Living with Anxiety, Battling depression, and Switching Psychiatrists

This last month was filled with drastic changes. I was considering switching psychiatrists for a long time now as I was with the same one for eight years and have felt no long-term improvements for five. I’ve been experiencing varying levels of anxiety and depression and sometimes I don’t know which is which nor do I always know if a hypomanic episode is brewing. The psychiatrist I’ve been seeing for all these years told me at the end of last month that I might need less Seroquel, given that I lost roughly 30 pounds last year. He said with my 6’4 height, I shouldn’t lose any more weight, which is a subject I find difficult to write about or talk about. For now, I’ll just say I wasn’t expecting to hear this.

Since reducing the Seroquel had caused anxiety and irritability in the past, he tried lowering it by the smallest amount. I found myself in a state of horrible anxiety and depression. My ability to work on my screenplay started to slow down. I also was having trouble sleeping. Two days after my last Seroquel decrease, my psychiatrist brought my Seroquel back up again. Due to years of not making enough progress with varying doses of the same medications, I went to two new psychiatrists for a second opinion about my medications. One was an older man with decades of experience treating bipolar and autism. The other was close to my age, but he was a former Chief Resident and current professor at NYU. Both had similar ideas on how to treat my anxiety that were slightly different from my long-time psychiatrist, but the older one seemed to have more confidence in his ability to treat me, while the younger one let me know he would be raising his rates in the next year.

I chose to switch to the older doctor because he seemed to have studied the history of psychiatric medicine evolution over the course of decades. He is also open to new ideas and eager to try a genetic test to help determine how to properly adjust my medications. I had very mixed emotions about this decision because the psychiatrist I’d been working with all these years had made a good effort to help for a long time and his efforts were successful at times, but the varying levels of anxiety were too much to bear. After several weeks of treatment with my new psychiatrist, I feel hopeful that I made the right choice. While I still struggle with anxiety and depression, I managed to start working on a piece of fiction for the first time, which is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time. I am feeling somewhat positive about it, but it is overwhelming. So far switching from Propranolol to Clonidine for anxiety has been helpful. Time will tell if these emotions and expectations of myself are sustainable just like it will reveal if this new doctor has better ideas.