Just checking in to say hi 👋

You are a huge inspiration to many that you have set up this forum and can focus on progress even if it is painfully slow.

3.5 years is a huge achievement.

Sorry about the 3am wake up calls, I still get those but I wasn’t a good sleeper before all of this so I’m fairly pleased with 4-5 hours a night, I’d prefer 7-8 but I accept that this wasn’t overly achievable for me for most of my life.

Thankyou for your kind words on my 19 month update post. I don’t know what the future holds but I know I am healing,

I know we all are.

Slowly!

Take care

Rosie 🕊️ 🌈

Wow you are back on your own now, away from parents? So proud of you Luke I can't imagine with the intensity of withdrawal you surviving and doing so much, how many people out there than can survive what you have survived?

Thank you all for the kind words.

On 9/27/2026 at 8:07 PM, wheretogonow said:

Wow you are back on your own now, away from parents? So proud of you Luke I can't imagine with the intensity of withdrawal you surviving and doing so much, how many people out there than can survive what you have survived?

I am now, yes. It's a big step and so far it has not been easy, but it's progress.

1 hour ago, Luke said:

am now, yes. It's a big step and so far it has not been easy, but it's progress.

Wow amazing! I know it’s not easy but it’s the first step for getting some control back over your life and rebuilding!

How are you managing working now?

Hey @Luke

Just thought I'd drop by your thread and see how things have been going? It's been a while...

I read that you're living independently and that you have seen an improvement since the start of the year! That is awesome dude, long may it continue! How's the work situ going? I assume you're back full time too.

Speak to you soon, TTM.

@Sophia @The_Taper_Man

I'm in full time employment, that said, it is with the same employer from before getting sick, and I had been there for a long time previously. The role I have been doing has been fairly low pressure and I have been able to work from home when I've felt really bad, and if some days I'm slower or worse than others, so be it.

That said, I'm now being pushed to move into a more fixed role.

Some days are quite manageable, with various symptoms popping up, others are still very difficult. At least now when they're difficult it's because I feel really rough, whereas a few months ago I was still having bad agitation/activation that made focusing on anything very difficult.

9 hours ago, Sophia said:

Wow amazing! I know it’s not easy but it’s the first step for getting some control back over your life and rebuilding!

Yes, it has been hard, but worth it overall. I have random flare ups of various old symptoms, but mainly now I don't get enough sleep and often feel tired/rough/run down/just generally shitty. Around that I can function, for the most part now.

That said, today I've been awake since 4, feel pretty bad and I've had a flare up of the skin issues on my face I used to get from this (which I've grown a beard to hide), so it's not all plain sailing.

I think each month I make a bit of progress overall, even though each month still has plenty of bad days.

Thank you both.

How are you, @Luke ?

On 10/3/2026 at 12:57 AM, poulette38 said:

How are you, @Luke ?

Some bad days, some not so bad. Pretty much always tired to some degree. My sleep is improving but it's still not good.

I'm managing to function through it all, although life could still be better.

Ok, @Luke

I'm glad to hear from you. It's good that your sleep is getting a little better.

Hi @Luke I hope you don't mind me asking you a few questions about your recovery? Feel free to ignore this if it is too upsetting to answer...

What month(s) were the absolute worse when you came off mirtazapine?

What month(s) were you able to identify slow overall improvements?

Did your ED completly resolve?

All the best

Edited October 11Oct 11 by Steve1

5 hours ago, Steve1 said:

What month(s) were the absolute worse when you came off mirtazapine?

Probably all the way from 0 to 2 years. At 18 months off I was still having week-long periods where I struggled to walk and talk.

Then 2 years off to 3 years off was mostly pretty bad but I was a lot less impaired, still regularly really quite ill though.

5 hours ago, Steve1 said:

What month(s) were you able to identify slow overall improvements?

I was becoming significantly less disabled in the few months before being 2 years off, but I was still very ill and although I did improve from 2 years off to 3 years off, it was a slow improvement that I could only really see if I looked back over the year.

I began to notice more significant improvements from about three years off, where I feel as though each month I made progress on average, even though I was still almost always pretty ill.

It's only in the last month or two where it's very clear that I'm better each month. Still not out of it yet though.

5 hours ago, Steve1 said:

Did your ED completly resolve?

I've made the most progress with that in the last 1-2 months, but it isn't totally back to normal and neither is my libido.

Thanks for the response @Luke. Hopefully your improvements continue and gather pace

You're welcome @Steve1

How is independent living Luke?

