Posted by satsumas on July 11, 2008, at 10:52:24
Hi,
I just finished tapering off of effexor, and have been at 100mg of desipramine for the past two weeks. but for the past few days i have been crying and feeling intense sadness and grief. Usually when I'm depressed, I don't necessarily cry, even if I feel bad about something specific. This time, I can't figure out if what I'm feeling is "real grief" or is a function of the the fact that I no longer have any serotonin reuptake.I'm venturing towards the former, becuase i've experienced some real loss (relationship-wise, my fault) over the past six months -- but in some way I've been grieving this for a long time.
My current crisis is intense grief, crying (for days now), and suicidal ideation, and I am struggling on how to reconcile this with my antidepressant use and the depression i've been dealing with for so long. On the one hand, it's good to cry, and that's a part of grief. On the other hand, the real loss occurred months ago, so was the fact that I was on antidepressants just shielding me from accepting it? Or from not crying about it? I certainly felt bad and upset during that whole time, but it feels horrible and confusing and mind-splitting to not know whether the antidepressants were preventing me from acceptance of the loss (if so, then, that doesn't seem to be so good, and a real negative side effect of being on these things), or whether the fact that i'm off of Effexor is just amplifying already resolved grief -- the idea being that my brain, in it's current state, is "rationalizing" it's chemical imbalance by pulling up old regret and past losses and obsessing about them.
These meta-questions are almost just as bad as the pain itself, and I'd appreciate anyone's opinions. Part of me would hate to be on antidepressants long term if all they do is prevent proper processing of grief at the appropriate time, and are just generating unrealistic hope or denial as part of their "mood lifting" effects. All that seems to do would be to prolong pain, and replace short term grief with longer-term feelings of "malaise" or "not-working" antidepressant treatment (confusing inadequate processing of painful life events with inadequate a/d response).
Opinions? Anyone have any advice? Would a different class of drugs prevent this sort of emotional blunting (a.k.a. inability to process and grieve bad life events appropriately)? MAOIs?
Thanks much.
poster:satsumas
thread:839250
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080706/msgs/839250.html