How My Dr. Destroyed my life

Having always been diagnosed with generalized anxiety & possible depression, I still managed to live a somewhat happy, normal, successful 22 years of life thus far. At the time, the word "dissociation" would have had little to no meaning or significance to me, that is, until the day it became the parasite that latched on tight, and literally sucked the life out of me. For me, these occasional episodes of "lost touch with reality" began after a traumatic breakup with my longterm boyfriend. He moved out on bad terms so i was living in my apartment alone & didn't have any friends or social interaction. Constantly being alone, I began to feel an eery sense of paranoia creep over me, especially at night, not being used to sleeping alone. Out of the blue while watching a movie or showering I started having random adrenaline rushes followed by a most terrifying yet unexplainable sense of doom that i was no doubt in my mind for some unknown reason-DYING. After a panic stricken 911 call & 2 emergency room visits later, I learned that what I was experiencing were in fact harmless to my body physically. They were anxiety fueled purely psychological panic attacks. As if that's meant to comfort me? Within days I noticed that every evening precisely as the sun began to set, a gradual wave of paranoia and a strange empty, disconnected feeling would creep over me. My vision slowly became foggy with only a clear tunnel view if I focused on a precise object, everything else just seemed to blur together and fade away. The best word I can use to describe this feeling of being would be "surreal" but not in the breathtaking sunset you'd normally think of. The feeling was extremely difficult to comprehend, I just knew I didn't like it one bit. My heart would begin racing & i started to feel like i was disconnected from my own body! I had no idea what was going on. Why was i suddenly terrified & paranoid of everything?! I couldn't even walk properly because i felt like i was floating or swimming. I felt like i was outside of my own body watching my life as a play in a theatre. I felt like I needed to slap myself to "wake up" or snap out of this "brain fog" but the only way to make it stop was to go to sleep & hope it'd be gone in the morning. Within a week of taking Celexa I was 100% back to my normal functioning self. Dr. increased dose from 15mg to 30 after a week & I was set for 6 months until I mentioned to my Dr. That I was still having some depression (worst mistake of my life) she took me straight off the Celexa complety (no gradual weaning) after my body had adjusted & relied on it for almost a year! & told me to try Cymbalta which I had never heard of. Within a week of being on the Cymbalta the dissociation was back-this time permanently! 24/7. I lost my job due to being physically unable to get out of bed from the major depressive episodes, I gained 10 lbs in a week since i no longer had the motivation to go to the gym (or live!) I went crawling back to my Dr. after pushing through the 2 most miserable weeks of my life begging her for the Celexa back. Her response was that I was being "impatient" expecting "instant results" & that I had complained about the Celexa too! So you can see what she was implying. Reluctantly I followed the doctors orders & upped the Cymbalta to 60 mg (double of what she started me on) also adding 200 mg of Lamictal on top of that to "stabilize my mood" as if Im F**king PMS-ing!! So here i am 2 months later waiting for my new psychiatrist appointment because my previous Doctor who put me through h3ll & experimented on me like a Frkn lab rat told me to start making phone calls to see another psychiatrist because my condition was "too complex" her exact words after poisoning my brain's chemicals for months regardless of my constant clear complaints of getting worse. I am currently worse off mentally than i have ever been or imagined i could ever be. My daily norm now consists of sleeping 15+ hours from major depressive disorder fatigue and being up until sunrise from the agonizing insomnia from my worsened anxiety, panic attacks, possibly now also diagnosed with bipolar depression & ocd along with dissociative disorder. Not to mention the misery of getting through a day trying to find motivation to want to live and some hope that this devastating damage can somehow miraculously be reversed. Thanks alot Doc.

I certainly can understand what you are going through, I have been on my share of medications that cause me to have dissociative like symptoms and suffer from anxiety and panic disorders that also come with dissociative like symptoms. back in may 2013 something wonderful happened. the new DSM 5 was published. With this there came new diagnostics for dissociative disorders. This change helped me so much because now dissociative like symptoms from other mental disorders like anxiety\panic and medications no longer are treated as a dissociative disorder. they are treated as ....side effects of the medications and treated according to what panic and anxiety problem a person has. how did this help? before this dissociative problems because of panic/anxiety, medication side effects got thrown in with other dissociative disorders and kind of glossed over as things that would clear up on their own with out medications. now when I have a panic attack or medication induced dissociative like symptoms my treatment providers have to by laws and diagnostics address them by medication changes and treating the anxiety panic problems.

example one day I was having the same symptoms as you and when I took it to my treatment provider I would be told well you do have dissociative disorders this may just be part of that, lets not do anything other than keep trying to use your grounding....time and time again the problem persisted no matter how much I used my therapeutic tools. then the DSM 5 came out that said dissociative disorder symptoms can not be because of other mental mental problems and cant be because of medications. my treatment providers could no longer just say well you do have dissociative disorders just keep using your therapeutic tools. they had to take a look at the fact that I had depression/axiety and look at my medications. it took time but eventually we found the right medication and dosage that cleared up those dissociative like symptoms that came because of my anxiety/panic and medication problems.

I know its hard but keep working with your treatment providers. let them know when you are feeling like this so that they can continue to address your anxiety and medication side effects. it may seem like nothing is going to work and this changing adjusting meds is not worth it. but its the only way to find that one medication combo thats going to work for you and how treatment providers must now address dissociative like symptoms that are induced because of anxiety and medication problems.

gosh, i am so sorry that this has happened to you. there is nothing worse than a pdoc that doesnt listen to what you know works for your body. i hope that your new pdoc listens and understands. just explain that the celexa worked very well for you but you need something added for depression. good luck and take care.

Thank you very much for your reply & support (:

Wow, omg, I'd try to sue her for malpractice if you can find someone to verify the hack was a hack! I hope things are better for you. How are feeling now? I had an experience once where my gp gave me Welbutrin for depression and everytime I went in saying the depression was worse he gave me more. Thing is, I knew nothing of mania. By the 3rd visit and several years later I was heavily dosed and went to a pdoc. What did he do! He upped my Welbutrin dose. By now I'm swinging in all directions, changing moods every second. I did the research and told the pdoc I was bipolar! He was like well that's different. He put me on Seroquel which bombed, so I suggested Lamictal and that did the trick. That quack retired months later. You got to watch them. If it looks like they are grasping at straws, that's because they are.