Recovery

Day 8, and I'm back in the game!

Okay, so it took six days to get my body used to the reduction of Venlafaxine but I feel fine now, so am very pleased that I stuck with it through all the unpleasant sweating, shitting and shivering. It has also given me hope that one day I might be able to be free of this drug entirely, and emerge relatively unscathed out of the other side.

Now I'm not naive enough to believe that there is a cure for my... condition (but wouldn't it be wonderful if I could erase it with some sort of Victorian wonder-tonic?!) but I do feel that I have recovered quite well over the last few years. I am certainly better than I was.

Years ago I was so desperate to be better that I made myself sicker. I woke up every day with the dogged optimism of a child on Christmas morning. Oh please, let today be the day I feel better, I said to myself. I don't know what I was expecting, rainbows and fairy dust, perhaps? All I know now if that this unrealistic expectation of my own ability to let my mind heal itself at it's own pace was preventing me from making any progress with the recovery I so craved. There is no sudden cure. There is no quick fix. It's long and it's tough and it gets worse before it gets better. The day I stopped expecting to feel better IMMEDIATELY was the day I started to recover.

The future looms large, promising unknown ups and downs. There's a very good chance I could relapse and become unwell again. I have just had to accept this as fact and try to carve myself a life that can deal with these issues as they occur.

But it is the confidence of a mental health recovery veteran that I can say that I feel better right now than I have in years.