so i've never done this before, but i'm at my wits end. Let me start off with a little bit of my past. I grew up in a house where my mom cheated on my dad all the time and she was addicted to cocaine. My father drank a lot and was addicted to vicodin. When I was 14 and my sister was 12 we were put up for adoption, we were lucky enough to be adopted by a family member. Unfortunately my new mom has bipolar and treats my sister and I like total ****. When I was 18 symptoms of depression and anxiety started to appear but they were mild. The anxiety would only happen at night when I was gunna go to bed. Then I would work myself into a panic and I would start to feel trapped and really sad. I would have to go downstairs and talk to my dad to calm down. After a while it would start in school and I would get really scared of dying. I started going to a therapist and psychiatrist. They diagnosed me with depression and anxiety. I was put on celexa 20 mg. With in a week or two I felt better, the medicine worked so well that I forgot about my depression and anxiety. I would go on and off my medicine all the time and it never affected me. I still felt happy and I loved life and enjoyed things. This lasted until I stopped taking my medicine completely. I stopped taking it because I met my boyfriend and he made me so happy that I didn't think I needed the medicine anymore. 9 months after I stopped taking it I started to get really sick. I would have terrible stomach pains and I would get nauseous to the point that I couldn't eat anything. I ended up losing 20 lbs in a week and a half. Then I started getting really anxious and panicky all the time. My thoughts would start to race and the thoughts that I would have made me upset and I would get depressed. Id do nothing but cry all day. This all started on december 29th 2011. I went to a new psychiatrist because my old one left. Her name is dr. tencza. She put me back on my celexa but at 40 mg. I was on it for 3 weeks and it wasn't doing anything, so I went back to dr. tencza and she told me to give it more time. About a week later things got so bad that I couldn't take it anymore. All I wanted to do was kill myself. I got so scared by my thoughts that I committed myself into kingswood hospital. The psychiatrist there put me on effexor 150 mg and klonopin .50 mg. Once I was released I started to feel better. I felt good for about 2 weeks then I started to regress in my treatment. Now at this moment I am extremely depressed and anxious all the time, I cant function daily and all I do is cry I have to force myself to take a shower or do things. My stomach pains are back but the nausea hasn't. Whenever I think about getting a job, going back to college, being alone or now pointless life seems I freak out and want to end my life. The feeling to end it is so strong that it scares me. I know that I wouldn't take my life but it scares me that I have these thoughts. dr. tencza has put me on buspar (buspirone hcl 7.5 mg) 2 times a day, I take the effexor in the morning and she switched my klonopin to once a day. I now take it before I go to bed. I've only been on the buspar for a day and a half but I cant take the depression and anxiety anymore. I know I need to give the medicine time, but I just want it to all go away. I want to be happy again. I want to be my old self I miss her very much. If anyone has been through this and is better or if they know what i'm going through, please help me. Give me some kind of advice or what helped you make it through everything.

[Marla500]

breathing exercises are very helpful for anxiety. (breathe in slowly to a count of four, and exhale slowly to a count of eight. this is basic, there are others but this works for me) can you spend some time outside? exercise is very helpful if you can get moving, if not just sitting and watching the birds, or the night sky, and getting some fresh air. hang in there, things will get better. meds can be tricky and it does take some time.

[Elana05]

Hi degfreak,
Oy. You have really been through a lot. I can relate; both of my parents have been addicted to alcohol as long as I have been alive. It is no wonder you feel the anxiety and depression and exhaustion. It is work attempting to take care of life and your parents and everything. And it's work that comes when you're still only a kid. I know what you mean about meds. I didn't want to take them. Then I thought, OK I'll take them for a while, then I'll stop. Since your parents had addiction issues it may be that some of the anxiety/depression are inherited, and this is one of the reasons that your dad and your mom turned to street drugs/alcohol, in order to "self-medicate" and try and take control of intolerable feelings when they came up.And dealing with a dysfunctional home life also takes a major toll on a person. Meds can be helpful in order to feel more capable to deal with life and the issues one has to address from the past in order to move on. I hope you are able to find a good med or med combination that works for you to help reduce the exhaustion, overwhelmed feeling and depression. Something that has been very helpful for me also has been to get to 12 step meetings. I have been going to Al Anon and ACA for just under 2 years. The groups are helpful because you can hear from other people who have gone through similar situations. These groups also let you know how impossible it was for you to do anything to change a family member's addiction. Here are some links. You might find a meeting where you live. Just so you know, you don't have to talk at all in a meeting. You can simply go and listen and see if it's for you. But the people are supportive. Hugs. Elana
http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/how-al-anon-works-for-me
http://www.adultchildren.org/Meetings.s