Alcohol used to be my drug of choice.  You can see how well that was working for me!

As I’ve mentioned before (and will surely mention again, because that’s how I am), I suffer from chronic depression.

As part of my dealing with my depression, I take drugs. I am a firm believer of better living through chemistry.

I take, what I call my “wake-up” pill – Provigil; and I take my “crazy lady” pill Celexa, and I take my “go to sleep” pill – Trazadone. Provigil (gen. modifinal) is amazing stuff – it was first developed for treatment of narcolepsy, then people started using it to fight jet lag – it basically gives you that alert feeling you get after a lot of coffee but without the jitters or coffee stomach.  And actually, the Traz is not so much to put me to sleep as to help me sleep soundly as an aid to my fat old lady aches and pains.

I suddenly started having trouble falling asleep. I would stay up late, and when I went to bed just couldn’t get to sleep. Also, I felt more fuzzy-brained than usual (and that’s saying a lot).

So I have stopped taking my wake-up pill. I still tend to stay up late, but when I go to bed, I fall asleep as soon as fuzzball Ollie will let me (he is the demando cat for his pets at night).

And since stopping the wake-up pill, I found that I was sleeping better, so I stopped my go-to-sleep pill as well.

My body seems pretty happy about these choices.

I want to emphasize the drugs I stopped taking were prn (take as needed) – not take-the-pill-or suffer-the consequences medicine. And should I feel I need these meds again, I have no qualms about taking them again. I just wanted to stop the feeling of needing to take them every day.

So now, if I feel a little dozy, I’ll do what normal people do – drink a cup of coffee. And if I can’t sleep – well, Ollie is always open for more pets!