The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't know your adhd drugs (I was only ever on adderall), but I am absolutely blown away by your motivation and drive given you are taking prozac and ambien. It also sounds like you don't need them any more, and I think you would have a much easier time bettering yourself without them.
I don't like anti depressants or anti anxiety meds, but it is more about the way they are pushed than their actual efficacy - to many doctors it seems, prozac and ambien are now a part of your life, as necessary as water and sleep. But they don't help you to better yourself - they make you feel better when you are depressed, but when you are depressed you are so low that you can't be normal.
The way I look at it, they cut off access to the utter depths of misery you have been feeling, but they do so by lopping off the ends of your emotional range - so the lowest you can feel is a general pervasive sense of 'fuck everything' (which is much better than 'fuck everything but especially me, God send a semi-trailer to this red light so I can climb out of my car and put my head under a wheel') but the highest you can feel is also neutered. And because you are depressed you don't even notice it - it's better than the low isn't it?
And yes, it absolutely is better than the low, but you are past that now, you beyond just trying to make it through the day without breaking down or worse, and you are trying to better yourself. And from the way you talk about time, this is a long term project, I don't think this is just a temporary high. So at this point, I think you should talk to your doctor about dropping the ambien and prozac. There are cleaner and more enjoyable ways to quieten the never ending cacophony of modern life, namely alcohol and weed. Which have their own problems, absolutely, but come with the additional benefit of not being controlled by the pharmaceutical industry.
There is also the substance free approach, but it is a lot harder, and I think it takes a particular mindset to get by exclusively on the warmth of self righteousness. At any rate, even a step down the pharma ladder would help you I think - I assume you have trouble sleeping, but it's hard to think of anything outside of xanax that is harder on your body and mind than ambien. That shit fucks you up in ways you don't even notice. Even valium is better for you I reckon. If you don't feel ready to stop taking them that's fair enough - you know what you can handle, but please consider it, as it will definitely help you improve yourself.
Oh yeah man, I'm not saying listen to me over your doctors lol. But I didn't think I was giving you any praise, more just encouragement.
If you want to look at it as praise though, it's still for something you have definitely done, something you have handled better than others, but more importantly it is something you have done to improve your life. You deserve praise for that, because it is literally the hardest thing a depressed person can do. For it was said: it is easier for a depressed person to jam a camel up their dickhole than to decide they are going to do anything to stop being depressed.
The biggest issue with that level of scrupulosity though, is that it gives you a reason to give up when you fail. You fail and you think to yourself "of course I failed, I'm a failure, I fuck up everything and never do anything right even though I have it so much better than others, I shouldn't have tried in the first place."
If you are in a place where any praise feels like a lie and just makes you hate yourself more I apologise (and I did mean it as encouragement), but it is something you are going to have to get used to now you are on your way out. Whatever happens, don't let it become an excuse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link