Antidepressants

In 2003 I got very, very depressed and was prescribed lofepramine, if I remember right lofepramine by my GP, again wasn’t really told anything about it and I didn’t, I wasn’t really interested I just wanted something to make me feel better, I was kind of, you know, I didn’t really care what it was. It seemed to work quite well and then it seemed to stop working.
 
I convinced him to let me try lofepramine again because it had worked in the past and so he said he would. He was quite, he was very good, he gave me information about the drug, he said to me, he kind of left it up to me in terms of, he said this is the dosage you can go up to, try it on this dosage, if it’s not working you can increase it yourself up to a certain point but do kind of come back and he was very insistent that I call him if I needed help or, you know, and have regular appointments with him to kind of check up on things.
 
Unfortunately it didn’t work and that Christmas I was admitted to hospital again.
 
Lofepramine I loved, sorry going back to the Tricyclic, I love lofepramine and the reason I wanted to go back on it the second time was a ridiculously vain reason but I remembered that it made me, it just, it stopped my appetite, I had absolutely no desire to eat at all and for me I wanted that back, I wanted, you know, I wanted to lose weight I wanted to not eat so I was just like yes give me a drug that makes me not want to eat and I’ll be more than happy.

When you went on the Tricyclics then did they alter your mood? Did they have an effect?
 
Mm they sort of doped me up really.
 
So you felt a bit blank did you?
 
Yeah, yeah. But I wasn't, I didn't feel that I could function and carry on normally. I didn't feel alert, I felt very sort of floating, relaxed and - which was nice and sometimes it was very nice to not feel anything but you can't go on like that, like it's not how you live.
 
And how, yeah I mean how did it impact on your day to day life would you say?
 
I functioned, I just, I got up, I fed the children, I took them to school, I'd come home, I'd sit – just sit with no music, no telly or I'd sleep and then I'd pick the kids up and make them dinner and put them to bed and then I'd go to bed and I did that for months.
 
So did you discuss that aspect of it with your doctor at all?
 
I don't think so no, because I don't think at the time I thought about it. I was just going through the motions.
 
Because when you're in that state it's quite hard to actually think about it clearly.
 
Yeah because, because your thinking's different anyway and it was, it was just, it was like being in a permanent state of drunkenness I suppose just mildly. But, so you weren't that bothered because it was, it was OK because you weren't feeling bad, it didn't matter that you weren't feeling good either and you just carried on with it.

I still remember picking it up at the pharmacy and, and taking it out of its box and looking at it and deciding whether or not I should take it. But I took it, and it felt like I was being hit by a tank somehow. I just felt completely flattened. I couldn’t really function. I remember going to the cinema and again it being quite dark and falling asleep during the film and then waking up hours later, and this was on quite a low dose of amitriptyline. It was only a starting dose and I remember spending hours and hours and hours just lying in bed. It just completely sedated me.
 
It seemed to do nothing for me. My GP at the time said, “Well, you know, you have to give it some time, it’s a tricyclic antidepressant, they take a few weeks for it to kick in, or a few months maybe. You have to give it some time.”
 
I didn’t know how I was going to cope with this because I couldn’t, I couldn’t function, I couldn’t get myself out of bed. I couldn’t get myself to the lab. It was so sedating. That was the main thing I remember about amitriptyline and it gave me a funny taste in my mouth. One I’d never had before.
 
So I quickly after not very long, I discontinued amitriptyline. I said, “I can’t cope with this, it’s not giving me any kind of benefit and it is just knocking me out. Its, not.... it’s not helping me.

I first came to, became depressed after the, quite some time after the birth of my daughter, I was 28 at the time, about 28… it, my general health hadn’t really been following her birth, in that I was losing weight, I lost weight in fact in my pregnancy it wasn’t really clear cut what was wrong for quite a little while but my GP was very good and noticed that I worried a tremendous amount and he put me onto a drug called Valium which is no longer used and just to calm me down because he said I’d burn myself out otherwise. And he… put me in touch with a psychiatrist for reasons nothing to do with my depression but because I was seen by the psychiatrist he ended up treating me. I went onto Tricyclic drugs… amitriptyline was the first drug and I was, I felt very dopey and tired with this drug I didn’t like it at all, I didn’t like being on it… I didn’t really get any better and I was eventually hospitalised.