Erin, you are decidedly not an awful person.

Erin, you are a great step-mom! Your priorities are clearly right: the needs of the child come first.

Here's a weird thing. I've taken no medications today. No antidepressants, no antianxiety meds, no painkillers, no decongestants, no antihistamines. I didn't plan it; I just forgot everything until about two hours ago. Now, I'm not taking this as proof that I don't need any of them, but it's heartening to know that if I skip a day, I don't fall apart.

I'm tapering off my antidepressant. I've done this before, unsuccessfully, but I haven't been in such a good emotional place before, in many many years. Also, the high dose of Wellbutrin I was taking was causing tremors in my hands, and I didn't want to risk that becoming permanent. So I went from 450 mg/day to 300, and now I've gone to 150. My shrink is keeping an eye on me, and thinks that the Deplin may be making a real difference in how much I need. He says that if I'm one of those people who doesn't metabolize folate/folic acid very well, the Deplin might prove to be all I really need. (Deplin is methylfolate, a version of that B vitamin that's already in the form the body needs it to be in.) If my problem turns out to have been a lack of vitamin B-whatever all this time, that would explain why no antidepressant has ever really worked for me. We'll see, I guess. More adventures in chemical enhancement.

Personally, I think Prozac and birth control pills screwed me up completely and permanently in my early twenties, and after twenty years of one unsuccessful drug after another, all I can do now is try to control the damage. Prozac etc surely have saved many people's lives and made many people's lives better, but I don't think I'm one of them.

I think more people have problems with birth control pills than realize it.

I've been on bcp since I was 17.

Erin, what everyone said.

You are not an awful person. You're a kind, good one.

I would love to (a) have a relationship that made me need to use birth control, and (b) be able to take the bcp that reduce periods, but (a) looks more unlikely with every passing year and (b) no doctor will give me bcp because of that blood clot I had that one time.

Laga, forgot to mention, yes, you and your mum are more than welcome to join on Roller Derby.

Cool beans, I'll ask her.

Thanks, guys!

I was on bcps once in college, but it made me gain like 20 pounds, and I wasn't getting any anyway. And they didn't do anything for my cramps, so...

I was a condoms and sponge girl. Didn't have any long-term relationships, really, that would allow for the whole not-using-condoms anymore thing, and I def wanted backup bc to a condom, so...

I have also been taking my AD much, much less. Maybe once or twice a week, and that seems to be holding me steady. Basically, the day I change my HRT patch, I take an AD, so that's every 3.5 days. Works so far.

When I took Prozac, I developed a big blind spot in my vision like I do when I have a migraine. It took months after discontinuing the Prozac for the blind spot to go away.