Depressed and anxious

Hi. I've been diagnosed with GAD. 17 years ago my wife, mother and father died suddenly. I had a 7 yr old son who I then dedicated myself to, which helped me. Although I had been Agoraphobic for 15 years before all this happened. I was not anxious after the deaths (focused too much on my son to be anxious I think). My friends disappeared. I started to use marijuana to cope and ended up addicted and smoking 24/7. I stopped using marijuana over 2 years ago and do not drink. Since then I have been in a constant high anxiety state with all the usual horrible symptoms and mental churning. I've had CBT twice (not much help) been admitted to a psychiatric ward for a week (definately didn't help) and given up on getting any real help from NHS apart from medication Pregabilin which turns out is quite addictive! Whenever I try to drop the dose a little the anxiety sky rockets. I use self help books and meditation to try to face the fear with some success and some distress. Anyway about 2 months ago after doing a visualisation exercise the anxiety suddenly went completely! I was over the moon and very high for a while. Then over the following month I slowly began to get depressed and got lower and lower, doing less and less, feeling bad about myself etc. until 4 days ago the anxiety returned. I have spent the day feeling horribly anxious and crying. Feel pathetic like a five year old wanting his mum to make everything alright. Very negative self thoughts which I know are not true but seem to buy into anyway. Depressing to feel that I am back in this awful anxious state again. Nothing seems to work.

[Frin9e]

hi, you are not pathetic anxiety and depression are very debilitating you are not alone, if you ask me it takes a strong person to seek help for mental health issues, men find it more difficult but you did it and you're still doing it, I feel the same about NHS its handouts and meds off you go.

[sweetiepye]

Hello Atho, You have truly been dealt a bad hand, I can't imagine what you have been through. Don't beat yourself up, we deal with these things the best way we can and are often on our own.You sound like you can overcome this if you can get the right kind of help. You've got so many things going on, maybe you could separate them out and tackle one at a time. I think when you look at this as a whole it is overwhelming. I'm not a professional but I would think getting off the pot first would be the thing to do. I know it causes depression among other things. I don't know much about drugs but I had to stop taking one I was addicted to and my Dr. wanted me to take less and less of it over a 2/3 week period. They know nothing. I increased the time between doses so I would have a difficult time, but bearable for an hour before the next dose. Then I kept increasing that time and as I did so I needed less and less of the stuff. It took awhile but I got there on my own without too much difficulty. You may have to find your own way, try Googling.Whatever you do , don't go cold turkey.. Keep in touch and be good to yourself. Pam