Is this the new normal?

I think I shot myself in the foot, metaphorically speaking. When I went off Abilify, I told myself it was only a matter of toughing it out through a month of withdrawal symptoms and that I could handle it.

I’m now thinking that either that was extremely reckless and naive, or that the Pfizer Covid vaccine left me with severe lasting depression and anxiety. I haven’t heard about those side effects of the vaccine so I’m assuming that somehow Abilify broke my brain. I am worse than I have been in many years.

Tomorrow, I’m going to start taking Abilify again, but instead of taking 5 mg every day like I did before, I’m going to take 2 mg every other day. I really hope this will be enough to make the severe depression and anxiety go away without causing the compulsive overspending again.

On the compulsive overspending front (and the debt I racked up as a result), I’m really proud to say that I paid off the balances on three of my credit cards and one of my husband’s. It didn’t even require tapping into savings or anything. It feels really good to be chipping away at this debt.

If I’m able to do this job, that will also help me pay down the debt faster and also build up our savings account. You’ll notice how I said if I can do the job: I’m not feeling very capable right now. I’m sleeping so, so much. I’m hoping that starting this low dose of the Abilify will be enough to bring me out of this slump.

I haven’t felt good or normal since I quit taking the Abilify, but so many other things have happened since then that could be factors (the Covid vaccines, my husband’s surgery and the fairly bad infection from that surgery that’s still healing, the weather crisis.) It’s hard to know what, if anything, is to blame.

But not knowing what to blame also makes it nearly impossible to fix it. I just desperately hope this isn’t my new normal.