I don’t know what to do.

So I’ve been on Wellbutrin for almost 3years and now I’m dealing with depression after one of the hardest years of my life.

I’m an almost 28 year old female and been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and mild depression (id say it’s more moderate but you know with those screenings you gotta be careful what you say)

I have had anxiety my whole entire life in varying of degrees and wasn’t on medication. (Tbh I probably should have been on something but my parents thought this type of anxiety is just something I’d grow out of. They were born in the 50s so you know mental health wasn’t a thing. My father had severe depression and anxiety but did not seek any treatment and it truly affected his life and all of our lives. Looking back I thought he was a grumpy mean guy at times but in reality he was just anxious and depressed.)

So as a child I just kept my feelings and things to myself and just assumed I was immature that I was always thinking about the next thing. (My mom would get frustrated with my anxiety and “threaten” to tell the Dr about it and it terrified me. Looking back she regrets doing that)

And tbh my anxiety wasn’t that hard to manage as a child and teen. But then my mom got really sick (she always had lung issues) and had to get a lung transplant in 2009. I was only 12 so you can imagine how wild that is. And just the way I was told about and everything changed me as a person I’d say. I slowly started to have more anxiety.

To me, I didn’t have the typical symptoms other people I know had anxiety had (heart racing, fainting, shaking, panic attacks etc) my anxiety is just mainly thought racing and worrying about things.

Ex; oh I have an appointment 1/14, and I’ll think about it over and over and be like “the dr is gonna say this or the dr will do this and what if this happens” and I’ll think about it until the event happens.

But once my father passed away in late 2013 after a battle with cancer, I started to experience even more anxiety and some depression started. I overcame that and graduated high school.

A few years later I was an anxious mess. Life was getting overwhelming though I wasn’t really doing anything. (I wasn’t working at the time this was happening) And I finally told a doctor about my anxiety and was diagnosed with GAD and I finally had a name to what I was feeling my whole life.

I was on Celexa from late 2019- early 2022. I was 20mg for a year and some change and then 30mg for almost 2. I had to get off of it due to gaining 20+ pounds during the pandemic. (But I think other factors were involved with the weight gain, a year into the pandemic, the isolation, the boredom etc. I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism and Hashimotos in late 2021 so that could have caused this as well and now causes me to have to trouble losing the weight)

20mg on Celexa I truly felt great minus me not really feeling emotions. It kinda felt like a high or numbing but not in a bad way if that makes any sense. I’m a highly sensitive person so I can cry and get upset easily and I wasn’t doing that at all lol. I upped my Celexa due to the pandemic (the thought of my mom getting cov!d scared me. And covid in general scared me. News flash my mom gotten it twice and nearly died both times. I’ve gotten cov!d twice and didn’t have any symptoms really) once I upped it I felt very tired and always hungry.

Back to Wellbutrin, I weaned off Celexa and taking Wellbutrin 150mg at the same time. I’d say with the Wellbutrin, the brain fog and tiredness of Celexa went away and I was feeling emotions again. I’d say I was doing pretty well with it. I still had anxiety (a little more then I did with Celexa) but it was manageable

Then 2024 happened when I tell you this was the hardest years of my life. A few deaths, a lot of unfortunate events and my mom nearly died and is now on dialysis. I am now I guess you would say a care taker. She can still take care of herself (like bathing, grooming, getting her medicines together) but I help her get what she needs, help her with her insulin, take her to dialysis and other appointments) and honestly it’s been rough on me mentally. I’ve fallen into this depression.

It’s hard to explain. Some days i feel pretty good and then something small can trigger me and I go down a spiral and I’m crying and just having a hard time calming down. Once I calmed down I’m okay. It just feels like a black cloud is following me around.

So a few weeks ago I told my doctor and she upped my Wellbutrin to 300mg. The first week I started to feel small differences in how I was feeling and my brain didn’t feel so busy. But i don’t know if it was the holidays or other factors but the last week or so I’ve just been sad and just down in the dumps.

In my doctor notes on the app it says if my symptoms still persist she’ll add venlafaxine aka Effexor. I never heard of this medication and I’ve been doing some googling.

Some things say this is a great medicine, other things say it has awful side effects and it’s so hard to get off of it. Then I looked at people’s experiences with Wellbutrin and Effexor and I’ve seen mixed reviews.

So all of this to say I am unsure on what to do and what to tell my doctor. Some days I feel pretty good and happy (even though the black cloud is sitting there) and other days I’m just sad and down in the dumps really bad. I say the good/ good ish days are more now than previous but it’s still not 100% (I know medicine isn’t a cure all but I was hoping the depression would either go away or lessen so much where it’s not effecting my life like it is.

My plan right now is to continue to take my Wellbutrin 300mg and see now that the holidays and other stressful things are over see how my brain is. If it’s not better, I’ll talk to my doctor. But I’m kinda scared to get on Effexor. I work 5-6 days a week and I can’t just take off to start a medicine or wean off of one.

Any tips or advice?