Nearly a whole month since day 1. This is just my experience so please take it with a grain of salt as yours might be very different.

Context:
- 30s, F
- historically sensitive to small doses of Valium 
- pandemic exacerbated GAD
- GAD for as long as I can remember
- have trouble making basic decisions like deciding what to order for takeaway, fear of grief, slight OCD, history of depression, people pleaser, trouble putting self first, fear of failure
- Therapy, including CBT for last 10 years
- put off medication until now for fear of dependence and side effects

Goal:
- undo conditioning of anxiety driven behaviours 

*Dose taken before bed, with food.*

Experience

Day 21-22
- anxiety was up and down all the time
- no side effects, still taking dose with food
- craving sweets again
- overall felt like my usual anxious self…and I hated it
- Had a huge fight with my mother, which hasn’t happened in a while -but weirdly did not feel the desperate guilt and need to apologize immediately as I usually did
- spent the rest of the night feeling normal
- in bed the intrusive thoughts kept me up

Day 23
- This was a bit of a nightmare, felt insanely depressed
- couldn’t get out of bed
- super fatigued, too tired to even eat 
- slept until mid afternoon
- felt better after my therapy session but still just feeling “down”
- stayed like this until I slept 

Day 24-25
- anxiety up and down -and when it hits, it hits hard
- brief moments of calm in between -almost comparable to the good part of week 1 
- but at least not depressed

Day 26-27
- less huge peaks in anxiety
- generally calm
- still some anxiety -mainly while I lie in bed trying to sleep
- insomnia due to intrusive thoughts 

Day 28
- the weekend is always good for me
- very sleepy
- overall good 


Overall 
- pretty anxious overall
- the random depression was INTENSE and I’m glad it was only 1x day 
- I want to believe day 26-27 was a sign of things getting better but am skeptical so I need more data (aka time) 
- considering increasing meds if no further improvement by week 6