Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Oh, how I love it and never seem to get it. Did you know that one of the symptoms of a depression can be a lack of sleep? Most often, the depressed person will wake up hours before they are supposed to and not be able to go back to sleep. Before my first suicide attempt, I was down to practically no sleep. I would go to bed for an hour or two, wake up and not be able to go back to sleep.
One of the common side effects of depression medications is no sleep. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. If I am not on anti-depressants I won’t be able to sleep, as well as having all my depression symptoms return, including the suicidal thoughts, however, with being on them I cannot sleep either.
The sides of effects of not sleeping are not fun either. I am tired all the time, it can make me very cranky, headaches (I hate headaches), lack of motivation, I doze off frequently (for example, today alone I have dozed off about five times while working on my blog), a general feeling of unwell. Wait a minute! Several of those side effects are similar to what you have when you are depressed, crankiness, tiredness, lack of motivation and even the headaches.
What a crappy cycle to be in! I see my psychiatrist Friday. I will explain to him that I am still not sleeping. He had told me the last time I saw him to take two of my anti-anxiety medications at night to help with my sleeping. That did not work. My anti-anxiety medication happens to be a prescription strength anti-histamine, but it was found to have a tranquilizing effect that was using for people with anxiety disorders. So it naturally makes me sleepy. Unfortunately, it also drys out my sinuses. When I take more than one to help me sleep, my sinuses get so dried out that I wake up with a horrible headache. I absolutely do not want to stop taking my anti-depressant since it seems to be working, so I am going to let my doctor know that I need something that will help me sleep.
Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Maybe I can get some tonight.