Can I ask are you taking supplements or anything?

Hi Luke just catching up with the forum today and your page.

I hope living independently is going ok for you and that you are doing as well as you can be.

Sounds like you’ve made a bit of progress the past few months.

I hope this continues and we all keep seeing progress 🙏

It’s such a funny old thing this none linear progress, I wish I’d plotted it as a graph so I could look back and see the progress on the harder days.

Take care Rosie x

On 10/12/2026 at 10:27 PM, wheretogonow said:

How is independent living Luke?

Can I ask are you taking supplements or anything?

It's ok, I'm struggling with a lot of other stressors in life that aren't related to this illness but they are making everything harder. It's both a good and a bad thing being independent, I probably did it a bit too early but I'm managing, sometimes managing well, sometimes only just.

I'm not taking anything.

17 hours ago, Its-me-Rosie said:

Sounds like you’ve made a bit of progress the past few months.

Very much so, I'm just still very much still in it. Thank you for dropping by.

Anyway, I had a day where I felt pretty ok on Sunday, the least unwell I've felt since all of this with very minor symptoms. Very encouraging.

However, I caught a nasty virus that came on on Monday and not only was that quite a severe one in terms of viral symptoms, it has flared up the WD a bit as well. It's very difficult to deal with but again, I'm managing. My most persistent WD symptoms have feeling very tired, a bit unwell etc. so adding this ontop is pretty brutal. I'm also just so tired of being physically unwell at this point.

I had what I think was covid about 13 months ago and I did eventually recover out of that and go back to where I was before it, so I am reasonably confident that this viral illness won't cause a major setback, but being ill all the time is pretty miserable. I feel as though a lot of people in WD communities struggle to understand this.

Sorry to hear hope the fatigue gets better

How is living alone like? Is it hard?

On 10/14/2026 at 8:48 AM, Luke said:

However, I caught a nasty virus that came on on Monday

I notice that viruses tend to come on when my system relaxes more. During the fight or flight withdrawal I don’t get viral infections at all. Maybe your system eased off a bit more, leaving you more susceptible.

I would also recommend wearing a mask to reduce sickness.

Edited Thursday at 09:58 PM3 days by Erimus

I hope you're feeling better soon, Luke. And if I understand your final statement, I find it baffling that people in WD circles don't take defending against sickness more seriously as well.

The statistical likelihood is that at least 10% of those here are suffering chronic symptoms from a post-viral illness (the one that will not be named, and others) that they may attribute to WD, but in fact isn't. I certainly agree with Erimus' final point, as much as I hate it. If there is one thing I've learned in the last number of years, it is that the public's perception of the mildness of SARSCoV2, and what the scientific literature actually says about it, could not possibly be farther apart. And I don't mean a few scary cherry-picked papers, I mean a mountainous pile of bad news in prestigious journals coming out like clockwork for years. One mustn't mistake the mildness of an ACUTE infection with how much damage was or wasn't done, and what the LONG-TERM implications will be, of even an asymptomatic infection.

One final point since I'm already ranting. There is no reason we have to put up with being sick with airborne pathogens at this point in time; the reason we do, is that as a society we choose to continue doing so. Technologies exist, such as far-UVC lighting (the heavy hitter) and air filtration (and possibly others), that together will, IMO, end airborne pathogen spread. Unfortunately life is still very cheap, and we just don't want to spend the few pennies it would cost on a population level to upgrade our infrastructure with these. This could not only end colds, flu, the C-word etc but also defend against future pandemics, which have about a 3% chance of hitting every year, and as we know, relatively minor one's like that which just occurred cost 10s of trillions of dollars to REACT to. Rather than reacting, defending against them with the above-mentioned tech has been calculated to have a return on investment of anywhere from $40-$200 per dollar spent - an unimaginably high ROI. Luckily, that tech is going to get radically cheaper, and when it does it will be everywhere - and it needs to be for it to work REALLY well because it is a network effect technology.

When you eat at a restaurant you are certain there isn't cholera in the water, or nuclear waste in your fish and chips or whatever. That's because we regulate those things and hopefully sooner than later society can acknowledge the horrific financial and human cost of not regulating and cleaning the air, and deal with it.

Edited Friday at 01:15 AM3 days by N2deep

hope you are doing well

13 hours ago, wheretogonow said:

How is living alone like? Is it hard?

Difficult, other than on occasional days when I've been doing a bit better.

