My trip to my shrink

I saw my psychiatrist yesterday- and it was the most uneventful appointment I'd had in a long time. I really had no complaints. We did determine, however, that I have a mild tremor in my left hand (very minor), since going on the lithium. Do I care? No.

I like this guy. He is the first person who actually looks for things like tremors and tardive dyskinesia, no other doctor has. What I really think is, if I psychiatrist can't be a doctor, then let psychologist prescribe. You have to be a doctor if you are a psychiatrist. These are powerful meds you are giving people, with often terrible side effects.

I asked him my question, which I know he doesn't know the answer to: what are the odds that I can stay on 5mg of Zyprexa the rest of my life and not get tardive dyskinesia? And he hedged. He said, a lot better than with the older drugs, but that the odds obviously increase the longer I am on the drug. He said that the important thing would be to catch it early.

I am kind of at peace with my meds right now. I don't want to think about making changes, getting off of things. Other than the Effexor, I am not on a high dose of anything. Side effects are pretty manageable, and my head feels clearer than it has in years. I can concentrate. However bad the meds can be for your mind, depression is worse. I have been wanting to blame the meds for my inability to concentrate the past couple of years- even though I was pretty continually depressed during this time. I even tried coming off of things. But what gave me my mind back was actually going on lithium.

No my life is not perfect. I still really struggle with a lot of things. More that I would like. But perhaps if I didn't, I would complain that the meds made me flat.

Meds don't fix everything. DBT doesn't fix everything. But I am glad that they have fixed some things.