Wellbutrin Wins

Sharing where I've been, and what it took to come back to the pod.

How I've been struggling with my physical health ~ and my mental health ~ and how it took turning to a psychiatrist and asking for medication to get me back to myself.

And how finally being well-medicated has breathed new hope into my life.

If you've been struggling, or know someone who has... I want you to know that you are not alone. And that there are lots of ways to ask for help.


Also now on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

Hi my friends, welcome back to the podcast now in video form if you want to be watching it on YouTube. It's weird. I feel like I'm welcoming myself back to the podcast almost as much as I'm welcoming you guys back. It feels like it's been forever. I actually thought it had been a year since I last podcasted, but I was looking up the show itself online today because I had to go back and research my own show. And it hasn't been that long. It was in March of 2022 that I paused. And then talk about why I paused and where I went and how I got back, which is sort of the topic of this podcast, sort of a. Recap I guess where I've been. Umm. 

But yeah, I feel like an incredibly long time and. I I've been thinking about you guys this entire time. I've been wanting to come back this entire time and. It's been really hard not being here, so I will say my brain is full of ideas and thoughts that I want to tell you guys, and this might not be the most edited, streamlined version of my podcast. If this is the first time you're hearing from me, maybe come back later or listen to an older one when I was a little more organized. I've just been thinking about you guys for six months and not podcasting and. And I also want to share sort of personally about my journey because I I hope it will help others who might be in a similar situation or if you know someone. Who is struggling with depression or anxiety? I just, I I want to be the poster child who helps others know that there is help out there in terms of medication. That's really what I want to talk about tonight, and I found that on my journey. One of the things that helped me reach out to a psychiatrist when I realized I really needed help and to ask for a prescription for medication was having people that I follow who are coaches, who are leaders, who I really respect and trust, who talked about their own struggles with depression and anxiety. And how medication was helping them. And so I want to participate in the conversation and contribute in whatever way I can because. I've always known medication was an option. I had always resisted it for reasons I'll talk about and it's been a total game changer and lifesaver for me and so. Mental health is still something we've gotten much better at talking about, but still something hard to talk about and hard to normalize. And there's a lot of. Uh, what's the word? Sort of. Shame or taboo around it and I I just would love to be part of the conversation that helps anyone who needs it to get the help 

that they need. So. If you were listener before I did talk about an occasion, I tried not to, but it ended up often being about how I was really struggling with an autoimmune disease and I've honestly probably had stomach pain for. I want to say 15 years. It's probably been 20, but 20 just sounds too depressing and shocking, so let's say 15. I went to a ton of doctors. They never knew what was wrong. They ran all the blood tests and everything else, and they would always eventually tell me. Nothing was wrong, and I was in pain all the time, but nothing was wrong. And so I stopped going to doctors. I sort of figured I had an autoimmune disorder and that everything I read about autoimmune disorders is. You go to a ton of doctors and it takes like finding some random doctors with a cousin of your friend in another state that you eventually get a diagnosis and I was like I I just can't do more doctoring and and and also that a lot of the. Ways to heal from an autoimmune because a lot of them don't have prescription medications that will solve the autoimmune or heal it. It's not like you get. Something that requires antibiotics and that'll help it. It's really a more complicated thing. And so most of it was, you know, less stress, more rest well. And I was like, OK, well, I can do those things anyway. Come to the beginning of the pandemic, actually, the year two of the plague, as I call it, and I had health insurance and I was working from home and. I sort of had time on my hands to go get poked and prodded by a doctor and I could pay for it. And I thought actually I was working with someone. I had gotten this really bad tendonitis in my hip. It felt like I was being stabbed when I walked in my hip and I saw an acupuncturist and he said, you know, you've got really bad digestive disorder issues and 

your joints are never going to heal fully until you get that sorted. I know a really great GI, a gastroenterologist who's really open to searching for answers. And you should go see him and I was like, OK, I've been sort of putting this off, and I thought I had it handled. But here is a person who is a healer telling me that I'm, like, managing my condition, but it's affecting other body parts. It's not just that I'm in pain a lot and I've gotten good at being in pain. It's that. My my tendons and my joints aren't doing well and they can't heal properly because my whole body is just trying to like manage my stomach. So I started seeing this GI in January of 2021. And I spent like seven months getting tests run on me, like every kind of test. And he tried a bunch of different pills, and every pill made me feel worse, and I was really grateful I could work from home, from bed, and just feel ****** and didn't have to get on a subway and try to be a functional adult. And and didn't find anything and didn't figure it out. And I finally went to the wife of a friend who is a functional medicine doctor and she suggested a different kind of test and finally figured out that there was really massive inflammation in my intestines that have probably been there for a really long time and that's what was causing all the pain. So we started doing a bunch of supplements. I was really anti steroids. 

