4 weeks in, the drugs do work! In your face The Verve!

Can it really only be 4 weeks since I started taking the happy pills?

Blimey!

I have to say that I feel a hell of a lot better in myself. A case in point was the other night when I was performing. I screwed up one of the effects which would have sent me to pieces and jarred my confidence before I started taking the medication. It barely stopped me in my stride. I just shrugged it off and moved on. Afterwards, I didn't beat myself up about it. I didn't go into a huge post mortem of it on the way home, I just accepted that sometimes stuff happens that is outside your control and moved on... This may sound like pretty small potatoes to some people. But to me, this is a huge revelatory thing and is proof positive that the drugs really do work. Yes, I am still having irrational bouts of anger and negative emotions, but they are becoming few and far between.

On the plus side, I think my confidence is building back up again to the point where I don't feel the need to be affirmed for every decision that I make which is having a knock on effect with the creative work that I am doing. New designs are coming thick and fast from Broadarrow Jack and I will be premiering some new stuff at events and stalls over the coming few months.

There have been some negative side effects that have been in evidence, some quite embarrassing. I tend to sweat a lot more noticably now and as a consequence, I don't want to do some stuff because of the very obvious over sweating. I am assured however that the majority of this will calm down and probably get back to normal. I don't mind the negative side effects as much, because the positive effects that the drugs are having are absolutely fabulous. And the best thing of all, I haven't had to have any time off work as a result of this whole process. I may be asking for a bit of extended leave at some point in the future so that I can actually relax for a while without worrying about work and how secure my job is etc. but that is for the future and who knows what that holds...

this may be my last blog post for a little while as the worst of the hurdles are over with I feel. I will keep updating as and when I feel that I have something to report.

Other than that I don't want to keep reporting situation normal blogs Developments are interesting to read about. What I had for my lunch and what time that I got to bed last night are pretty boring for everyone (myself included). So, thank you all for following the process that I've been going through from the very bottom of my bottom, please feel free to keep it on a back burner and I will update everyone on the Facebook if I blog up again.

Peace!

Two weeks in... There is no spoon

Well, two weeks into the prescription and there have been a few things that have given me cause for concern. I won't talk about all of them because I don't think that is appropriate. Suffice to say that with Citalopram, I began to experience some interesting (although not entirely unpleasant) side effects. There are one or two worrying side effects however. As a person that needs to mark work and give detailed feedback, I have experienced (over the past couple of days) a general fog when it comes to formulating words and marshalling them into a coherent thought process. This is a pretty bad thing as the feedback that I give has got to be detailed and provide the student with a good idea of where they have excelled or where they are going wrong.
The blog is slightly different as I don't need to be quite so focussed with it.
One of the other things that I have noticed is that I haven't been experiencing a balancing of moods, I've been as depressed or as angry etc. as I have been all through this process, but the bouts of extreme emotion have been lasting a shorter and shorter time. This is very much in the plus column as far as I am concerned. I have been genuinely smiling a lot more since starting on the pills, however the bouts of positive mood have been becoming shorter and shorter too. Leaving me with a sort of low grade ennui. I'm not sure that I like it to be honest. But if this is what is necessary to give the therapy a chance to work then I suppose that I have to weather the storm. Concentration has been an issue at work. If I am doing physical work then I am OK, sitting and reading is not going well (back to the problems generating feedback). Prior to the advent of the pills, I had no trouble at all with reading the work of students and generating pages of feedback for them...

so yeah, just a quick update. I'll post something more meaty once the first course has been taken (I still have 2 weeks left of this course) with some detailed pro's and con's as when I was first looking into the possibility of citalopram, I tended to find either personal accounts of negative experiences or clinical accounts of positive experiences... There didn't seem to be much in the way of a personal analysis from both sides looking at it objectively. Hopefully, I'll be able to bridge that gap.