Hiya dontrun. Really pleased to hear you are now stable. And you're right, it is a scary, frustrating process to finally get off all your psychiatric medication. There are so many fears about "what if it all happens again?". But I totally understand the drive to get off the drugs, something a lot of psychiatrists don't seem to "get". Mine would constantly ask me "why does it matter if you are on these for the rest of your life??" Well, it DID matter to me, it mattered A LOT. They don't seem to understand that you need to know what is the real "you" again, and that you can function as a "normal" person without this horrible vague backround doubt that what's really "you" is actually what the drugs are making you into. Don't know if that makes sense?
Anyway, I was not prepared to accept that I would be on medication for the rest of my life. And I think that was the main starting point. Do NOT accept that you HAVE to take this stuff forever. If I believed them, I never would have had the willpower to get off everything. When you have a wobble, it's so easy to doubt yourself and think that you will never get there and that you are a permanent mental health case.
There are some mental illnesses that are long term, and yes in some cases, it is right that a person remains on their medication indefinitely. But I don't think this has to be the case in PND. PND is post natal i.e. an illness in the mother related to the birth of a baby. It is time-limited by its very definition. You don't have to be ill forever just because you suffered from PND, however severe it was.
Mine, like yours, was pretty severe. I was in a MBU for nearly 3 months. At one point I was on 11 different psychiatric medications, some of them at max dose. I took olanzapine at max dose for a while, as well as lithium, zopiclone and a variety of ADs. I had to take procyclidine to control the side effects of the olanzapine. I started to feel very out of control, not knowing what sensations were caused by my illness and which were caused by the cocktail of drugs I was on.
When you get in such a state you get desperate and I was willing to try anything. I made the mistake of throwing everything at trying to get better and I stupidly tried too many things at once - CBT, homeopathy, reflexology, massage etc. on top of all the drugs. I spent a silly amount of money seeing a private psychiatrist on Harley Street. And was left feeling horribly confused and stressed out, with all the advice. I had to cut everything out and re-discover the "real" me. And I couldn't do that whilst I was on all these drugs, I didn't know who I was anymore.
Getting off the drugs is a s...l....o....w..... process. You have to forgive yourself and start to accept that there will be ups and downs. Don't blame yourself or beat yourself up when you have a blip (yes, "when" not "if" because they will happen unfortunately). But keep telling yourself you WILL get there, no matter how long it takes. You definitely will get there in the end.
Start with one drug at a time, never try to come off more than one drug at once. Start with the one you feel you need the least or the one that seemed to make the least difference. So in your case, you need to leave the lamotrigine till last. In my case, I had to leave the mirtazapine till last. I started with the olanzapine, because I hated the weight gain it caused and the general doped-up feeling. It's hard to know at first what are withdrawal effects and what is just the fear in your mind of going downhill. I started to get anxiety really badly when I started to reduce my dose but I think a large part of it was just fear of going downhill, rather than my body missing the drug. I cut my pills into tiny fragments, and kept them in a box with vitamin pills. This sounds crazy but I kind of cross-tapered onto the vitamin pills, somehow fooling my body into thinking it was still taking the drugs. Also somehow keeping them in the same container made the vitamin pill seem more than it was IYSWIM?
I had lots of blips. My psychiatrist on more than one occasion suggested upping my dose of ADs to higher than I even started on. It felt like such a defeat. But I kept on with my schedule of chipping away at my pills. I would say it probably took about 18 months to get off everything. I finally stopped my last pill completely in Dec 2010. I haven't taken anything since, and have (pretty much) been well since.
I am now pregnant again, which is very scary. But I'm also excited. At one point I never thought I would recover from PND, let alone be in a position to go on to have another baby.... yet here I am! And having done this pregnancy drug-free so far, I feel so happy that this baby hasn't had any drugs swirling round its system. Watch this space to see how I cope after the birth!! Am being seen by the perinatal psychiatrist every month and so far everything is going well.
I really do wish you well on your journey of recovery, please keep posting and let us know how you get on.
P.s. thank you to madmouse who pointed this thread out to me!