Tired of feeling "drugged"?

Does anyone else get to feeling every now and then that you are just sick and tired of all of these drugs? I find one of the hardest parts about this illness is being patient with yourself and accepting the fact that you must continue taking your meds and deal with the side effects.

I often get very frustrated because i'm 23 and i'm young. I am wanting to party and stay out late with my friends and nope...I have to get home because I have to take my meds to sleep and it takes them 2 hours to kick in and yada yada.

It's so frustrating. I am very patient with myself and I have been stable on meds for over a year now but sometimes.....it's hard to stay patient. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

~Lia
crazymusiclvr@aol.com

YES..... I use to feel like that and I often walked around in a fog.... that lasted for about 2 years and then I started to get serious with my T and we worked on healing me from the inside out and with that came the medicine getting less and less - now I am only one one Rx medicine and one Natural Herb.

LoVe,
Rhapsody -

Did you ask your doc if it's possible to reduce your dosage? That may help, or even switching to an alternative. Take this question up with him or her.
My switch, a couple of years ago was a good move, no zombie feeling, like I had in the past with some other meds.
I wish you luck with this.
Take care,
DE

Do you typically feel drugged or do you only notice it as a problem when you want to stay up late for a change? If you are feeling drugged during the day then it would be worth mentioning that to your doc and your doc might be able to look at reducing the meds a bit.

> I have to get home because I have to take my meds to sleep and it takes them 2 hours to kick in and yada yada.

Are they meds that you take every night for sleep or on an as needed basis?
I used to take my meds with me (find a little container to pop them in) so I could go to the bathroom and take them and I didn't have to go home to take them. If you know they take a couple hours to work for sleep then you could do this, though it probably isn't a good idea to drive after having done that as even though you might think they haven't had an effect they probably do have an effect after maybe half an hour.

You could ask your doctor whether you could take more in the morning. Or whether it would do you any harm to miss a dosage occasionally - like once a month or something like that. Probably not so good to do that every week, but you could probably do it for special occasions. Good idea to talk to your doctor about that though.

If you have been stable on meds for a while... Then it might be worth chatting to your doc about reducing them just a little bit... If you stay stable then that might mean that you have to put up with less side effects.

Um.. The sleep thing... Is that an unwanted side effect or did you have trouble sleeping before so it is actually a welcome side effect most of the time?

Thank you for your feedback I found it all helfpul. I have a lot of difficulties sleeping which means I have to have a regular sleep pattern if possible. Going out and having fun means breaking that sleep pattern. It means going to bed at 3a.m. rather than my usual 11p.m. for example and it's unrealstic for me to think I can do this at the snap of a finger without having trouble sleeping.

For the most part, I can tolerate my meds. The one that has the greatest impact on my social life is the seroquel. Thank goodness for it though because it helps me get a good night's sleep without causing me to wake up feeling drowsy but I must take it early and it does impair me from being mobile.

I don't think lowering the dose of any of the meds i'm on is a good idea but i do leave that up to my doctor. I'm stable but still hyper all the time. I have responded very well with the lamictal, lithium and seroquel. I think a part of me also misses the slightly manic Lia when I could go out all night and have fun without thinking twice about meds (even though i'de pay for it in every way). I am basically just venting and thanks all for listening. I guess i'm also trying to make a point that sometimes a mentally ill person has to make sacrifices and take responsibility to stay on track and keep themselves well. Thanks for listening.

~Lia
crazymusiclvr@aol.com

hey. absolutely i understand about the venting. i understand about how annoying it can be to not be able to go out with your friends because of medication too. my friends used to get into x-boxathons. we would play till maybe 3 or 6am. but then with the medication... i would take it with me and i'd be curled up somewhere zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz from 11pm. i was lucky that they didn't drink socially, but it was still hard because i wanted to stay awake and play with them :-(

i find... i'm not on any medication now. been a couple years off it and i'm fairly stable. but... i still find it hard when my usual sleep pattern gets out of kilter. i went out with friends last night and didn't get to sleep until 6am. today was a complete write off because of it and i didn't get any work done. felt depressed and anxious and stuff too. i guess i have a fairly sensitive body. can't go out partying like i used to lol and i'm in my twenties too.

hang in there. it is great that you are stabilised on your meds. i understand it can be hard sometimes. take care.

I know exactly what you mean by having to "pay for it" the next morning. I went out to a concert last night and didn't get home until midnight. I took more and more and more seroquel but couldn't sleep. I fell asleep 4 a.m. and now my sleep is all out of wack and i'll probalby be a moody gruoch today. I always end up paying for it and it makes it to where it gets in the way of me having a good time while out with friends. OH well....

Yea ... I stopped taking mine (celexa) for the past week so I could go out and have a massive night on Saturday (friend's going away). It was so fantastic to be able to not worry that I would get stupidly drunk (makes me get intoxicated quicker and not in a good way) and also that other stuff we took would work on me (cuts down effectiveness of many things).

As a result I am more than tempted not to restart ... *sigh*. You are only young once may as well enjoy yourself ... Even i I have a supercrap week this week it is definitely worth it

Yup thats why I took depression management classes - so that I could manage my depression without medication and not go through any crashes once of the medication. thanks to those classes I have been medication free now for over 2 years.