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Wellbutrin Made Me Feel...Something.

• Ali Kay

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Welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast. A podcast for you so you don't get burnt up like a mother. I'm your host, Ali K, and this is the Selfish Mom Podcast. Learn to prioritize your mental and physical health first so we can thrive and not just survive. Let's take action, become our best self together, and redefine selfish as the most selfless thing we could do. Alright, alright. Hey guys, welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast. I am your host, Allie Kaye. Thank you so much for tuning in. As promised, this is going to be the episode where I share it all about Well Butrin. So I am going on nine months of being on Well Butrin. I was prescribed it back in December. So it will be a year in December. And I just want to share this entire journey with you: the pros, the cons, my plan for moving forward, and really why I got on this medicine and just all the changes I saw. So stick around. Some people even take it to quit smoking. There's a lot of uses for this medicine. But if you told me I would be on medicine for nine months, I would have laughed in your face. For me, medicine was just always the last resort due to like past experiences. I just always felt like you know, I had enough coping skills to manage my ADHD, to just be aware of my moods, my depression. And honestly, it just got way out of hand and I needed more help. So if anything, if you stop listening to this episode now, I just want to give you one takeaway that it is not embarrassing. It is normal to need help. And if something is getting in the way of your daily functioning, then go seek help. And it's honestly been the best thing that I've done. I do want to start this episode off too by saying I am not a medical professional. I am not a doctor. I don't prescribe medicine. I can only obviously I don't prescribe medicine, thank God. But you know, I I can only tell you my experience. So again, I am not a medical professional. This is coming just from my experience and my experience alone. So before we kind of get into why exactly I went on Well Butrin, I need to give you a little bit of background about myself, just so you kind of have some insight and perspective with what I've been dealing with for years and just who I am, my journey, my mental health journey, if you may. So I definitely struggled in school. I would say that I had to work like 10 times harder than my friends. Like I just I wouldn't get it right away, you know. I was definitely that child in classroom in the class where they would like go around, you know, and you would like we would be doing math problems and the one person would go, then the next person would get the other problem. I would be counting, okay, I'm number six, and I would be trying to figure out, you know, the answer to that problem before they got to me, because one I was going to struggle solving it, and also I didn't want to be embarrassed. And it was like that anxiety, that social anxiety of like, oh my God, you know, I'm going to get the wrong answer, everyone's going to laugh at me, just like that type of child. A lot of pressure on myself. And I will definitely say around like 15, 16, um, you know, after going through puberty, I definitely had some really like just moods. Um, I think one thing was just me, you know, being that alter ego of myself at school, you know. And I think us girls do this a lot, you know, masking, where we have to be this like perfect person. We're like on at school, you know, and I put a lot of pressure on myself. So when I would come home, I would be like angry, you know, you just want to let it all out. And just socially too, just seeing a lot of like ups and downs. I remember like I had a guy friend um who I knew since middle school, and he looked at me one day. I think we were like 16 or something, he's like, Are you sure you're not bipolar? You need to get that checked out, you know, because I would just I would cycle through like moods. Um, and then it really wasn't until college that everything came ahead. And I think that's typical. I think it's, you know, it's ages 20, 21, 22, 23, that if you have been struggling with mental health issues and you've never dealt with it, then it's just all gonna come out during that time because a lot of changes, you know, you can only control so much, and that's exactly what happened to me. Um, when I was 21 years old, and I can do so many episodes of this, but I actually went through an a real psychotic break. Um, and again, that can be a whole other episode. It was very scary. Um, my parents took me to the hospital, like that type of situation. But from that experience, it was also like one of the best experiences because it cornered me to get the help that I needed and it helped me to just understand more about me and like what I what I needed to do in order to cope for the rest of my life. So, from that experience, at 21, I was diagnosed with ADHD, um, an anxiety disorder, and I went on medication. I went on Lexapro. Um, my psychiatrist also started me on Adderall, which I hated. I had a really just like bad experience on Adderall, and then she changed it to Stratera. So, Stratera isn't a stimulant like Adderall, but it's one of those things where the medicine has to build in your system. And mind you, at 21, I was also going to school and stuff. So I was I