11 hours ago, Erimus said:

I notice that viruses tend to come on when my system relaxes more. During the fight or flight withdrawal I don’t get viral infections at all. Maybe your system eased off a bit more, leaving you more susceptible.

I would also recommend wearing a mask to reduce sickness.

Maybe. I felt like several weeks ago I was fighting something off, kept getting a mildly irritated throat, but it passed.

Now, I'm really quite ill with this virus ontop of WD.

Most of the time I'm really stressed, constantly. I've plenty of real things to be stressed about, WD causes a deep, physical stress feeling as well and then I've been dealing with physical unwellness, exhaustion and struggling for years now. I do a job that's levels below what I did before getting ill, for less pay and that's a constant struggle battling against physical unwellness. It's massively stressful and adding more unwellness ontop and being sick and unable to work again is not helping either.

My sister has a particularly severe case of long covid, so every viral illness I worry will be what ends any semblance of improvement and functional living I've fought to get back to.

I'm struggling a lot emotionally, and with physical fatigue. Physical fatigue has absolutely plagued me throughout my withdrawal, so who knows what's this virus laying me out or what's just a flare up of the same old ****. It's probably both. Either way, I'm years into battling fatigue, which for a long time was extremely severe. I'm so, so sick of it.

8 hours ago, N2deep said:

I hope you're feeling better soon, Luke. And if I understand your final statement, I find it baffling that people in WD circles don't take defending against sickness more seriously as well.

Thanks.

What I was actually saying is that within WD communities most people don't understand what it's like to significantly physically harmed for years. I'm regularly told I've no idea how "bad" it can get being anxious, by people hitting the gym, with active social lives who have worked throughout WD.

Few are misfortunate enough to understand the utter misery that comes from being physically unwell for years on end. I spend most of my time on here trying to comfort and support people who are doing much better than I was in the situation/timeframe, or who are clearly improving far earlier than I ever did, and in some cases are better at months off than I am now. I point them to the reasons they have to be optimistic, while wondering what my own are.

Discussion of someone like Angela Peacock usually revolves around how severe and long-lasting her withdrawal was. She absolutely did suffer, but she was doing things physically that I could not throughout, and was much, much better than me at 3 years off- her videos all say things like people shouldn't worry about hearing about long term cases because at 3+ years people are doing okay and having good lives despite some lingering symptoms.

The thing is, she's right. She was a particularly bad case, and even then at 3+ years really seeing the light. The question is then, how do I feel to have been worse and to be struggling loads way past that, and all from short term use of one drug?

In recent months I've had days here and there where it has been better, and was hopeful even though it's still miserable to live month to month where maybe 3 days out of a month I'm not struggling through physical unwellness and fatigue. That's not a "good life" to have reached after this many years of suffering, and oh boy, did I suffer.

Now it feels like I've been hit with a sledgehammer. I hope it's something that's relatively temporary and I'll recover out of it and it doesn't significantly set my health back longer term because to be truthful if it does I don't want to live that way for more years. I'm still having what are clearly viral symptoms so I'm trying to keep hope that I just need more days to recover from it and that will be that.

As for taking viral illness seriously, my sister is still disabled from long covid and will have been for 5 years in a few months. She spent a long time totally bedbound unable to tolerate noise and light, with earplugs and an eyemask. Then, she spent a long time only going out being pushed in a wheelchair.

I've seen firsthand how a viral illness can utterly destroy every aspect of a person's health and wellbeing, and this was a significant factor in me taking mirtazapine in the first place. Every time I have a virus, I worry that I am susceptible to this outcome like my sister is, and that it will do the same to me.

I take it seriously, but all I can do in terms of taking it seriously is to stress about it. It's just another thing on the list.

At what point did you think reinstatement was too risky @Luke ?

All the best

I discussed it a bit early on with SA staff and members. They leaned in favour of not reinstating due to the short time I'd been on the drug. That said, I don't think I managed to get across how severely ill and impaired I was- I think they're used to everyone saying they're the worst ever etc.

In any case though, I had never tolerated the drug well, and spent the entire time on it trying to get any doctor to acknowledge that I was having an adverse reaction to it. So, maybe reinstating might have helped and saved me years of suffering, but there's also a chance it would have caused years of suffering anyway whilst trying to manage a taper.

The drug began harming me from day 1.

Thanks for the reply @Luke . I knew I was having a bad reaction to escitalopram since week 1 but stupidly put up with 10mg for 9 weeks.

And now when I've dropped to 5mg the withdrawal just seems to be getting more aggressive as the weeks go by. So confused what to do