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I am still OK


A month in my life moodapp.io

It’s been almost 12 months since I wrote about my mental health journey first.

Until then, I kept it all quiet, or at least from the public and certainly from my employer.

The people who loved me were different. They knew exactly what was going on as they put up with everything I threw at them – low mood, anxiety, despair, procrastination, excuses, crazy theories, the whole cold buffet of depression.

But apart from these wonderful people, it was a different story. No one could know what was going on in my head because if they found out I would be exposed. Who wants a chief strategy officer who struggles with depression and thinks they’re useless?

I honestly thought I might get fired when I first posted that article. That clients might complain about having me in their company. And others turn on my weakness.

It’s one of the reasons I posted the article on World Mental Health Day, because it sure wouldn’t be a bad corporate look to get me out of the building on a day of mindfulness and meditation.

Although I was finally over it.

And I’m so glad I did. So many beautiful people have contacted me over the past year that they themselves are struggling with how their minds work or not. It is simply one of the greatest privileges of my life to hear people’s stories. And I was struck by the enormous amount of hidden pain that so many endure while putting on a brave face and facing the day.

You need to know that you are not alone.

A lot has happened since last October. So I thought I’d update the story – in case any of it helps you take action or seek help or recognize that what you’re experiencing is common to so many of us.

In time, maybe you will share your story, and maybe together we can advance the way we think about mental health, in addition to giving everyone stress balls and yoga classes on World Mental Health Day.

Since we last saw each other

I have been taking Duloxetine 60 mg every day for the last 15 months.

I know it’s every day because when I forget, at about 9 o’clock I start to feel very strange. I have these ‘drops’ like physical dizziness that only last a second or so but kind of suffocate me. I call them “drops” because they are like falling several stories and then suddenly being stopped by a cord or rope.

I don’t know what would happen next because I won’t let it go anymore. I take a pill and grit my teeth because SSRIs like Duloxetine are absorbed in the gut and take two hours to get there and start working.

The results of Duloxetine are fantastic. It’s a miracle drug for me.

One app to rule them all

I track my mood with an app called, unsurprisingly, mood. Every day at a set time she asks me how I feel and I color the day in one of the five tones of my chosen color. You can see the slide in the image I used for this post. I use red and understand that the day is supposed to be coded dark red if it’s going bad and light red if it’s going good – I think if it’s light red you’re calm and measured. Not for me. I want the day to be bright and sharp, bright and deep fucking red. Light color means meh to me. A meh day where I can’t do anything and my brain is lost in some shitty fog. I want deep red every day.

As a result, I can now tell how long big and bad spells last. The odd bad day is fine – antidepressants won’t remove the rest of the crap in your life, just the chemical imbalance. But I watch the period around the week like a hawk. Because I’m naturally paranoid about losing the clarity and energy I have now.

The mood app shows that I’ve only had three bad periods in the past year, and none of them lasted more than a week. If that’s the deal, then I can live with that.

But mostly I’m good, rarely dark red but good. It is clear that the amazing high at the beginning of taking Duloxetine has worn off and of course I miss it. But they have been replaced by what I can only describe as normality.

I feel normal most of the time now. Normal me. The real me. Me who just doesn’t live in a cloud and believes his brain doesn’t work.

I really understand why people on mental health meds often stop taking drugs at this point. After all, what’s the point if you feel normal now? I may be “cured”, but rather I suspect that the sheer normality of how I feel shows that the treatment is working.

What happened to snoring?

The side effects I talked about are pretty much under control.

The rash I’d developed in the early months turned out to be eczema – a reaction to medication – and a steroid cream so strong it has a flammability warning on the side of the pack soon whipped it into shape.

My duloxetine dreams are still crazy and very fun, if a bit exhausting. I really need to record them somehow.

Snoring, however, is another matter. The meds seem to relax my throat at night and this causes horrible snoring. That would be bad enough, but with a nursing wife with very disturbed sleep, it’s a real problem.

After trying all possible medications, I finally had a sleep test done. This led me to a device that somewhat uncomfortably keeps my airway open by pushing my jaw forward. But this has caused a problem called TMD which makes my jaw extremely painful when I bite down.

Hell, if that’s not one thing, it’s another.

And there’s the drink. Soon my psychiatrist told me not to drink while taking duloxetine. I took her at her word but it was a bit weird as the NHS are perfectly happy for you to drink and take drugs.

While I was at dinner, I started experimenting with one particular glass of wine. Everything seemed to be fine. Then this year in Cannes I allowed myself a beer and a glass of wine every night – call me Mr. Fun. I ended up going on a bender and having three pints at the agency’s summer party.

I haven’t had a drink in any real way for 18 months at this point.

And the result was terrible. Straight back to the low period. This may be a classic case of correlation, not causation, but it was close enough to scare me. I stopped immediately.

I really, really want to drink a lovely welcome glass of Haute Medoc, or frankly fruit from any part of Bordeaux, but I’ve come to the conclusion that my drinking days are over.

To be clear, there is no advantage to this state of affairs. I don’t jump out of bed in the morning after half a bottle of the night before’s amazing stuff. There’s nothing I like about not drinking, except that I want to avoid “that” feeling at all costs.

There I am with my meds. At 60mgs it’s here for the foreseeable future, maybe forever. Originally there was talk of stopping after a year, but I’ve been on Duloxetine for 18 months now and don’t see myself coming off it anytime soon. Withdrawal is supposed to be horrible and has to be managed so I don’t really want to experience that and if I had to be on this drug for the rest of my life I would be more than happy.

I would really like to hear from someone who has come after a good experience using SNRIs. Or uses them for a long time.

Confusion in therapy

And taking a break from therapy has helped me tremendously to go beyond the immediate and unpack the whole closet of self-discovery.

For me mind therapy is an unlock for all of us. How can we be expected to navigate this world if we are chronically unaware of how and why we respond to it? I wouldn’t say my life has been changed by therapy, and in many ways my self-awareness is a bit fragmented as a result. But it sure helped.

The thing is, I can never be sure how good the therapy I am getting is. Part of me thinks the therapist doesn’t matter, it’s up to you to do the work and if you’re ready for it, it will happen for you.

But there are also so many different types of therapy on offer that I don’t know which one is right for me or even what range the therapist offers. Therapy for me is like going to a restaurant and not being allowed to see the menu and not understanding what the food is when you do.

But overall the therapy was a good experience and I would really like to go back to it. Know that I am not asking this to solve my depression, but to help me understand why I put myself in a bad place.

After a year I am really fine

Every day I am amazed at how good I feel.

That’s not bragging, it’s the total and utter joy that comes from not waking up and letting a cloud come down on you. Not informing yourself in the shower about how shitty you are. Not being desperate to get to the end of the week so the pressure in your head lifts for a while. And not be so hard to live with.

My newfound energy and clarity transformed my professional worth. And that it had a huge ripple effect on my sense of worth and mental health. I am prolific with both ideas and output in a way I haven’t been in many years.

I was able to enjoy every moment of my youngest child’s first eight months. The few times I was “down” since he was born underscored how difficult those first few months would have been if I was still lost in depression.

My older boys will judge whether or not I came across differently to them. I really hope so.

And while I’m still the deeply flawed person I love and live with, I deal with the ups and downs of my relationship better than ever. At least I can say that my family will get the best of me and not what’s left after I bluffed my best forgotten day.

That’s the story so far. I’ll let you know if anything changes – good or bad. But if you ever need to talk about your experiences or mental health issues, here is my email huntingtonr@me.com. I am not an expert and I am unable to advise you. The kind of advice I have in my original post. But I can share what I’ve been through or just listen.

I can definitely do that.

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