was really struggling ADHD-wise, you know. I I really didn't have a grip on on all that. Um, and as I was taking, you know, these medicines and seeing a psychiatrist, I was also going to a counselor as well. And my counselor from the beginning was like, you need to get off this medicine right away because what you went through was kind of like it was a situational experience. And we need to like learn how to cope and get out of that before you're just like on all this medicine. Um, I didn't listen to her, I kept on with the medicine, and the medicine was really just a really bad experience for me. I ended up going cold turkey off the Lexapro. The Lexapro is an SSRI antidepressant. Never ever do that. Never go cold turkey off an SSRI. I feel like the Adderall kind of stimulated like a manic episode, just like not good. But, anyways, long story short, I stayed with counseling and I ended up just being intrigued with psychology, and that's what I was majoring in too. I was majoring in sociology and psychology. Um, and I just loved psychology. I loved learning about human behavior. I think that's one of the reasons why I love to study acting was just the human behavior, you know, what drives people. And I wanted to learn more about myself. I was very intrigued. So through counseling, I did my homework. I learned about generalized anxiety disorders, social anxiety disorders, depression, um, you know, mood disorders, just personality disorders. Like I was just very intrigued, and I was also intrigued on coping, like learning how to coping and personal growth. So, long story short, at 24, no, 25. Yeah, 25 after I had my son, I went and I got my master's in clinical mental health counseling. Okay. So from there, that's where I really evolved, you know, with my managing my mental health, learning how to cope. I got very into fitness after I had my kids. You know, that's been so big in my journey. Movement is, you know, for my mental health. I also very got into, you know, what I fed my body. I saw the correlation that your mind and your brain and your gut are all whole, you know. If one's not working properly, like if your brain's not working properly, something's probably going on physical in your body, and vice versa, verse versa, versa. Yeah, vice versa. You know, just that whole holistic approach. It's like a well-oiled machine. So I just want to give you background because that's that was my perspective. Um, so as far as like medicine and also like SSRIs in general, like SSRIs, your serotonin, is created in your gut. So learning that, I was like very antidepressants when it came to SSRIs, just like all the things, because I thought, you know, I can manage it all. That was just like my perspective, and you know, my my lifestyle had a lot to do with my mindset. So after Lane, and you guys have heard this, I'm not gonna get into like detail about that, but um, you know, I'm three years postpartum. A year after I had Lane, um, and prior to when I was pregnant, I was very motivated. You know, that was like top of my game. I was working, you know, I was running my staging business full time. Ford and Lucas, my two kids, were in school full-time. Um, I was also just like I had just gone viral on TikTok. I started a social media business. You know, I'm getting brand deals. I'm basically running two companies. I had a pot, this podcast was like top 13 of overall health and wellness um podcasts. Like number one was Jay Shetty. You know, this this was 2020, 2021, COVID, pre-COVID or COVID era. I was hustling, really fed into that, you know, boss babe mentality. Then I got pregnant with Lane. And if you've been along with that journey, I haven't felt like myself since Lane. And I always thought it was postpartum, and then you know, I've gone to doctors and my blood work is just out of whack, um, hormones, all the things. So, long story short, I know that my body isn't functioning properly. There's something going on. Um, whether it's my breast implants, I I really don't know, and I'm still trying to figure it out. And I've I've been trying a lot of things if you've been on this journey with me, but I can't really, I haven't been able to fix it, if you may. And what has been happening is, you know, I have just been so scattered brain with three kids. I'm running two businesses. Um, you know, I have the duties at my house. I have just like normal day-to-day stuff that just felt so hard to get through. Like it would be such a daunting task to clean my house on a Sunday, you know, to get ready for the week that I just couldn't get myself to clean it. And then I started like not even getting motivated to work out. I just felt low and down and out. Like I just felt like everything was getting worse and worse. And it was really hard for me to manage just the daily day-to-life functioning. And again, I know that something's off in my body, when something's off in your body, it affects your mindset. But I also know that when, you know, your ADHD symptoms, your depressive symptoms, you know, certain behaviors, when these behaviors are getting in the way of your daily functioning, that's when help is needed. So I swallowed my pride, and this was back in December. You know, this was when I this was peak, just I was I needed help, you know. And I was like, I'm just going to go get a doctor on, and I actually went online. It's um, I do it through cerebral. So cerebral. Um, it's an online just telehealth um psychiatrist that you meet with, and um, you