I’ve taken myself off the Verapamil tablets; six months is long enough to try it out, and it really wasn’t doing me a lot of good. The main problem was that it made me fuzzy-headed all the time; I couldn’t think very well and everything felt ‘flat’ and dull. It was the mental equivalent of permanently wearing dark glasses and earmuffs. Reading through the Wikipedia article on it, I wasn’t wholly surprised to discover that it’s occasionally used as a treatment for hypomania – it was impossible for me to experience any strong feelings about anything. Motivation (as I’ve mentioned before on here) was severely lacking; the main reason why I’ve been blogging so little lately. Time and time again, I started a blog post, only to stop after a couple of sentences trying to remember exactly what point I was trying to make. I really envied my writing friends who were able to steadily chug out hundreds of words each and every day for NaNoWriMo. Books and reading were also a problem – I kept losing interest after a couple of chapters; I can’t think of a single book that I started during the last few months that I managed to finish.
Additionally I was getting forgetful and clumsy, with my typing becoming appalling – spellcheckers took care of most of my mistakes, but they couldn’t stop me mangling names and numbers. And I couldn’t remember quite simple things, either (like getting the online version of Transit ready, for instance). And there was the depression, which I’d rather not talk about…..
And it didn’t really stop me having tachycardia attacks either – they were just much fewer and of much shorter duration.
I’ve been ‘clear’ for five days now, and the new mental clarity is amazing – I’m thinking again! And I’m feeling rather cheerful. I’m a bit apprehensive about having more tachycardia attacks, but I’m determined not to get stressed about it.
So – on with the show!