My story on citalopram

I wanted to share my journey on citalopram to hopefully help people and to encourage them when taking anti depressants.

So it all started last may. I started getting severe shooting pains in the side of my head. The shooting pains turned into unbearable migraine. The migraine lasted weeks. The doctor prescribed me codine, but all that did was numb the pain for a short time and made me extremely dosile and I always felt high.

The pain was always there. It never went away. It would stop me from doing daily tasks and I had to cancel on friends all of the time. I had no social life and could no longer attend university anymore because of the pain I was constantly in.

I eventually had no choice but to drop out of university. I was on my last year too. My mental health was at an all time low.

I developed severe health anxiety (hypercondria) when I had pains in my head I was convinced I has a brain tumour. When my heart skipped a beat out of time, I was convinced I was having a heart attack and had to be taken to a&e. When I was tired I thought I was going brain dead and when I couldn't warm up I thought I was getting hyperthermia. I know it sounds crazy and hilarious, but at the time it was awful.

It was one of the worst times of my life. I self harmed all of the time and thought about suicide regularly.

I begged my gp to refer me to a nerologist because I was fed up of them prescribing tablets that were only numbing the pain for a little while. I needed something more productive.

After weeks of begging, they got me a referal, bit the appointment wasn't for another eight months.

I couldn't physically wait that long. I wanted to die and my dad was prepared to help me in any way he could. So he told me to get private care and he would pay. Although it was expensive he insisted so I booked an appointment and got seen almost straight away.

The nerologist suggested I go on citalopram (the anti depressant I was previously on) because it helps supreme head pain and I have been on it previously and it helped me before.

I really didn't want to go on them because I thought if I go back on them, I would have to be on them for life and it would numb my emotions.

After some consideration I decided to go back on them. Starting on 10mg. I was scared to take them because at this point my health anxiety had gotten so bad that I wouldn't even dare eat fatty food because I was scared my heart would beat too fast and I would die. So I was really sceptical about taking the pill.

I took it the next morning. The first day was rather scary. I remember my friends came to visit me and I remember saying hardly anything. I felt so zombie like and couldn't even open my eyes properly. I couldn't keep down any meal and my appetite was dead. And this was only the first day!

The next couple of days were pretty much the same. One time I was in the car with my dad and one momemt I felt amazing like everything was better, a minute later I felt like I was going to have a panic attack and a minute after that I thought I was going to throw up! I would have disturbed sleep patterns and would become zombie like. Not wanting to do anything but lay there. I pretty much just stayed in for 3 weeks straight only surrounded by my dad, my brother and cat. It was a rocky 3 weeks to say the least. I would cry at the slightest thing and become really needy. Also would get really bad dry mouth. I lost weight because I never was hungry. But for the first time I felt pain free. But then the pain kept returning and vise versa.

Time went on and things slowly got easier and more bearable. The side effects wore off and the pain eventually decreased with it.

I finally felt happy and pain free in the first time I could imagine in forever.

I started going out with friends more, meeting new people, going out at night (I couldn't do this before due to my anxiety), playing guitar, writing songs, playing gigs. Things were like they used to be. Yes things aren't perfect and I probably will be on these for years to come and it has numbed certain emotions down. Like for example, I don't feel jealousy, and don't get excited like I used to. But I can now do daily tasks with ease and although some days I still feel a slight pain, I can deal with it much better and it's no where near as painful as it was before.

I wrote this for people just staring to come on anti depressants. Because I know it can feel unbearable at first, and can do for a whlie. It is not by any means an over night process and the side effects can be horrendous, but stick it out. Make sure you're surrounded by loved ones if you decide to come on anti depressants. And the struggle will be worth while. Its probably one of the best decisions I have ever made coming on citalopram again.

I call them my little drops of joy aha

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