know, you tell them what's up. So I knew in December that I needed to go on some type of medicine, but from my past experience with like an antidepressant SSRI like Lexapro, I didn't really love it. I hated Adderall, that was terrible. Um, Stratera, I really didn't feel a lot of difference, but I actually got pregnant with Lucas when I was on Stratera, so I had a very short like time on Stratera to really know. So that, and and this is exactly what I talked to my doctor when I got on that call with her in December. You know, I was saying, I know, like I have ADHD behaviors, I know I'm struggling. Um, these are the medicines that worked for or didn't work for me in the past, these are the medicines I've tried, and I definitely want to go on something. You know, I was very just assertive in that way. And she said, okay, listen, you need to try Well Butrin. And she's like, the Well Butrin, like the people or her clients that are on Well Butrin are the ones that, you know, are the CEOs running businesses, doing all the things. So that kind of made me feel like, oh, okay, they're not doing it by themselves. They have a little, you know, they they asked for help too. So that made me feel good that she said that too. She kind of just made that more just, you know, like other people need help too. Because I did feel very just not just, I felt really just sad that I had to go this route because I thought I had it all figured out, if that makes sense. And I also felt like I know my body isn't working properly. Um, and I I can't, you know, I just haven't been able to resolve it. So I felt defeated, honestly, when I had that call. Like this was definitely the last resort. Um, and I think she definitely could feel that. And I said that. So when she said that, you know, other people, the the you know, the moms that are running businesses and all things are on it, it just made me feel less alone, if that makes sense. Um, so she's like, let's do well butrin. Here's the thing well buturin is not a stimulant, so it is not like adderall, and it is not an SSRI, a serotonin, um, where it it deals with serotonin. Um, well butrin deals with your neurotransmitters, so it helps release dopamine, which is what Adderall does too, but it but not in a stimulating way, like Adderall. So it affects your neurotransmitters, dopamine and your neuroprinephrine, which is your from what I understand, is like your adrenal, you know, feelings in your brain. And dopamine are is like that feel-good feelings, you know. And she said, we're gonna try you on 150 milligrams, and it's the time release. And I am not, I'm on, oh god, I'm gonna like butcher this because I cannot speak today. I'm on buproprian H T L B-U-P-R-O-P-I-O-N. So I think this is the generic of well putrin. So if you were wondering, generic or I am on the generic one. Um, and she said, let's try you on 150 milligrams. And she said, but the goal will be to get you on 300 milligrams. Um, and I was like, okay, I again I was like, I'm going to trust her, I'm gonna try this ride, see where it leads me, because anything is better than what I was experiencing at that time. So she prescribed me the medicine after the call. This was like early December. Now, one thing I did in the past, and I did it now, or I did it as soon as I was prescribed the medicine, and I continue to do it not as often as I did in the beginning, was I kept a mood journal. Guys, this is so important with any type of medicine that you get on. Um, I've had so many bad experiences with medicine. I didn't know like how to see if the medicine was causing this or how I was feeling, or keep it is so hard to keep track. Um, so I kept a mute mood journal, and it doesn't have to be in-depth. All I did was each day I said my mood and like what I was feeling for the day. So, like one day I just said good, bad, feeling motivated, feeling down, you know, like that type of thing. And then also I got off that call and I talked to my husband and I said, Listen, I'm getting on medicine, so you need to like tell me if I'm not acting different or acting the same or something's weird is going on, like you need to hold me accountable. And I think that's so important. So, two things if you are getting on new medication, any type of medication, you need to take, you need to keep a mood journal, just say whether you're feeling good, whether you're feeling bad, and then have a second, and then have a person to like hold you accountable as far as like how you're acting. Have someone hold you accountable for your behaviors, you know. So those were the two things. So I went on the medicine, and right away when I took that medicine, it felt like I was like, oh, like you know that good feeling. Like, I think I cleaned my house that day. I actually did my taxes. The taxes that I was putting off for over a year, I sat down and I knocked them out in like two hours. That's how like good, and like I felt it right away. And she did, my doctor did say you are going to feel something, but it's going to get less and less. And also the medicine does kind of build in your system. So I would say by the third week on 150 milligrams, I started to level out, meaning I wasn't feeling as like good as I did the first couple of weeks. Fast forward in February, we bumped up to 300 milligrams. Or not, yeah, February. So starting in February, I'm sorry guys, January. It was January. It was exactly four weeks after I got prescribed the 150 milligrams, she bumped me up to 300 milligrams