My first week on Citalopram: what did it feel like?
About a year ago I realised all my other options were exhausted, so I turned to drugs.
I had attended counseling, tried cognitive behavioural therapy, drank herbal teas, and read self-help books, but I’d always slip back into an unbearable pit of despair. Sometimes within a few weeks, sometimes it’d take years. I was hospitalised before I finally decided to see my doctor about medication.
He gave me a prescription for Citalopram and I waited a month before I took any for fear of its negative effects. When I did finally begin treatment, I recognised that I was becoming uncharacteristically furious very quickly.
I thought it might be beneficial to keep a log of how things felt for the first week, which is a) written below, and b) helped me shift most of my initial frustration.
Before you read on, it’s important I say this: despite obtaining a glimpse of recovery during this time, what followed was months of experimentation, worry, and advice. Eventually, I settled upon an agreeable dose and saw my health improve long-term. It took a great deal of patience. Medication is not a cure — it’s a step up.
Day 1
After much deliberation, I finally chose to go ahead and take Citalopram — a daily 20mg dose — and I am terrified of the potential fallout. I was diagnosed with depression/anxiety after a series of dreadful panic attacks, and I have engaged in various types of counseling and therapy since I was as young as sixteen. In fact, I remember my first therapist telling me she thought I was suffering from depression. I shrugged her off.
Anyway, shortly after sending panicked, over-stressed text messages to a work colleague and escaping the office, I called my doctor to double-check the drug’s side effects (which I’ve heard can range from severe to abhorrent).
She said, ‘Yes, you’ll feel sick, constipated, depressed, anxious, suicidal, half-asleep, itchy, and forgetful — but other than that you’ll be fine’. She forgot to mention that I’m also unlikely to ever experience another erection for as long as I live (there are small communities of men online who’ve never recovered their sexual appetite).
It doesn’t matter. I have now reached such a self-defeating, captive state within my own head (it feels as if my brain is trapped inside a small, airtight tupperware lunchbox) that I have no other choice but to pop these pills. Pills that are, I know full well, not going to tackle the root cause of whatever’s the issue. If it takes the edge off, happy days — it should make it easier for me to fix myself in the long-term. Or at least get outdoors.
Day 2
Interesting. I didn’t achieve a great deal today.
Rather, it feels that way. And this is usually the case. I presented another episode of Are You Sitting Comfortably? on East London Radio, I caught up with a friend over tea and pizza, and then I went to a nifty little Shoreditch coffee shop and did some audio editing. After that, I spiraled into an evening of BBC Three’s Cuckoo and yet more pizza.
I was supposed to go to the gym, clean the flat, pack a bag for tomorrow’s trip to Kent, and iron my work shirts. None of this was achieved, and it is of course this stuff — however mundane or daft it may sound — that plays on my mind. What a failure! Waste of space! Get a life!
Aware I’ve been taking the drugs, I’m not sure if I’m anxiously anticipating side-effects, or purposefully, adamantly trying to pretend that I’m absolutely fine. I felt a little bit wobbly earlier, but that could be nerves. I was randomly sleepy mid-afternoon, which is nothing I haven’t felt before. I have, too, been quite forgetful all day long. But here’s the good news: I haven’t yet forgotten how to generate a magnificent boner.
Days 3 & 4
I went to Kent yesterday, which — as those of you who know my backstory will understand — is never easy. My anxiety shot through the roof; I couldn’t sleep. I was scared to leave the house.
After a battle, I eventually did leave and lugged my lifeless body onto a grey, soulless Southeastern train.
I had to sit in the park for about an hour before seeing my family. I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t read or admire the view. I simply had to sit.
I was deciding how I felt and what I felt. I didn’t exactly reach any conclusions. My heart was pounding all day long, and my leg was wobbling constantly (it still is). I felt vulnerable. Childlike, almost. And I was concerned that people were looking at me and thinking, ‘Gosh, doesn’t he look depressed!’
I did, though, catch up with my niece who has a discerning ability to do away with life’s troubles. We played connect-4, and by this time I’d also had a half-pint, so was loosening up.
Today, however, I was at work and mostly unable to focus. I couldn’t stop yawning. Yawn upon yawn upon yawn!
For two days I’ve felt a weird combination of extremely tired and terrifically anxious. It’s as if I’m strapped to a rocket while suffering the debilitating effects of a fistful of Nytol. Most irritatingly, I can sense the beginnings of an upset stomach; the kind of stirring in the pit of your belly that you might feel the morning after a booze-up.
Being sick is a possibility, I suppose.
Days 5 & 6
I have inadvertently abandoned the gym for a short time — but strangely, I don’t feel enormously worried about it. Lately, I hadn’t really been going for pleasure — more out of a deep-seated anxiety to do with ‘body image’, fearing eternal romantic failure due to being out of shape (different to the kind of drug-induced turbo-anxiety I’m experiencing this week).
The gym is a brilliant anti-depressant in and of itself; some time ago it became a hobby valuable to my overall health and well-being. I remember the challenge, as well as the transformation, as being thoroughly enjoyable. That feels distant now — it’s too difficult to reach the gym let alone work out there.
Work has been tough. The frantic leg wobbling continues and my bowel habits have changed (not necessarily for the better). My skin is different too (much better, thanks). A mixed bag.
Here’s the interesting bit: during winter, friends will tell me that sunshine is all I really need to feel lively. Apparently, I suffer from ‘SAD’ and need lots of lovely vitamin D on my face. Simple! Well, guess what? I’ll say it: sunshine doesn’t always help — in fact, it can make things worse.
When the weather matches your mood, you can at least supply some vestige of justification for your vacant facial expression. When the weather is glorious, you’re thinking, ‘How on Earth can I still feel this abysmal?’. This plunges me deeper into bed-ridden turmoil: I can’t possibly go outside because I’m not capable of faking happiness to the degree expected of me.
I can feel the absence of that feeling (as well as its onset). When I’m not stuffed up in the office, I’m finding I can enjoy the weather.
Day 7
I know this is going to appear somewhat forced (it being the seventh day in my diary) but I truly cannot specifically recall ever feeling this normal or sane before. I’m sure I have felt this way, but so much crap has clogged my mind for so long that normalcy is nothing more than a foggy memory.
My original concerns stemmed, I think, from the potential for this medication to actually work, confirming that I have definitely been suffering from depression — medically speaking. And here it is, working.
Years of counseling and therapy, self-help, experimental sleeping patterns, abstinence, over-indulgence, escapism, and soul-searching — though sometimes helpful — always took me, one way or another, back to the same devastating psychological battle. It’s upsetting to look back at how draining things have been.
People think depression equates to crying all the time, when in truth it eats you inside out, deadens your soul, silences joy, thieves hope. Your ability to envisage a future worth trying for? Gone. There’s no crying over that — you’ve nothing left to feel for. What remains is an empty shell, a vessel — with no momentum.
Showering wasn’t an effort today.
My imagination wasn’t scuppered.
Laughing didn’t feel double-edged.
Waking up wasn’t my worst nightmare.
I returned to the gym. It felt fun again.
I’m not crazy. I know my problems aren’t ‘solved’ and I will surely re-encounter my demons, but knowing I now have a head start is more than I could have bargained for.
Wondering what came next? Read my follow-up, written four years later.
