Day 26 - No meds

Today was Day 26.

I had a GP appointment this afternoon to discuss my current medication and to assess whether I should continue with it, start to come off it, or shift to something else. Since I have started on the medication I have been experiencing the full list of posted side effects and several others that aren't on the list. Unfortunately, many of the side-effects are also potential symptoms of my underlying anxiety attacks so it is hard to tell whether they are being caused or decreased by the medication. I had decided that at some point before going back to my GP I would attempt a day off the pills to better assess the effects of the medication and be prepared to comment on any decision for a change. I probably shouldn't have left it until the last day but the rest of the week hasn't gone well enough to attempt it. I got a better night of sleep last night, a bit broken up but maybe 6 hours in total, I had a busy day planned to keep me distracted, and I would be seeing the GP in the middle of the afternoon if I was struggling, so this felt like the day to test myself off the pills.

The half-life on Buspirone Hydrochloride is only 2-3 hours so a single day should be enough to clear it almost completely. Judging by the daily cycles I have been going through this seems about right. A normal day on the medication gives me a fairly regular cycle:

5-6am, wake-up (if I got to sleep at all), this is the low point of my day and comes with fairly gentle crying and anxiety attacks as standard.

7am force myself out of bed and take the pill. Get showered, dressed and off to work. At this point I am still struggling with the emotional attacks, but I have a routine and a timetable so I can force myself through them.

8am start work. First hour or so at work is filled up nicely with morning call, reading overnight emails and generally trying to figure out what happened in the 16 hours since I left. By the time I get to anything new the pills are working and I am part-zombie.

11:30 lunch. By now the pills are at full force. I am in total zombie-mode by this point and it has become a daily experiment to see whether I can eat and, if I can, whether I can taste anything. Work around this time is on auto-pilot. The side effects are also getting into top gear now. I cant focus on anything for more than 10minutes at a time between flashbacks and thinking about what might happen next.

4pm home time. I still have no attachment to the outside world and in all honestly I really shouldn't be driving in this state.

8pm. If I have been training I am normally ok at this point. I think the endorphins from exercising are probably having some effect here. If not then this is where the slide really starts to kick in. Trying to distract myself by watching TV or a movie, blogging, checking facebook etc helps slow the descent but from here till bed time it is going to become more and more difficult to focus on anything but her.

11pm Bed time. Not that there is much point as I am now in a bit of a state and there is no way I am getting to sleep for at least a couple of hours. My head is back to running around in circles trying to make sense of things.

So how was it different being off the pills?

 

Up until 10am I didn't really notice any difference. Maybe I was just keeping busy enough though. My focus was better and I was actually managing sizeable chunks of work, maybe 20mins worth, between drifting off into flashbacks again. By 11am the tremors were going on both hands as well as my right leg (the leg has been a persistent tremor even with the medication) but there were positive signs as well. Definitely less of the zombie effect and I think I even managed to raise a smile at one point. Lunch was still an effort to eat and tasted of nothing, so it seems that the appetite and taste effects are not directly related to the pills. 

The GP has suggested that if I can cope without the pills I should stay off them and keep them for any incidents when I have panic attacks or start to feel anxious. She also suggested that I might want to try taking them at bed time to try and knock me out for a proper nights sleep. Because I am still feeling ok I am going to skip on the night-time suggestion for tonight and stick with no meds for as long as I can.

In the evening I went to Stonehaven for the triathlon. That deserves a blog to itself but I've written enough for one day. 

Day 26, no meds experiment started, Day 27 will be a continuation of this plan, but I now have to carry them around all the time for "emergencies".