Startling news arrives from my GP. The level of antidepressants I am currently taking is going to be reduced, halved even. Initially, I think this must be very good news indeed because my clinical depression must be getting better. Since I have never actually met my GP – everything is on-line these days – I’ve imagined he must have telepathic powers. But of course he has no such powers because no-one has. This is treatment by email. And the small print gives the simple reason why my meds must be reduced: I’m too old to be on such a high dosage.
Well, I didn’t see that one coming. At first I thought that maybe depression diminishes as you get older, that some kind of chemical re-balance takes place and we all live happily ever after, but there’s no technical explanation. I am left to work it out for myself, always a dangerous thing for a mental person. So I started guessing.
Are my meds likely to give me another medical condition, like cancer, or make me demented? As I have literally no idea and my brain is swamped by anxiety (as usual), it’s bound to be something terrible.
I reckon my cyberspace GP has concluded that as I have not managed to kill myself yet, that I am not likely to. I’ve got this far, somehow, with only the odd passing thought that I want to end it all, rather than a near permanent obsession. Or perhaps he has read my previous psychiatric reports which suggest I am at a low risk from suicide? All these things and more will dominate my thoughts for today because the reality is this: I am being advised to reduce my meds at a time when I am being considered by one of those private NHS ‘partners’ for yet more depression therapy. (The two are almost certainly not connected because I self-referred rather than arse about with the all the health centre bureaucracy.) In short, I am being advised to lower my meds despite there being no evidence my depression has improved. Great.
The GP also mentioned my ADHD diagnosis which he hopes will “provide the relief and re-assurance you were seeking”. I take that on face value. These are kind words and, in my view, empathetic but my diagnosis has done nothing of the kind. Where I saw my diagnosis as the beginning of a new journey, it turns out it was a dead end. There’s no help available from the NHS and the meds suggested by the (private) ADHD assessor would likely further increase my blood pressure and a different GP advised I should not take that or any other ADHD drugs.
Now I am stuck. I’m going to reduce my anti-depressant meds by half, which scares the shit out of me because they were doubled in the first place because in the absence of meaningful therapy it was the only way to manage my depression, my crutch if you like. And there is nothing I can do about my ADHD which carries on as it always has, the only change being that I now know why life was and remains so hard.
I’ve only received this message in the last hour so this blog is raw and I’m reeling a bit. I think I’ll pull through, as I usually do, but as ever in the English world of mental health, society does not treat depression, or any other mental health condition, as an illness. It’s Schrödinger’s depression which does and doesn’t exist.
The only certainty is the uncertainty I feel about easing back on the meds. Maybe I’m in better shape than I think I am, maybe I won’t feel any different.
I will conclude with some advice. If you can possibly avoid it, don’t get depressed or have ADHD. The diagnoses are one thing but doing anything about them is quite another matter. For me, this feels like the end of the road, that in the words of Bob Dylan, beyond here lies nothin’. Life goes on, hopefully, but I’ll never get this shit sorted. The end?
