Good question, wildcat, and one I ask myself too, when I'm lying wide awake in the middle of the night before a big day of some sort :)
I haven't slept well for several years -- at one point, back when the top ten events on the life-stressors list were going on at once, I didn't know why I even bothered going to bed -- I'd lie there, mind racing, until I finally fell asleep about 3 or 4:00 in time for the alarm to go at 6:00. All my doctor would do was offer me sleeping pills, which I didn't want to take because I'm the only adult in the house -- what if one of the girls got sick or there was an emergency and they couldn't wake me?!
After various permutations and combinations, I've finally ended up with Remeron at night to help me sleep, and Effexor and Wellbutrin
in the morning to make me happy and give me energy, respectively. Not that they all do what they are supposed to do, exactly, but it's the best we've come up with so far. I've tried reducing or going off meds completely several times when I was feeling better -- like you, by the sounds of it, I felt that being on medication was a sign that I still needed them, and I wanted to show (who? myself? my doctor?) that I could actually be that well even without the support of medication. Not a good idea -- there were a few times when I would carry on for a month or so, but then the doubt, the second-guessing, the negative thoughts, the irritability, would start to come back until I was back where I started. Either a slow learner or an eternal optimist, I did this not once or twice but 4 or 5 times. Now I'm regarding these meds more like the anti-biotics you mentioned -- the infection is gone within a day or 2 of starting the drug, but you have to continue to take it for several days afterward to be safe. Would that the timeframe and specificity was similar to anti-biotics!
Or like training wheels on a bike -- they stabilize me while I learn to ride and balance. Other people and my inner critic may point and laugh with scorn that I need training wheels, but that's just something that I must learn to ignore. For me, right now, training wheels = sensible, no training wheels = scraped knees and broken bones.
Vent and complain any time you like, wildcat, without feeling guilty. We all need outlets -- this is the only place that I feel I can pour my heart, my musings, my troubles out where at least a couple of people are bound to understand exactly what I'm saying. I feel guilty for my long posts, but am not at all irritated by and am most often interested in and grateful for other people's long posts... :)
