New to Citalopram

I'm sorry for your loss. You have a reason to be upset and a reason to be anxious and such, I never had a trigger for my anxiety I guess I just have a chemical imbalance. Which is irritating in and of itself. I have had these citalopram since Friday and haven't managed to even take one yet. I don't want to be in the house alone while I'm taking the first one. Stupid me, every time I get a pill I think I'm gonna be allergic to it or it will have complications. I have cut one in half and plan on taking it when my parents get back. Funnily enough I've been having symptoms like i'm already on the cits the last 2 days. Today I've felt a constant lump at the back of my throat which one of my advisors said would happen when I first start taking them.

I can't say much to persuade you to take them as that would make me a hypocrite and stupid that I'm not taking my own advice ha. As you see this site has plenty of support on it, always anxious and depressed people that are the loveliest. How strange.. The perfectly healthy mostly seem arrogant and uninterested in anyone else's problems.

Daint x

Thank you for replying to me.

Am new to this site and trying to find my way round it😁 I think I will start taking them tonight as things have to change and, surly it can't get any worse than what I'm going through now. Sounds so silly but I've had to draw myself up a pros and cons chart with regards to taking the tablets, at the moment, the pros outweigh the cons! I started taking my Beta blockers over 7 years ago. There's always been something not quite right (in my mind), I've just tried to ignor it and use my humour as a way of coping there is a history in my family, my dad has manic bipolar, my eldest brother suffers with depression as did my younger brother. My younger brother died in April last year, I've not even attended his inquest yet, that's later on this month. I've mentally gone down hill and I feel like such a failure now, I've managed for 37 years without having to take medication now, I'm trapped, I don't feel strong enough to get myself out...I'm scared to ask for help, my scared bacause I was nearly on my last year in counselling so I could help others, now it's me that needs help, doesn't feel right. Are your parents around a lot? Maybe you should right yourself up a chart, make plans to alert people (who can help) when your feeling wobbly, try keep yourself focused hour by hour on your progress with taking the tablets..watch things that take your mind off of things, watch funny things...small steps are easy to deal with, maybe, if you can be bothered, make video blogs on how you feel, how ever often you wish to, you don't have to post them as it's very personal. Keep a diary of your progress so you can read it back to yourself and you may be able to notice small changes...I feel physically exhausted at the thought of most things but, you could plan to keep the brain active x

None of my family have anything close to what I have, it just seems to have happened to me, my auntie had anxiety in her younger years however she always got through it no problem. I can't really ask her for help because she isn't all that bright anymore she's pretty old and she has enough on her plate without me adding my life to it. I plan on taking mine at some point in the afternoon maybe around 4 or 5 if not it will be around 9pm. I just hope I'm like the others who don't have the side effects. I'm sorry for anyone else that has them and it's selfish but, I hate the way I feel already. As for my parents they are always out and about either working or whatever else they do. I don't really have any other family members or people that I can call to help me out, as they all live further away or have their own jobs to go to. I hope you have a good experience with these pills as you have with beta blockers.

I am like you daintonlee...I don't really have any triggers. Anxiety just hit out of the blue one day. I took 10 mg for a month and now am starting the 3rd week on 20 mg. I am starting to do better, but still hoping things greatly improve over the next several weeks. 

For some people Cit causes them to be sleepy and others it causes insomnia. I am one that has to take it in the morning because it causes insomnia. I just wanted you aware of that incase you decided to take it late and can't sleep. 

Yea that's why I'll never understand why I'm like this. Just a faulty brain I suppose. I'm hoping it won't cause insomnia and make me sleep like a baby but either way I stay up a lot anyway. If it does cause me to stay awake, what time would I take the pill again the next day?

Why don't you try it at 4 or 5 and see how it goes? Then you can gradually adjust either forward or backwards a few hours to see what works best for you. It is a bit trial and error, unfortunately. 

Lots of people take medication for lots of different things. I doubt you have a faulty brain. It is just something about our make-up and the world we live in that brings these kinds of things on. 

Please try to view the medication as something to help you and not a weakness that you have. Personally, I am glad we have medicatoin as an option to help us. Can you imagine living in a time where nothing existed to help people??? 

I'll try overcome the fear of taking them and just have one around that time.

The world without medication would be pretty terrible. I've just always been a "natural" only. Tried herbs and stuff which helped for a while. Then it all got too much for no reason.

I get that! I would rather NEVER have to take a pill! I have yet to meet a person who enjoys taking pills for a real illness.

Please keep posting and let us know how you are doing. I hope you are pleasantly surprised that it isn't nearly as bad has you had thought it would be. If you have side effects, just keep telling yourself that it is temporary and in the long run you will feel much better. Be patient with yourself. You have been battling the anxiety for a long time and it is going to a little while to unravel it all.

I will keep you posted no doubt because I'll be asking if this is normal about every symptom I get (hopefully not) :P I'm still waiting for my parents to get back first. They've gone to fetch a puppy for the household. Just want someone around just in case x

Hopefully a puppy will be a good distraction! 

I never knew why I was like this either, but reading a lot of this subject, understanding why and now looking back at my path, I can see it was stress and emotional that was the cause.  I didn't know it at the time.

Everyone has a different path that leads them to this illness - trauma, stress, emotions, bad experience that led to stress ....... so many.  But we all end up in the same place.  Depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, fear, emotional ...... 

Take for for instance stress.  Everyone deals with stress differently - some people thrive on it and we all have our own levels of tolerance.  If you have stress, the body usually deals with it.  If you have prolonged stress over a long, long time, maybe mixed with an emotional time too, unbeknown to you your nerves are becoming 'jagged'.  As more time goes by and you continue to get stress you'll start to find you begin to not cope as well - get upset over the smallest things, get angry, emotional ........ your serotonin hormones begin to get depleted (your happy hormones) and you might find depression creeps in or anxiety, and you're susceptible to panic attacks.  For me, whilst I was like this, I suddenly had a huge panic attack which scared the hell out of me.  I was able to dismiss it, but had another a week later ..... and that was it.  The fear stuck with me, and I crumbled.  The years that followed were filled with anxiety and depression.

If I hadn't already had my 'path' prepared with prolonged stress and emotions, my body would probably have dealt with it differently and just dismissed it.  But when your body has jagged nerves, is depleted of serotonin you can all too easily slip into the illness.  That's when the cycle of fear, adrenaline, fear starts.

These meds work on your serotonin.  They hang onto to it before it's absorbed into the brain, making you feel pleasant.  Over time as more and more serotonin is hung onto, you'll begin to feel happier - and once this begins it also calms the anxiety.  In time you will once again be restored to happiness, calmness and just feel like you used to.

You can't function with low serotonin levels.  It causes depression, anxiety, over thinking, tiredness, fear, negative thinking, low appetite - all the things you maybe suffering from now.

Restore the serotonin and you'll begin to find your way back to feeling normal.

Its like having an elastic band snapped - that band gets wound up tight with stress and once you let go it keeps moving, jiggling - imagine that's how your nerves are.  The meds will soothe those nerves, stop them jiggling, restoring the balance and making them smooth again.

😄❤️

Yea it will give me a goal to work towards too. Taking him for a walk and such. As for looking on the Web it's a tad bit late haha. But I understand that many people don't put positive experiences cuz they don't use the Internet like other anxious people. The ones who search everything they have to diagnose themselves with cancer and stuff.