It’s three o’clock in the morning. You seem to have been having a good sleep. And then they arrive. You are in terror, not with ghosts and monster of your youth. You fear for yourself. Something terrible is going to happen to you . . . soon. You’re going to be in a car wreck today. Your boss is going to find out about your daily struggles and fire you. Your wife is going to die suddenly. No, you’re going to die a slow painful death. Your paranoia knows no bounds. And this has happened before. In fact, it happens almost every night. You never get back to sleep.
Welcome to one of the worst things that manifest themselves as you battle clinical depression. The paranoia of the night is what your therapist calls the night terrors. Is there no cure for it?
You get up that morning tired and confused. Is last night’s terror going to come true? Is something else bad going to happen? You go off to work for another day of struggles. You manage to make it through the day but dread coming home for another evening of dark thoughts and another night of the terrors. Your wife, who first noticed your deterioration and got you to your doctor, once again asks if there is anything that can be done. Is there is anyone else you can see? Each week you survive the five days of work, but on Saturday, you just cannot hold yourself together anymore. You are fed up, dissatisfied with everything, and start arguments about any little thing, real or perceived. Your wife and family try to calm you down and avoid annoying you. But it is becoming a struggle for them too. Your wife is showing signs of anxiety. Your kids avoid you as much as possible. But that’s their problem, not yours.
Your family doctor listened to you and your wife and told you that he thought you were depressed. He referred you to a psychiatrist. You have consulted with the psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist. They are still trying to help. Your psychologist listens to you and assures you that he fully understands your feelings and tries to instill ideas on how to improve your sleep and your behavior. Your psychiatrist has prescribed drugs to address you condition, several drugs over the past few years. Some don’t help at all. Some help for a while and then something will change, and they are no longer effective. So, you keep going through the worst six weeks again. For three weeks you have to stop taking you last medication and quickly sink back into the depths. Your new prescription then starts and take another two to three weeks to become fully effective. Your hope rises that this is the one. It seems to be the one for a matter of weeks or even months, then it too fails. You threaten to quit all medication and then you really sink back to the depths. This goes on for about ten years. At least a couple of tries each year. You’re discouraged which adds to the toll of depression.
Reason and the pleading from your wife finally convince you to give it one more try. You have no reason to believe that this will be any different from previous tries. Your psychiatrist now wants you to try a combination. The two drugs look familiar. You have taken both of them each previously. Neither seemed to work by itself. Will the combination be any better? But you get them and start on them. You start to fell better. Will it last? As the weeks and months go by, they continue to work. You feel better. More optimistic. This turns out to be the answer to all of your prayers for the past many years of disappointment and anguish. There is now no way you are ever going to let these wonder drugs go. You feel normal again. No more night terrors.