Not because they're bad, they're just my system is so, so sensitive to medicine. Everything sort of makes me sick. My stomach hurts whenever I take medicine and I get dizzy. I just it's a lot. So I was like, you know, really trying to do something more natural based and we did that for several months and then we retested and the inflammation markers hadn't changed at all. And at that point I was like, OK, let's do the steroids like I've got. I've got to tackle this thing. You know, it's not, it's just causing so much damage in my system. And so I started steroids in January of 2022 started a very low disk like 5 milligrams of Prednisone and and we went up to 10 milligrams. The goal was to be on 10 milligrams. So I started at 5 and I think about a month later I was up to 10 milligrams. 

And. It knocked me on my ***. Steroids are incredible if you have inflammation and there's nothing else you can do about it, they're really a powerful wonder drug. They're really hard side effects. Not all of them affect everybody but weight gain, messing with your sleep, messing with your mood, or some of the common ones and. I had just massive exhaustion like I. I I was really just, like, not even crawling out of bed, like rolling over in bed, getting work done. And as soon as the work day was over, I was just going back to bed and I think that flexing. I don't know what the hell I was doing. I just was so tired all the time. I was canceling all my weekend plans. I wasn't trying to leave the house. I wasn't trying to do anything. I was. It was really, really rough. It's really, really rough because, you know, socializing, which was just starting to come back in spring of We know that social contact is one of the things that's really important for mental health. So here I was already feeling ******. It's been a year and a half that I had been feeling extra ******. I finally got a diagnosis, which gave me hope. And then I realized, well, I've been sick for all this time. My body is even more ****** than I thought. It was the poor thing. And and here I am, you know, trying to make it better. And I just feel. Umm. Not quite like death, but like am because I didn't feel physically like sick. I just felt like out of energy, which for me is not like me. I'm a pretty high energy person and I just I couldn't get anything done. And what's really interesting is that the last podcast that I posted was March, I think 3rd of and I went up to the 10 milligrams of Prednisone, February 28th and there's like a direct correlation 

with. And I don't know if it's the exhaustion or if it was depression, but like, I don't know if the exhaustion was what led to depression or if the depression was part of the steroids. Who knows? It was cocktail of Shih Tzu. But I really struggled from like March to June, and I think actually my last podcast was talking about depression because on top of everything else, my beloved older aunt has been struggling a lot with what's next for her. And she's got physical impairments and she's starting to have cognitive decline. And I've been going to visit her for a week every few months and stay with her. She did the pandemic alone in her apartment, and as we know, social interaction is really important. I just really wanted to be company with her and. It's been a gift to be there, but it's also incredibly hard to watch somebody you love. Start to decline and there's no soul for that. There's no pill, there's no fix, there's just. 

Loving someone through that. So I had done that, I think in March, which is when I came back and was already, I could tell I was sort of skating over just above really bad depression and I thought I could manage it. And then I went to see her again, I think in June, and I came back and I just remember waking up and thinking. I'm not. I don't. I was like, I don't. Why? Like, what is the point? Why are we? Why breakfast? Why? Just like, why Tuesday? Why Monday? Why like I and it wasn't? I wasn't suicidal. I wasn't in that kind of crisis, but I could just tell my thoughts were just dumb. I, you know, I was going through the motions, but I couldn't figure out really hope for the future. I couldn't figure out why it even mattered and where I was headed. And the minute I saw that, I reached out to a psychiatrist. I was like, this is not OK. Like, I I've been struggling. I know I've been struggling. I know all the reasons why I've been struggling. I've been doing as well as I can to manage it. I go to therapy. I get life coach. I, you know, see many doctors, I do all the things and I was just, I was like, I can't, I can't lift anymore on my own. I just can't. And I thank goodness have insurance and I reached out to a psychiatrist. Was really interesting about this. Is that? I so I have a coach, a health coach that I talked to because autoimmune is a very long battle struggle and there's a lot of information and a lot of misinformation and it can feel incredibly defeating. And so I've been really blessed to work with someone seeing her twice a month as I've been going through this, I think been working together about a year. And she's helped me, like, download. And also every time there's a flare up and I panic that I've got all the way backwards, she's really good at like, I'm just like, give me the pep talk, like, tell me I'm doing good. Tell me I'm on my way to fixing this because I cannot see the end of this. And she 

