Two weeks into my six week plan to get off my medication – how’s it going? Good. I think.

This fortnight has seen me alternating between taking my full dosage and just half dosage each night, slowly trying to get my body to adjust to having less and less Duloxetine in my system.

Overall it has been pretty painless. I haven’t had a massive increase in anxiety or any depressive slip backs and I haven’t felt massively sick.

The day after my first half dose was a wash out – I spent most of it in bed because sitting up gave me vertigo and sleeping was the only escape. It was a Sunday, so I just slept.

Since then it hasn’t been so bad – I have had a headache on and off that brings dizziness with it but that goes away with sleep so I have been giving in to it and napping. This means that I sometimes ended up finishing the housework in the evening because I’d slept in the afternoon, but I never lost a whole day again.

I have noticed that I need to take my tablet at around the same time each day otherwise the headache rams straight in and makes me feel a bit sick. But that’s okay – it’s easy enough to avoid!

The muscle spasms I got when I first started taking Duloxetine have returned. I spend quite a lot of time grumpily muttering at random bits of me to stop twitching, much to Caius’ amusement.

I have had days where I have felt physically ‘heavy’ – as if I’m wading through porridge to get anywhere – my muscles ache as if I have done some sort of rock climbing exercise the day before. But it’s not so bad that it stops me doing anything – I just do it a bit slower is all.

Mentally though, I have felt balanced. I’ve been annoyed, sad, happy, confused and a multitude of other things but I haven’t got stuck on any of them. I haven’t not wanted to get out of bed in the morning (well, no more so than anyone else in a committed relationship with their duvet, anyway) and I haven’t found myself staring at the laundry basket feeling like it’s going to consume me.

Indeed, yesterday I defeated the laundry basket for the first time in a long time AND all the clean washing is put away as well. I don’t think that’s happened before since… er… university? Possibly ever.

Most of all, I have found the fun in life again. I realised the other night as I played a silly, impromptu game with Caius and Arthur, that I had missed doing this. It had only happened in flashes on good days, whereas recently it has happened more. It hasn’t felt like it required more energy or emotion than I had to give, it’s just felt like the obvious thing to do.

I have laughed more, smiled more, read more, joined in with more things socially, got more done and conquered more chores than I have in a long, long time.

Usually I would have one day like that and then be mentally exhausted and it would be weeks until the next day. Now it seems to be the other way around.

The next two weeks will see me taking the same dosage of Duloxetine every day – half of my original dose – to give my body time to settle and regroup before the final drop down to nothing.

I hope my next post on the topic is just as upbeat as this one. I might never be ‘fixed’ but if I can stay at this level of ‘better’ under my own steam, then I will be more than happy.

I am remembering who Carole is, and she’s actually quite good fun and not completely useless.