Four Days Off My Meds

Well, it's been four days without my meds. They should have started to work their way out of my system. I'm not sure if there's been any change. I have no idea what to tell my doctor.

I thought maybe at first she was right and the mood stabilizer was the cause of the excessive restlessness and anxiety. After not taking it one night, I felt much calmer the next day. I still needed my anxiety mends, but I didn't have the overwhelming all-over restless leg syndrome like before. Even when our roof started leaking again, I was pretty calm.

But I thought, no, it's too early to be seeing a difference already. Maybe I was just having a good day. But the next two days were okay as well. I barely needed my meds and only took them once the anxiety got too bad (usually around dinner time) and at bedtime so I could sleep. So I started to suspect maybe the doctor was right and stopping the mood stabilizer would allow me to go back to normal anxiety levels.

Then today happened. Four days into the experiment and the anxiety is back. I can say it's not quite as bad, but it's been there all day, just hanging out in the back of my head. I have this overwhelming feeling like I'm supposed to be doing something else or that I'm forgetting something. It gives me mini panic attacks at the most random times. But I'm not forgetting to do something. At least I don't think so. Mostly I keep getting this feeling like I forgot to do my NaNo writing today. It'll hit me whenever I'm doing something else. Except I wrote 3,800 words today. I finished at like 4pm. I don't need to do any more writing for the day, but the feeling keeps popping up.

And I've felt extra restless today. I just want to get up and move around, but when I'm on my feet, I just want to sit. But when I sit, I can stay still. I tried to finish watching the Shang-Chi movie I started yesterday. I had to literally sit on my hands to keep from moving around. If my cat hadn't laid right on my feet, I probably would have been moving them as well. So many times I found myself just blindly staring at the TV without focusing on what was going on. I kept thinking about writing even though I had finished my writing by that time.

It's all so frustrating. This all happened after I had already taken an anxiety pill because I could feel it building up all day and couldn't take it anymore. I'm going to go one more night without my mood stabilizer I think and see how I feel tomorrow. I will say the anxiety has been a little less than usual, but it didn't go away fully, and then something unknown triggered it today for no reason (nothing is even going on--roof is still leaking, the world is still crap, I'm still crazy).

If I go back on the mood stabilizer and the anxiety suddenly gets even worse then I guess I'll know it's the mood stabilizer. I have to then email my doctor to let her know the results. I'm still not sure what to say because I can't tell if it's really the meds or I just had a couple good days. I don't want to stay off my meds for longer than I have to. It's scary being off of them. Luckily, I'm on the lowest dosage so I'm not having to step down gradually over days then build it back up again.

She said the meds should be out of my system in 4-8 days, so I should really start to see a difference. I really don't feel any different off the meds other than a little less anxiety than usual. I was hoping to up the dosage of the mood stabilizer until she said it could be causing the anxiety/restlessness. Now I'm not sure what to do.

I have another appointment on the 9th. Until then I guess I keep just chugging along.