was really good at being like, I've seen this happen. This is the trajectory of what it looks like to heal from an autoimmune. This is what's hard about it and this is how you it feels like you're starting again, but you're actually just stumbling a little bit back and you're going forward and the overarching of it. So I went to her and I said look, I need something and my stomach is incredibly sensitive. What is your recommendation? And she came back and said that Wellbutrin, which is a pretty common antidepressant. Is the most gentle on the GI of the stomach. And I was like, great, that's really, really helpful. And so I saw this like liatris and I told him everything was going through and he. God bless. But he was like, OK, so we should probably start you on anti anxiety antidepressant and a sleep medication. And I was like, whoa. Knowing me, knowing how every time I start even like a supplement. Seriously guys. Like a supplement that is super healthy and and non prescription. Usually the first half a week or whole week, I my stomach really hurts. Everything I eat really hurts. I'm dizzy, I feel sick, like my whole system has to adapt to things very, very slowly. And then it usually takes about two weeks before my body is like, OK, we can do this. But I was like, I'm definitely not trying three things all at once. On top of which, if you're having side effects and you're starting three new medications all at once, you can't figure out which one is causing side effects because you're on 3 new things. And I was like, no, no, like I've been, I've been meticulously tracking every single medication, every single supplement, every single thing I've been eating and drinking for at least a year and a half. Probably before that, definitely before that, but. For sure, during this whole GI track and I I was just like, you can't get good data if you put me on three things at once. I didn't say all this to him, but that was my thought. And I also, you know, he started listing different antidepressants and I was like, well, my health coach said, you know, Wellbutrin is a really good one for being gentle on the stomach. 

And so he agreed to put me on Wellbutrin. Honestly, like, I've been in therapy for a long time. I know what the signs are. I I knew I needed something and. I could really explain that. And he was great at being like, yeah. I totally agree. Umm. So I started the Wellbutrin in June and I started on the lowest dose that they have. And I will tell you, I think I started on a Thursday or Friday. By that Friday or Saturday, I went to the ballet. I went to see the ballet at Bam, which is this incredible art space in Brooklyn. And I. I just felt like, I like I walked. It was a 30 minute walk. I saw ballet, which is like my favorite happy place, and walked home and I felt like I had rejoined the world. I felt like I had been trying to leave my house and see people and be in the world and I couldn't. I've been trying to do yoga and I couldn't. I've been wanting to do stuff and I just had no energy. And it was so hard to have no energy and to be sad about my body and to feel like after two years of COVID and like, you know, real lockdown, like I couldn't. I still couldn't leave the house. And I could tell it was just, uhm, there's a thing called Situational depression, which is like the circumstances that you're in are just so grinding that you that can really tip you into depression. And, you know, I was definitely in that space where I've been sick for a really long time. My body's been in pain for really long time. I'm sort of not sure I'm ever going to get better. I'm getting this really heartbreaking diagnosis. And. And and pandemic 2 years guys like if you want a situational depression like. Uh, there's lots of things to choose from. So am I. So I will preface this by saying also that antidepressants usually take four to six weeks to kick in, and that's kind of when you know if they're working for you or. A lot of them can have side effects. 

