I got on some antidepressants about three months ago and my entire perspective on life has changed. Up until then I had planned on sticking around until my little brother was in his 20's then offing myself. I figured it would be the least devastating way to do it. This was the conclusion I came to while on my morning bus ride to middle school. Since then I've had no plans, no dreams, no ambition, etc.
I spiraled into alcoholism during high-school and after graduating I dropped out of college during my first semester. I worked odd jobs and got drunk as often as I could. My friends joked with me about being an alcoholic so much that I got mad and made them stop.
This continued until I was 21. I had a pretty good job, but hated having to show up. I only worked four days a week, so I would be drinking on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I wasn't going light either, this was at the height of my degenerate alcoholism. We were drinking 90 beers with 3 people including myself and that was considered a casual night for us. I remember stepping outside to pee only to be blinded by the sun. We had been drinking for over 14 hours. At one point I was drinking about 12-15 shots of alcohol a night even on work nights. I continued to spiral out of control. Any progress I'd make into losing weight would be wiped out by depressive episodes. Some days I would not eat all day long, then come home and drink on an empty stomach just so I could lose weight while not having to give up alcohol.
I was extremely unhappy and one of my friends noticed. He had moved about 3 hours away from our hometown after graduating. He had a nice house in a big city and invited me to come live with him. After a lot of soul searching, I decided to do it. I put in my two weeks notice and left all my toxic alcoholic friends behind.
Since then my friend pressured me to go get help for my mental health. I saw a psychiatrist who was terrible at his job. We tried me on tons of different medications, not really giving my body time to flush out the old ones before starting the new ones, so I experienced a lot of side effects. One day he ended up switching me to wellbutrin. It only took a couple of weeks before I felt a complete change. I was happy. I would wake up everyday and actually get right out of bed. I was playing the video games that I loved and actually enjoying them. I was over the moon. For about a week. Then I starting getting some very debilitating heart palpitations from the medication. It had been raising my blood pressure which was already very high. My psychiatrist took me off it, but I decided right then that I needed to do whatever I could to take that medication.
In the next year I quit drinking, smoking cigarettes, and vaping during quarantine. I had been obese (343lbs 5'8") my whole life and thought that was the cause of my high blood pressure. Nope, turns out my alcoholism and the ridiculous amounts of nicotine I was consuming were the soul cause of my high blood pressure. Soon I found a doctor and got a script for wellbutrin.
It took about two weeks to notice a small difference in my mood and energy. A week after that my friends had come in from out of town and we were hanging out. I was thinking about how much fun I was having and realized that the part of my brain that made me depressed was just gone. Like completely gone. It felt like a part of me had died. The next month of my life was absolute ecstasy. I can't even begin to explain how much my world view changed, but I'm going to try:
It felt like someone had just taken off the shit tinted glasses that were on me my whole life. Nothing felt pointless or hopeless anymore. The world felt like a giant opportunity instead of a prison. I started staying asleep throughout the whole night like I hadn't since I was a child. Life felt more manageable and I was able to start doing important things I had been putting off. My baseline happiness had just been increased to a normal level for the first time in my life.
I finally understood how all those "normal" people could go around enjoying life. Then I realized just how robbed I was of a normal life. I had been depressed for so long that I had no idea what normal felt like. If I had known feeling like this was an option I would have sought help years ago. I also realized just how terrible of a person my mom was for not listening to the doctor when I was 13 and depressed. The doctor told her that I needed antidepressants and she took that as an insult to her parenting. Her pride cost me ten years of my life. I haven't spoken to her since this realization for a lot more reasons then just this. This was just the straw that made the camel buck off the shit weighing it down.
Soon I began dieting. Not only that, I had actually began to do it for longer than a week or two. I have been dieting steadily for about 2 months now and have gone from 343lbs to 299lbs. You want to know what the best part is? I'm not even struggling. I no longer feel depressed and eat. That was the entire problem. I was a binge eater because of my depression and my depression/binge eating would cause me to relapse and give up.
Now I look at dieting from this perspective: you need to not fuck up about 90% of the time, but not beat yourself up over the other 10%. Its natural to indulge so long as you aren't going overboard. Now I check calories before ordering food and have found some healthy choices that really kill that craving for grease without destroying my diet. I found these ice cream sandwiches at Aldis that are like 140 calories each and they completely satisfy my sweet tooth. When I feel like munching on something like chips, I grab olive oil and salt popcorn instead. Water all day every day with soda being a rare treat. Now when I get hungry I don't use it as a judgement of how much to eat, but rather when to eat. I've begun calorie counting everything in the past few weeks and the weight is steadily falling off.
I figure if it takes me 2-3 years to get to a normal weight that's okay with me. I'd rather do it in this way that feels manageable then kill myself trying to lose it as fast as possible. It also feels good to not use exercise as a crutch for weight loss like I had before. I don't exercise at all and I'm still losing weight steadily. I literally sit on my ass all day smoking weed and playing video games while losing weight. I'm gonna be joining some friends of mine in a business venture this fall, so I'm just floating till then. I can say for the first time in my life: I'm looking forward to the future.
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