Talking Medications

    This week I am going to go over medications. Psychotherapy and medication are the two main treatments for anxiety disorders. Signs that it's time to talk to a mental health professional include: Constant or nearly constant anxiety. Anxiety that gets in the way of your daily activities, like work or social life. There are very many different medications your doctor might prescribe you. How do you know if you need antidepressants? Your doctor might suggest that you try antidepressants if you have tried counseling and lifestyle changes and they haven't worked and/or your symptoms are bad enough that they interfere with your daily life. Most, if not all, anxiety medications have to be prescribed by a doctor. If your doctor diagnoses you with anxiety, they will most likely prescribe an antidepressant for medication. Antidepressants work by increasing neurotransmitters. These are chemicals in the brain like serotonin and noradrenaline. They can improve mood and emotion, although this process isn't fully understood. Increasing levels of neurotransmitters can also disrupt pain signals sent by nerves. Antidepressants are a class of medications used to treat major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, chronic pain, and addiction. The common side effects of antidepressants include dry mouth, weight gain, dizziness, headaches, akathisia, sexual dysfunction, and emotional blunting. A common type of Antidepressant is SSRI which stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, which is what most of the meds I have tried are.

Over the last 4 years, I have tried many different medications. Cymbalta, Zoloft, Lexapro, and Venlafaxine were to treat my anxiety but for my panic attacks, I take a different medication. For my panic attacks, I was prescribed Xanax and Hydroxine.

The first medication I tried was Lexapro (Escitalopram). I only tried it for a little because it made my anxiety really bad so I stopped it pretty quickly. The doctor told me it would get worse before it got better but it got to the point where I was shaking 24/7 so I had to stop taking it. Lexapro scared me a little bit due to my reaction to it so I took a break from medications. About a year or 2 later my anxiety got really bad due to situations going on in my life so I decided to try medication again. I tried Cymbalta and felt no change so I stopped that. My doctor then started me on Zoloft and I did not have any bad symptoms from it like I did with Lexapro so I decided to stay on it. The first thing I noticed was that I was not noticing anything. I had no symptoms or anything but I also could not tell if it was helping or not so I told my doctor that and they decided to up my dosage to see if that would help. I noticed my anxiety was a little better, but not much so they upped it again, and still not much of a change. That is when we decided to try a different medication and try and get an appointment with a Psychiatrist because they specialize in mental health and would provide a better understanding. They told me it would be a while till I got an appointment with a Psychiatrist so I went back to my primary doctor and they prescribed Venlafaxine Effexor). 

The medication I am on right now is called Venlafaxine but the brand name is Effexor. I am still trying to find the right fit for me but so far, Effexor is the only one that has made me feel a difference. Before I started taking Effexor, all I thought about was anxiety, 24/7. My brain always felt like it was running a million miles an hour. It made a lot of things more difficult to do. I was always overthinking and stressing about the littlest things. When I took Effexor, it kind of slowed my mind down, which was better than my brain always thinking about everything. It does help me do things more because it makes me overthink less.  It also kind of makes me more "out of it". I found myself daydreaming a lot more and kind of spacing out and just thinking about random things. I don't mind it but it does make me a lot more lazy and tired. 

Also, everyone reacts to medications differently so you might have a different experience and it might take a while to find the medication that is the right fit.