So this is my disclaimer also not a doctor, but disclaimer that a lot of them have side effects and it's really important to try them out and see. And what's really bizarre, some of them the side effects can be suicidal thoughts. And I actually remember in my 20s trying antidepressants and I remember. Sitting in my desk at work, I'm like the 7th floor. And I spent a whole afternoon just like thinking about jumping out the window. And I was like, this is not me. Like, I'm a very anxious person. I know I'm depressed. I know I'm not OK. But I don't spend my time really thinking in a scary way about about ending things. And I called my psychiatrist at the time and I said, we gotta stop this. So it's really important to kind of know where your mood is, know where your thoughts are and to be tracking that stuff and if there's a real change through the negative. Be be like willing to call. But that said, also be willing to try something new. And this is kind of why I'm here is. It can be really hard when you're already feeling insanely ****** insanely hopeless, insanely alone, and you reach out, which is hard, and you ask for help. And you get help, and that help makes you feel worse. It's devastating. It really is. And I was talking to a friend who had tried antidepressants. And so they made her feel like a zombie. And she tried anything since. And I was, you know, saying to her, I totally get that. And that does happen. And there's a lot of different kinds of antidepressants and they work on different, I don't know if it's hormones or like serotonin, norepinephrine. There's different. I don't know what they are, guys, but the things in your brain that work and so the different classes of like Prozac and Zoloft work on different things than Wellbutrin works on, so they're they're approaching how to make you feel better in different ways, and you'll have a different reaction to them. So 

I got really lucky that Wellbutrin. Hurt my stomach for a little bit, but didn't **** ** my stomach, which is key. And I had a really quick leg reaction, like, and that's unusual, but I think one of the reasons it happened that fast is because so much of what was making me depressed was the. Steroids and steroids have a depressive effect on energy. And mood and Wellbutrin is a bit of a stimulant, they actually use it also for ADHD. And I was like, oh, cool. So, like, I'm on uppers and Downers. Like, great, I'll balance out. And I did. I mean, I really, I had been, I've been wanting to do yoga, I've been wanting to move my body and like that weekend, I did yoga and I just felt like, Hallelujah, you know that my feel, my old self coming back. Umm. And and I started, I started calling them Wellbutrin wins, because I just started seeing how much of, like, I was coming back online, you know, like that I thought I wanted to go see a show and could walk there. That I just saw a reason to be excited about being in the world again. That I was doing yoga when I had wanted to do yoga. What's interesting is that about, I think 2 weeks or a month later, I ended up calling my psychiatrist again and saying, hey, I see that these were like a really great start, but it's not enough. Like now, now that I'm sort of evened out, I realize that I'm still kind of like hanging on or scraping the bottom of the barrel, like I'm much better, but I'm still really not OK and things are still really hard when they come at me. And so we increase the dosage. And then that lasted for a little bit and then I called again and I increased the dosage again and again. I started a very low dosage. Most people would have started high and kind of seeing how it goes. And I started really low and then worked my way up, which is why I have such a good 

understanding of where like I was tracking the data and I was tracking my mood and I was seeing what are the signs that I'm doing better, you know, where's how do I know that that this is helping me. And the reason I also shared that is because I had a real concern about numbing everything I. It's not that I know life is supposed to be hard, but. There's a lot of research that shows if if you cut yourself off, you numb yourself from the things that are hard about being human, you also numb out all the best things you know. The reason we grieve so deeply is a sign of how deeply we love. The reason we get heartbroken about missing an opportunity is because it mattered to us. The. I am a very big feeling person and it's a bit of a gift and a curse. Like I feel incredible joy and I feel incredible sorrow and I didn't want to stop feeling those things and I especially didn't want to feel happy when things were hard. I didn't think that was a good match. I didn't want to just numb out, but what I was feeling was incredible panic all the time and. 

I have really bad anxiety and in fact what the psychiatrist said which was interesting is that Wellbutrin isn't really known to be anti anxiety. It usually works on depression and not anxiety. Again, I'm medicated in lots of ways so it could be working on the steroids, but it also I think, is that my anxiety was tipping me into depression. What I know is that it lifted a lot of the anxiety. It sort of went from like. Everything feels like a panic all the time. I would. Spend an hour or two in the mornings when I woke up meditating and just trying to like figure out how to get out of bed and tell myself that things were going to be safe. Like everything just felt. Like I was being electrocuted all the time. Everything was dangerous and scary, even though rationally I knew that didn't make sense. It was so. Like adrenaline, cortisol in my system that I had to like constantly talk myself off the Cliff for very simple things. And. What I saw with the Wellbutrin is that level of panic went down and so things were able to come at me that were like, that's really scary, or like not scary, like bad, but you know, like, here's a big life decision I need to make, or here's something at work that's really stressful, or here's the thing that's. I don't know. Doing the podcast or getting an audition or something exciting? Good. And I was able to. I was able to talk back to the panic. That was a Wellbutrin win, because before I had talked back to the panic, and the panic was like, yeah, we don't whatever. Panic went listen, panic, which was like, panic, is going to panic. And so even though I was doing all of this work on myself, I was just constantly managing panic and all of a sudden with the Wellbutrin, it was like, Oh yeah, you could probably figure that out, like. I 

