Did the doctor give you some information about it?

Yes she gave me some information but I also did personally did like some of my own.

And how did you go about doing that?

It was like Google searched it. I mean there is lots of stuff, I mean it’s a bit like, like hit and miss you know there’s lots of stuff online about people talking about anti-depressants and some of its a bit like, you know, I mean as most people I don’t go on the internet and trust everything that I read you know… the NHS website has the information and that’s where I got a lot of it from. But also there were bits where people were talking about their own personal experiences and when I researched Prozac there seemed to be a lot of people who had the same feelings as me. And there was the citalopram, there were people who had sickness and stuff but there was no, there didn’t seem to be so much of this feeling that it was something terrible and awful.

Was that what you were most interested to find out when you, when you were thinking about taking the citalopram, about how other people reacted to it?

Yes before, for like for me with the citalopram if I’d had the two weeks sickness or just the beginning period of sickness again like I would have, I would have been fine with that. The main thing for me was I didn’t want the numbness and that, the sort of like you feel like it kind of creeps up on you and then it’s there and then it takes a bit of time to go I just so didn’t want that and so it wasn’t, it was important to me to sort of hear what other people felt like.

And see how you could function on a daily basis?

Yes and there just didn’t seem to be that same like consensus that it was a problem so. you know there are always going to be people who react badly to something and, you know, that’s part of it but yes it seemed, people seemed to be much more positive about it.

And whose suggestion was it to have the antidepressants, was it the doctor who suggested it to you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah it was the doctor.

And how did she explain to you what they, how they might help?

She just sort of said that, you know, they would calm me down, they would just make me feel a little bit more in control of things, they would reduce my anxiety and my stress levels and to be honest at that point I was just ready for anything that would do that. I couldn’t think of anything else to do I mean I certainly didn’t want to go down the drinking avenue because I’m sensible enough to know that that doesn’t cure things. but at the same time I did still have a worry that I’m taking medication and what’s going to happen when I have to stop taking it.

Were you worried about how they would make you feel, how did, what did you think about that?

I was a little bit worried because you know obviously I am fiercely independent and, you know, I have heard people have said when they’ve taken antidepressants that they go all fluffy and they don’t really know what they’re saying and what they’re doing and I didn’t really want to be like that and obviously with being on my own I didn’t want to put myself into any situations where, you know, I wasn’t in control of myself or I could fall over or I could injure myself because of the medication. So to be honest when I did get my first prescription I read the leaflet inside, front and back, to make sure I knew exactly what could happen to me in the course of taking them.

For me you know taking the pill kind of was basically saying I’m not going to cut myself’ and it was a decision and I was being proactive, I was picking up the pill and I cried before I did it, this time I cried a lot because I didn’t want, I was scared of it and. But you know that, taking that was basically going right I am being proactive, I’m doing something to help myself and I had to have that confidence knowing that you know if I’m going to take this pill it’s going to help me or have belief it’s going to help me.

So when you’ve got that sort of moment trepidation taking the pill.

Yeah.

Is that a feeling of failure or something like that?

Yeah, yeah and like, yes like sort of saying to yourself over and over again what am I doing to myself, why do I need to do this, what’s wrong with me’, in all honesty you feel quite low about yourself I think, like oh I need this, do I need this, do I need this?. You know am I mental, am I?’, you know all those connotations of all those stigmas I think of mental illness and, you know, and I think it takes a braver person to actually do it and go okay I’m going to commit to doing this’ than not.

So yeah, yeah but it’s not a nice thing to do the first time you take it. For me I got emotional about it because it’s like okay this is a journey I’m going to have to go on and I’m going to have to try and see it through as much as I can to help myself.

I was enormously encouraged that he didn’t just say here’s some tablets go away and take them, think about it. And he gave me a couple of websites to look at to just looking at possible side effects and how it might work and that sort of thing. so that gave me enormous encouragement with him as a doctor I have to say that he was actually thinking about me and what was best for me. and then I came home and talked to my wife about it and it was about November, October or November and I remember thinking the doctor said the first month on this treatment can be pretty grim or not, you know it can highlight some of the worst aspects of, of the depression, it can be a problem. and I remember thinking Christmas was coming up and I was feeling awful and I didn’t want to mess up Christmas and so I thought if I start now with the tablets, if I’m lucky I’ll get the month or six weeks in of not feeling so good and they might actually start to kick in the benefit for Christmas. And I just thought with the children around I came to the conclusion I didn’t want to waste any time and I’d spent enough time feeling, you know, unwell and if they could provide, if there was a treatment that could help then I would go on it.

I think I just thought, you know, something’s got to change and I can’t change, I can’t even begin to take a step when I’m kind of stuck like this really depressed, really low. and so I kind of thought – I know I’ll go and speak to my GP about it’ and I was really reluctant to take antidepressants, you know, I said about the previous experience because this was a different GP at this time and they persuaded me that things had really moved on patient wise and that they would give me an antidepressant that definitely wouldn’t make me feel more anxious because that was the thing I was so, so anxious and having so many anxiety attacks that the thought of having something that would increase the likelihood of me having an anxiety attack was absolutely unpalatable and they assured me that this particular antidepressant wouldn’t do that and that people didn’t have problems coming off it as well because that was the other thing it was like I didn’t want to be stuck on this for the rest of my life. And I trusted my GP was we had a long talk about it and I think he had said, was it she, no he, he had said that actually the one I was on before was known to be rubbish now and that they didn’t prescribe it anymore. So I thought okay fine, fine so I took it reluctantly and I think I had the prescription for a while and was sort of dithering about taking it and eventually I thought no, do it.

I weighed things up in my mind. So I would write down on a sheet of paper what were the positives and what the negatives were and for the Cipramil it was almost all negatives but that was coupled, with they became to be more reticent about prescribing Cipramil at the time, because I’d taken an overdose and so on. But I clearly saw there were many more negatives and almost no positives. I mean I couldn’t think that it had improved my mood. It hadn’t done anything for me. It had made me more sedated which wasn’t a good thing, I wanted to be active and doing things. And, and so I just wrote it on a piece of paper and took it from there really.