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Medication side effects: a response

Here's a comment, from Nanina, in response to my mini tirade about putting up with medication side effects:


I always felt I'd put up with anything as long as a drug 'helped.' I felt this way about medication until 6 months out, a year out on a 'new med' I was still throwing up, still dizzy, still fatigued, still staggering around like a roach sprayed with Raid. Some people never can tolerate the side effects. Some people have irrepairable memory damage due to ECT. Some people with mental illness just have to tough it out with psychotherapy. I envy the people who get relief, improvement and hope from medication. I've never been one of them. But I'm pulling for you.

I appreciate what Nanina is saying here. I've gone through many, many years of hellish medication trials, and I'm also one of those people who has brain damage from ECT, so I know how tough it can be to find treatment solutions. Sometimes it's impossible to stick with the meds—if the cure is worse than the disease, what's the point? I know meds don't work for everyone. How I wish they did.

Comments

I'm was relieved to read your comment. I was afraid I had said the wrong thing. All I want for people who suffer from mental illness is relief and peace. It is so terrible and lonely to be depressed, to see things that make you wonder if they really exist, to wander around the house looking for the radio or T.V. that's "on" when it's not on and the noise is in your head, to only seem to connect to your pets or your houseplants or the stars. Then there's this hope that a drug will help. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't and your hopes get dashed...again. Maybe you feel better for weeks, months, years then suddenly the 'black plague' returns. It's god awful. Yesterday I ran into an old so called friend who thinks I'm a malingerer. The tension of that experience triggered a serious funk. Today I was in tears after two hours of dealing with Medicare and my Part D provider. I still have to call Medicaid and couldn't. I feel like a malingerer now and utterly dependent...utterly crushed by my interactions with humans. I don't like being this fragile, but that's what mental illness does to me. I'm rambling and emotional right now. Anyway, I do want your meds to work Liz. I want you and everyone else to have some respite from their respective mental illnesses. It's hard work.

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About

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Liz Spikol is senior contributing editor of Philadelphia Weekly. She writes the award-winning column The Trouble With Spikol, which began as a chronicle of her struggle with mental illness, and has since expanded into humorous musings on everything from graphic novels to how to use a mop. She also writes the paper's book review column, Lit Gloss. This blog -- named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 by PsychCentral -- is about mental illness policy, news, personal journeys and more.