Hey, I'm sorry things are so rough for you, but I'm glad you're out of the hospital.
While I don't have everything figured out, drugs are something I feel I'm pretty good at. I'm going to offer up some of the lessons I've learned, but if you feel they don't apply to you or you weren't looking for advice on this subject then I'm sorry, just ignore me.
But I'm assuming a psychiatrist is prescribing whatever you're on, and not just a general practitioner? If not, that's where you should be going. GP's are pretty clueless, in my experience. Mine leaves the room to google it every time I ask a question :/
Once you've got a psych, if you don't already, come up with a list of symptoms you're trying to address and ask them to recommend as many different things to help those symptoms as possible. Write down the names of any drugs they recommend. Then go home and look up each of the drugs on wikipedia or wherever else. Consider if you're prone to certain types of side effects, or if you tend to be sensitive to all of them like me, and decide on each drug on a case by case basis.
If the side effects are acceptable, check out how long the drugs have been around. Try to avoid brand new drugs that just hit the market in the last few years if you can, though sometimes you just can't. The longer the drug has been on the market the better. If something has the potential for addiction or interacts with other drugs or alcohol in a dangerous way you should probably stay away from it if you can help it.
If you start something on a trial period, keep an eye on exactly what it's doing to you. You might even consider starting a journal of how you feel, mentally and physically, to more accurately track the changes. If you don't like what it's doing then talk to them about tweaking the dose to minimize side effects or coming off of it and going to the next thing. Always start on a low dose of whatever it is. You can increase it later, with their supervision.
Psychiatrists are legalized drug pushers, nothing more. Don't take something just because they recommend it, try to objectively weigh if it will do any good versus the potential for harm it brings.
Your anxiety can be controlled with medication. And so can your insomnia. I take stuff for both of those things, but it took forever to get those two problems even somewhat under control. I used to just take whatever the psych recommended and then react horribly to it because it wasn't right for me. I stopped taking anything at all for years, and just lived with the symptoms. But these aren't things you have to live with, it just takes using your psych as the tool they are.
Be careful with things to help you sleep though, they tend to be very dangerous. The stuff I take every night so that I can calm down enough to sleep has no potential for addiction and is pretty much impossible to OD on. Try to find things like that if you can. Before I got this prescription I'd be up for 24+ hours a lot and could never keep steady, normal person hours. Now I go to sleep every night no matter how bad my day was or how much I have to worry about. It makes all the difference in the world for my ability to function in the day to day.
Anyway, I hope this advice is somewhat useful, and that I'll continue seeing you around the forums. You have a really interesting perspective on things
Be well.
