Okay, I give in.
I've resisted medication for so many years now, reasoning that I'd be better learning to manage depressive episodes myself than have to depend on a chemical prop, something I've always have a fear of. And to an extent it's been working, I'm better at recognising the signs and communicating them, and trying to at least batten down the hatches before I go under, and serious episodes seem to be further apart and shorter.
But this past few weeks, despite being aware of my rapid descent, and identifying no clear cause whatsoever, I've just kept sliding. I've managed to remain civil to my loved ones, I haven't snapped at anyone, I've dragged myself into work six days a week and staggered around, but everything else, EVERYTHING else has been a nightmare. I've been unable to complete the simplest task (including two important contracts that I've now totally screwed) to deal with bills, phonecalls and emails, to prepare a meal, to be remotely supportive or helpful to friends and family or even respond to them, to stop feeling like a sucking black pit in my thorax is devouring me every single minute, sleeping or waking. I am effectively dead inside, a lumbering barely-functioning zombie that smiles and says 'good morning' and chats cheerily about the weather (or the Prog) even though everything behind my eyes is a howling wasteland and I'm as much use to those around me as dead battery.
I'm trying every coping mechanism I have ever heard of, or have had any success with in the past, and all it does is turn me into a Potemkin village of a person. I think, finally, I need to go down the chemical route, but I can't even seem to manage tackling that.
Allowing that no-one here is a doctor or an expert, and I'm not going to act on anyone's advice, what are my likely options here once (if) I do approach my GP? What sort of drugs are prescribed these days, and what do they do?
