I (23f) have been struggling w/ mental illness my entire life, but I always assumed I was able to “control” it better than other people and viewed myself as a relatively stable person. More recently, I’ve been reconsidering this idea of myself… I have been diagnosed with social anxiety/general anxiety disorder, depression, OCD and adhd (so far). I was medicated for intense depression and anxiety attacks in high school, took the lowest dose of citalopram and considered myself fine. I went off of it when I got to college and proceeded to experience some intense emotional highs and lows. I’m currently a year out of college with a full time job, now on Zoloft (just moved up to 150mg) and 10 mg adderall twice a day. I hadn’t noticed much of a difference with them at first except maybe the adderall (I can now do tedious tasks without wanting to gouge my eyeballs out and I feel more calm) but because of issues with my pharmacy, I have been off of Zoloft for over a week now and the effects are starting to show. It’s made me realize how messed up I was before medication—I’m so angry, almost manic, obsessive and self destructive. My capacity for empathy is small and I don’t care much about establishing or retaining my relationships with others. I also struggle with ED tendencies and those get worse when I’m off my meds. I don’t like myself when I’m unmedicated, I feel like a bad person who is out to destroy all of the relationships I have with people I love. Seems like maybe there could be more going on there on top of the already long list of diagnoses I’ve managed to acquire.
Mostly just wanted to rant/reflect. I’d love to hear if anyone else has experienced something similar.