and I was like, oh, this is what other people go through. Like, they talk back to their panic and they go, yeah, like, I've, I've done things in the past that I've like, you know, I've had this hard thing happen. I've lost my job and I figured it out. I've had, I've moved apartments and I figured it out and suddenly I could, like, remember that I had skill sets and capabilities that before I couldn't. I was like, intellectually people would tell me things like, yeah, that sounds right, but I can't just convince my system that I'm OK. And so that was a Wellbutrin. When I was able to talk back to the panic and it listened, and suddenly it didn't take 2 hours every morning to calm my system down and get out of bed. I wasn't spending all day managing anxiety. Social anxiety went down. Going out didn't feel as overwhelming as it always had. I didn't have to. Stress so much. It's also weird because, like, I've taught myself all these social skills, so I'm actually really great socially, but in my brain, everything is terrible. Everybody hates me. Everything is wrong. This is dangerous. So I had to sort of like, and I couldn't explain that that wasn't actually what was happening. So I had to just sort of take all of that. With me and just convince myself to bring it along, which is really, really exhausting. And uhm. And so I. I OK, so two more things. One is that I started talking to friends about this and I even talked to my boss about this and that was kind of. Scary and brave, and she was incredibly receptive. Which. With such a gift to me, but it was one of the things where I felt and I still feel. 

Again, I've never been anti medication. I tried it in my 20s and I think part of the big problem for me is that my stomach was so ****** **. And I actually don't know if it was ****** ** from trying medication. They put me on three of them. They tend to not everybody, but I feel like they tend to overdose sometimes or you start with a lot of stuff. Again, not a doctor, please take a doctor's advice. Just my experience and it was a lot and my stomach was really damaged starting in my 20s and. And so I don't know if it was sort of, I didn't just think I could handle taking medicine long term. And I didn't think I could handle all that until I got my stomach healed enough from the autoimmune, the Crohn's disorder that I could actually take medication. So that was one of the big parts of it. But the other big thing for me was I again didn't want to check out. You know, I I knew that a lot of the things that were causing anxiety and sadness in me were were things that I wanted to sort out had a had a place that they were coming from, experiences that I. I wanted to understand better and I wanted to know how to how to live in the world, how to live in my body, how to live in my brain. In a in a way, I also have a habit of doing things the hardest way possible, so I probably. Probably chose the hard way and kind of thought as my of my anxiety and depression as as a growth opportunity, which I tend to do, you know, like, oh, what can I learn from this? What is, what is my brain trying to tell me? What do I want to know about? So I definitely had done all that I've been in a life coaching program for many years. I've done. I'm such a workshop junkie. I've done so much really cool learning because I've just been trying to heal myself for so long. So I'm like The Walking Encyclopedia of. Development, and it's one of the things that I actually really love doing, but it came out of this place feeling really anxious and really sad and really overwhelmed all the time. So I was always worried about going on medication and sort of tapping out of that experience and just being like happy and OK, which is not at all what happened and. And I'm just incredibly grateful. And so I've been really talking to people, to friends, you 

know, saying if this is something you are struggling with, please reach out for help. Please ask, please try something. And if you tried something and it didn't work, maybe try again. If you're still feeling really ****** it's not for everyone. There's tons of research that shows that exercise can be just as useful as antidepressants sometimes, that social interactions, there's a lot of things you can do for yourself that overall will really help kick start. Your mood if that's something that that you need. So I'm, you know, but I was doing all those things and I wasn't OK. And and I think it's really scary to ask and I think it can be really lonely to feel that way often I think that's the biggest feeling is just you're just it's so hard to communicate to somebody else how. Gray the world can be when you're in that space, or how terrifying it can be when you know technically. Were mostly OK again, pandemic complicated aside. UM. So back to this idea that it takes four to six weeks for medication to really kick in and I was again looking back at. When I started the steroids and when I'd last been on the podcast and looking at when I had really my journey with Wellbutrin, and I realized that I started this dosage that I'm on that I think is really working for me, which is like 450 milligrams a day. I started it six weeks ago. To the day. 