time release. And remember, that was always the goal. So on the 150 milligrams, I just felt really good. I didn't really have any like short fuses or anger. Um, I still was feeling my emotions, but again, around that four-week mark, I definitely felt less and less like it was helping me as far as like ADHD symptoms. Bumped up to 300. I felt this right away. So let me just tell you what I have felt from January until May. So that's February, March, April, May, let's just say June, five months. The first five months on 300 milligrams, okay? It definitely helped me to stay motivated. I felt very level. So I am someone who has very high highs, very low lows. I can be really motivated and like on top of my game, and then the next day lay in bed for the entire day. You get me? I'm a very high and low type person. I cycle, you know, I have a lot of edge on me, you know, um, which sometimes for me is can be a positive, but also, you know, it can get in the way of my daily functioning. So I will say I immediately felt very level. And I also felt very angry, not like angry, like mad at the world, just very like intolerant, um, especially when it came to my husband. I just was snippy, and I and I will say I was snippy to my kids as well. Um, and I I felt no emotions, like this is a real thing. I I like I didn't feel good, but I definitely didn't feel bad. And mind you, with my life at this time, we were going through a lot. We're living in a rental, our life's really chaotic. Um, we had a lot of closing doors at this point, and I was very, very stable. So I feel like yes, those are a lot of cons, but it kept me very level, which I needed at that time. Um, and I feel like it definitely really helped me with my ADHD symptoms and just my daily functioning. You know, I was getting out of bed, I could get my daily chores done. I think the biggest pro that I felt on Well Buterin is when I woke up and I knew I had a million things to do for that day, and I usually would be scatterbrained and be like, oh my god, you know, like I had like full thoughts when I woke up. Okay. So that's probably the biggest pro of the Well Buterin is every morning I wake up and I have full, complete thoughts, and that's a big thing. So my my whole thing was like, okay, that's a big pro and it kind of it's kind of more than the cons. It weighs out more than these cons that I was experiencing, and you know, I just wanted to stick with it because I had gone this far on the well butrin, and that's another thing my doctor was telling me it can take time to level out. She did say in the beginning that some people feel very angry, and that might be a symptom that never goes away. And she's like, and those are the people that get off well buterine. So when I was feeling like that anger and like that intolerance in the beginning for those five months, I was definitely very aware of it. Um, but I was very hopeful that it would kind of level out, and it did. So I will say in the summertime around June, July, so five months after I had I was on the 300 milligrams, I could cry again, you know. Like I felt more emotion, like I felt happier during, you know, times, like, and I felt sad, like my emotions kind of leveled out, if that makes sense. Like I didn't feel so numb. Um, and I think crying was like a big thing. Like, I swear to you, in those first five months on the 300 milligrams, I could not shed a tear. Like, I just shouldn't couldn't shed a tear. Like, I didn't really feel anything. It wasn't like good and it wasn't bad. I was just like living, you know. So, so this summer after the five months, I have definitely I've cried, you know, and I I and I'm okay with that because I'm like, okay, I'm feeling things. I still feel like I'm pretty level. Like, I again, I don't think I've really had these extreme highs and these extreme lows. So, fast forward to today, so uh it would be um five, six, seven, seven months since I've been on the 300 milligrams, and I am starting to come up with a plan to get off of it. Now, let me tell you why. I know, like my doctor's kind of like, hey, if it's working, why do you want to kind of like break what's working, you know, because it is working. Here's the thing a lot of things in my environment has changed. One thing is we moved out of that rental, we're in a bigger space. Um, there's like light at the end of the tunnel with this house, you know. It has been just a very emotional roller coaster the past two years with this like house. Um, and now we're kind of like on the other side. We started building it. So my environment has definitely changed. Um and another thing is when I first got on the well butred, I lost like five pounds in that first month. It was probably the most weight I had ever lost. So one of the symptoms is definitely weight loss because it it suppresses your appetite. So definitely in the beginning, I had to like remind myself to eat. It wasn't like I I was like disgusted of food. I just seriously forgot to eat, you know, and some people love that symptom. For me, it was great. Like I lost found five pounds in one month, but for me, I just feel like I don't like that symptom any anymore, you know. So that's that's kind of like a big one because now I kind of want to transition um my journey into like building muscle and stuff. And I feel like because I've lost weight on this on this medication, um because it suppresses my appetite, I kind of that's just a negative, a negative symptom for me right now. Another thing