don't be afraid to ask for help

Hey everyone! 

So as you know, I plan to use this blog to document my journey to a more healthy lifestyle when it comes to eating habits, physical activity and my spiritual and emotional well-being. Well, I recently decided to go on an anti-depressant called bupropion (marketed as Wellbutrin or Zyban). You might be wondering, how does that fit into a healthier lifestyle? Aren’t anti-depressants bad for you? The truth is, I’ve always been curious about this, too. So I’d like to share with you the reasons behind this decision and what I hope to get out of it, which may be beneficial for some of you.

I had this friend in university who once told me my life is like a rollercoaster and I like it that way.  At the time I didn’t think much of what he said, but he was right. For a very long time, I had been riding a wave of constantly changing emotions – one minute I would be ecstatic, excited, filled with love. Then something small would happen and it would plunge me into a dark, negative place. Fast forward half an hour and I’d have found something else to be excited or happy about… And the cycle would continue. For a long time I just rode the wave and assumed this is how I was and would always be – how everyone was. But a couple of years ago I realized that not only are there people out there who have their emotions under complete control, but I could be one of them… if I worked at it. I could learn the source of my emotions and what made them so intense, and I could slowly but surely get to a much calmer place in my life.

This is a great goal, but it’s not easy. Especially when dealing with the aftermath of your emotions takes up so much of your time and leaves you so exhausted that you barely know where to start in dealing with what caused them. At the end of the day, I was just happy to be able to sleep, and I had no energy left to dissect my depression and anxiety or figure out where they came from. Riding that constant wave is really quite tiring, and your emotions can so easily cloud your judgement. It’s nearly impossible to stop and think, “Why am I so angry? What’s really going on here?” when you’re completely livid, and you don’t feel at all in control of your frustration and anger. In my opinion, this is where medication comes in.

I plan to use this medication and the resulting calming effect to finally find a way to deal with my emotions on my own, so that eventually I can stop taking it and live happily without it. Calm the waters, so to speak, so I can really get to the root of everything going on inside my mind and consequently gain some sort of control over my emotional state.

I would like to document this journey in my blog as well. I know there are a lot of people out there who may need help of some kind, but are wary of pharmaceuticals. I plan to do a kind of “study”, where I write in my blog and discuss how the medication makes me feel, what my emotional state is like, how I notice it has changed me, and also any physical side effects. I plan to be as unbiased as possible. I’m hoping this information could be of use for some people who wonder about anti-depressants but don’t know where to get real, honest information about what they do to your mental state and how they may change you as a person.

Tomorrow I’ll begin updating this blog at least every other day, and I’m excited to share my journey with all of you.  

Namaste,

Marita