Which I feel like is the biggest Wellbutrin win because I have been. I I talked about this podcast with my psychiatrist. I was like, I want to be doing this podcast and I just, I can't like everything is just so hard and so heavy and so much work and I. I can sort of just make it through my day job and eating and then go back to bed like, I just don't know how to do more. I don't know how to be creative. I don't know how to be excited about anything creative. I don't know how to. I don't know how to do anything outside of. Outside of coloring within the lines, it's not even the right metaphor. And so I I kind of had an oh **** oh wow. Moment today when I was thinking about this that. Six weeks and I feel finally medicated, properly medicated, well, medicated, and my biggest Wellbutrin went to date is the fact that I came back and I'm able to do this again. So. Again, not a doctor. You should talk to a specialist. You should get help that you need if you need it. And antidepressants aren't the solution to everything, but they're an incredibly powerful tool if you're. Brain is telling you things are not OK, things are really scary, things are really dangerous and I don't know how to fix this. There's help out there and it can make an incredible difference and we've all collectively been through. An incredibly difficult. A sustained, incredibly difficult. Not even putting aside, I'm sure, what personally people have been going through with lost opportunities, with grief, with lost loved ones, with fear about their own health and safety, with fear about everyone else's health and safety, with the loneliness, the isolation, there's just been so much and it's constant anxiety. About the world falling apart about being really sick. It's been a really rough couple of years. Umm. And so I would anticipate that you might be feeling this way or I would anticipate that the numbers of people who could use a little bit of a boost. And it will also say this, some people need antidepressants for like one year and their brains reset. Some people need it for a little bit longer, maybe five years. Some people need it for longer. There's no right or wrong. There's sort of what is your brain chemistry? I sort 

of think my tends to be. Not so good, but that could also be. I won't get into why, but I could also be situational to just that, you know, been around longer. I just know that for me, because I've been anxious and depressed for a long time. I don't necessarily think that one year is going to solve that long time, but if you're someone who used to kind of feel pretty good about life in the world, and the past few years have just knocked you on your *** and you're not quite sure how to get back up, it might be. That starting something kicks you. It's like a kick start back up and then your brain can reset. So it's not necessarily about identifying as someone who is depressed or is depressive or anxious. It could just be this is the place that you're in and this is the help that you need. 

I've been saying to my friends, kind of half joking but also kind of seriously, that I'm happy to be the poster child for Wellbutrin. And I feel like I owe it to you guys in the same way that I owe it to my friends, which is. We don't talk about it enough. It's been incredibly helpful to me. It's been. Such a gift, and I have more things to share about what has changed since I started taking the Wellbutrin. But the fact that I got to come back to this, the fact that I just started writing a short film script, the fact that. Other exciting things are happening that I really want to tell you about in later episodes. To me is I can't even explain how bad things were. Again, steroids, exhaustion, and how much better and alive I feel now. Alive in the sense of being part of the world. So I am here to night mostly as a PS A to talk about how. Umm. Yeah, to be part of this conversation that if this is something that you think you might need, that you can't talk to someone and you can try something. And if it's not right for you, you can stop it. Like, really be the own expert in your own brain, your own mood, and your own body. Uhm. But that it's available to you. And I think the more that we can normalize this, the more that someone is diabetic and they're not making enough insulin and we give them insulin to help them. If your brain isn't making enough serotonin or the other things that I should know are in your brain that make you feel better and happy in the world, you can you can get help with that. 

OK. It's. Really scary to be back and really wonderful to be back. And I really look forward to talking about creativity and art again. And I just wish you all the best and I thank you for joining me and this really important, scary, powerful topic. Be well, my friends.