Zest-less

Chelsey has been very well grounded, polite, and cooperative. She understands where she is and is reasonably content. She still needs monitoring, but the meds have done their job.

However, they may have gone too far. There’s a fine line between being dangerously delusional and being a zombie, and she’s on the zombie side of the line. She’s always tired. She can’t maintain interest in anything for long. She can’t tell stories or even follow plot twists. We brought her a course catalog with some fun classes, and it took her forever to painstakingly read each word and process the information before moving onto the next potential class. I would estimate that her processing speed and capacity is about a third of what it was pre-crisis.

The worst part is not the diminished horsepower, but the diminished zest and excitement. She’s wading through emotional and mental peanut butter. It’s like seeing a shadow of who she was, and it’s painful. It feels like too high of a price to pay for the relative certainty of safety. If we keep her safe and alive but she’s not herself and not very much alive, are we really helping her?

I’ve struggled with severe depression in the past and should probably stay on meds for the rest of my life to be safe. However, I made the conscious choice to get off all depression meds over a year ago, in part because I hate how they change who I am. I feel artificial and manipulated on psychiatric meds. Meds helped me in the past and may help me in the future, and I would not advocate my choice for anybody else. Nevertheless, my choice and rationale makes me mourn the changes in Chelsey and second-guess the med-heavy approach.

We’re hoping there’s a middle ground. Perhaps current meds and dosages were necessary to stop the crisis episode, but we may be able to reduce the dosages or alter the meds now that she’s stable. There has to be a better balance. She can’t advocate for herself, and we can’t bear to consign her to a half-alive life. The real Chelsey is zesty, and the meds are masking that.