is like going back to coping skills again, like you can take medicine, but you still gotta learn these coping skills, and I feel like I'm establishing more of a routine in my life, which is very helpful for me as someone who deals with ADHD. So those are kind of the thoughts of me getting off of it. But one of the biggest, biggest negative things that kind of like switched with the intolerance is the anxiety. So I didn't have the anxiety I had until May, five months later, on the 300 milligrams. Rather than feeling intolerant, I started having this anxiety. I've always dealt with anxiety, but it's been more than it usually has been. Like I just have these like thoughts, you know. All of a sudden I will envision like my kids going through some type of trauma, or I envision as I'm driving the car, I envision my car crashing and I hear the sound, and I like physically and emotionally like experience this like hypothetical scenario that didn't even happen, but I feel all the anxiety that went with it. So, very like a lot of intrusive thoughts, and I've dealt with intrusive thoughts, but not like nothing's really going on in my life to have these, you know. I'm not postpartum. I I just intrusive thoughts have been kind of ruining my life. So I will definitely say the anxiety has been more lately, and other people have experienced this too because I talk about well butrin a lot on TikTok, and a lot of people end up going on like Lexapro, like an SSRI, with the Well Buterin. I just feel like I want to see if I can get off of this with a plan. Um, you know, poor performance is a lack of poor planning. I want to have a really great plan in place to understand how I'm going to like manage getting off the medicine. And another thing with well butrin, it's easier to come off well buterin than it is an SSRI. Now you never want to go cold turkey, but from my understanding, what my doctor has told me is you just like gradually lower the dosage and eventually you're just off of it without any major like withdrawal symptoms. So I am contemplating in January going down to 150 and then going from there. But I think the two biggest things, again, that I'm going to do is keeping that mood journal and having my husband keep me accountable so I can really understand what's going on. Because just checking in with in with your doctor every couple weeks, like your doctor doesn't know what's really going on. So you need to be honest with yourself, you know. And I've had to tell myself that too. Like, I need to be honest about what's going on, and I need to be honest to my doctor. So that's and in the past, I was not like when I was 21 and you know, going to my psychiatrist, I was not honest with what was going on. You know, I never told her I just went cold turkey off LexaPro, you know. So this needs to be a collaboration with your doctor, but when you log what you're going through, it makes it easier. Your doctor has more information and can make more of an, you know, an educated um decision with you. So that's like my biggest advice. Again, I am not a medical doctor, but if you take anything away from this episode, I just want to let you know that getting help is admirable. You know, as women, we have all this pressure on ourselves to be so many things. You know, we are the glue that keeps everything in place. We also might get a lot of criticism. Like, we can't win, you know. You can't like I just feel like in society, women can't win. You might think you're doing it right this way, but you get criticized, so you do it this way and you're criticized, you know. And I just it's okay to ask for help, I guess. What I'm trying to say. And that was the biggest thing for me. Uh, and what I want you to take away from this episode is that there's modern medicine. If you're like me and you're like holistic or that scrunchy mom, you know, there's a time and a place for modern medicine. Like it's amazing, you know. Look how far in advance we have. Come with modern medicine. And when your symptoms and your behaviors are getting in the way of your daily functioning, like you cannot function properly in your daily life, go seek help. There is nothing wrong with that. And I promise you, you are not alone. So that's today's episode. A lot of information. But I hope that's very helpful. I know there's so many people that are contemplating, you know, going on some type of medicine. So that's been my personal experience with Well Futuring. It has not been a straight journey, a lot of, you know, things going on. But again, you keep a mood journal and you have someone hold you accountable through this whole experience and you stay honest with your doctor and you collaborate with them. And I think that you know you can get great results for the season of your life. And again, like this is a season of my life. You know, do I think I will be on Well Butron forever? No, I don't. And I think this is just the season of my life that I need a little extra help, you know, and no, no problem with that. All right, so that is today's episode. If you guys want more like resources from me, I have so much on my Stamp Store. That is linked in the episode notes. The Selfish Mom six-week method. Stay tuned for more information on that. I am relaunching my coaching. I want to get a great group of women who want to put in the work to learn how to be that selfish mom where you're making yourself a priority. So stick around for more information on that, and I will catch you next time.