EPTTo give some basic background - it goes back a few years. I'll tl;dr at the end of this section. Just scroll past this if you need to.
The not very recent past -
In 2009 I had a landlord burn down the house in which I was residing on the 23rd of December - I was home for winter break and had to make an emergency trip down, all of my possessions that I had stored there were destroyed though fortunately no one died - this same landlord had 2 people die in a fire a few weeks later. And he was the better of the two options of landlords. It wasn't strictly his fault - he thought the water pipes were frozen and the reality is the water meter was broken and the city refused to look at it when we requested even though the original repair person had warned us that there might be further stuff wrong with it when he repaired it originally. So a heater was pointed at the side of the house and left on for so many hours that it caused a fire, the area where I slept was basically completely burned away - if I hadn't been home for a holiday break I would likely be dead. The landlord admitted to being at least partially at fault for the fire even though it was technically his workers fault - the heater wasn't supposed to be left unsupervised for longer than 15 minutes and they left it unsupervised for more like 8 hours. No one was around to help me move into the new apartment where I wound up living for a year or so, because it was the holidays.
The next semester I had an extremely bad case of pneumonia and was failed for inadaquate presentation of a paper that the professor gave a 100% (the paper, not the presentation). This was a capstone class, the experience made me basically sever all ties with that section of my school - I went from English to Philosophy to finally University Studies when I graduated(my university's name for a General Education degree). At the time I had been diagnosed with a moderate case of GAD and mild/moderate depression. After All the negative developments in row I progressed into MDD and I'm fairly sure I had an episode that lasted for a length of time I can't exactly place - I think it was another year and a half before I accepted I couldn't keep going. Time doesn't move the same at that level of depression or anxiety when you aren't being treated for it. Eventually (In fall of 2011) I realized I couldn't keep going, I reached my breaking point and contacted my family. I moved in with my father at this time (my mother raised me, but my father/stepmother had better resources to deal with me- my stepmother is a pharmacist and former psychologist) and finished the remaining year of my college remotely via internet classes and CLEP exams (I took 6 of these in 1 semester to graduate). I was put into contact with a decent pyschiatrist eventually, psychologists seem... confused by me and my family in general. I was also formally diagnosed with some other things (mainly idiopathic childhood-onset delayed-phase sleep disorder by a sleep specialist - because it was childhood onset apparently it was worse than normal and probably why I'm typing this at 5:30 AM after waking up yesterday at 8 PM). I've realized I probably had dysthymia from about the age of 10 onwards - when it presents itself at that age it makes the person irritable instead of some of the more obvious symptoms. Throughout all of these experiences I never displayed even the slightest suicidal tendencies or thoughts. I'm pretty sure they would've hospitalized me otherwise as I maxed out whatever things they use to test if you're depressed at any of the doctors I saw.
Anyways, at this point my diagnosis were upgraded to major depressive disorder (unipolar? I can't remember the exact way it's written) and anxiety, unspecified because it wasn't quite GAD, it was some inexplicably intertwined mess of anxiety disorders (some SAD, some GAD, some ??). Essentially after about 6 months of messing with medication there was a regimen that worked out well. I also started dating someone around the end of the medication being figured out (this has basically been the one good thing to come out of all of this - I have a healthy relationship with my SO and I wouldn't have met her without this all - we'll have been dating for 3 years in january). It wound up being more like 8 months before I wound up on a steady regime.
My family has EXTREME reactions to medicines so doctors tend to be very careful (my personal reactions that are most well documented, except for later- hallucinated on levaquin and had an undocumented reaction to abilify - it made me sleep for something like 30 hours straight after the first dose. Trazadone makes me feel hungover, I don't even react well to melatonin). For those curious it wound up being 300 MG wellbutrin XL (this was later bumped to 450 which is the current dosage) and 4 MG of alprazolam daily (xanax - it was actually the fifth anxiolytic that was attempted and the second benziodiazepate. Lorezapam does nothing to me. Literally, nothing)
It could be worse - my maternal grandfather was a violent schizophrenic and my brother almost certainly is a sociopath (he fits every criteria for ASPD perfectly).
My father moved to Florida first half of 2013 and I wound up on my own, was told to find a job and a place to live within two weeks of my birthday. It was a wonderful gift (obvious sarcasm). (I was turning 24). I live in Cincinnati Ohio - I really doubt anyone cares where I live and it's a really large area anyways.
TL;DR - I have major depressive disorder and a severe anxiety disorder, as well as delayed-phase sleep disorder.
Now, as to the current-
In the past year I've worked as an outbound call clerk for a pharmacy benefits manager. All I did was communicate prior authorization outcomes to patients or nurses or doctors (basically, this is whether or not insurance will cover the medication being requested- and we almost always were denying and reading the denial reason). I despise call centers. I hate talking on the phone. Before working at a call center I hated phones and would put talking on one as one of my bottom 10 activities. My job the year before this was AT&T customer service/technical support for their shit ISP (do you want to pay 300$ for 30 mbps internet that we will only guarantee up to 18 mbps? then sign right up)
Basically the medical clerk job got to me. I couldn't take after around 6 months of working there - I was burned out. All the patients I called were on medicare, meaning they were either elderly or had a health condition that was already killing them. I started to have thoughts about how I would rather be dead than in the building. It didn't really occur to me that those qualified as suicidal thoughts until my gf told me that when she heard me describe my work she pondered if she needed to call a suicide hotline. Not too long after that I had a mental breakdown, I was starting to feel physical pain being in the call center - I have no idea why and it continued throughout my next three months of working there (my sister, who is a doctor, muttered something about somaticism or something when I asked her. Said I was internalizing emotions and experiencing them as pain, that it was something she had seen in children in the ER when she did that rotation). And so since I was having suicidal thoughts the medications I was on were changed somewhat - zoloft was added.
And I got serotonin syndrome. I've always been terrified of SSRI medications because of it. I've personally only heard of one person besides myself who has experienced it. I was on the medication for about 15 days. I thought I was just having weird side effect reactions. There are theories as to why I got serotonin syndrome but it was nothing concrete (basically wellbutrin and zoloft are metabolized by the same enzyme). Since I'm fortunate enough to know pharmacists and doctors in my immediate family I was able to ask them about it and they pretty much unanimously told me to stop taking the zoloft immediately. I had developed tremors that covered my entire body by the last time I took it, and I had no idea what the problem was. The shaking was growing worse every day, but I didn't feel feverish until the very last day I took it - when I just called in sick to work and slept the feverish parts off. When I took my temperature later I didn't have one, but I almost certainly had earlier in the day. I was flat out shivering and soaked in sweat. The very next day I saw my therapist and she was able to confirm with my psychiatrist that I had serotonin syndrome (they work for the same group so she was able to get his attention via phone without too much difficulty). The shaking receded slightly after I stopped taking the zoloft but I still had it, my psychiatrist put me on a beta blocker (propanolol) to help with the shaking and it does seem to have helped. That was around the end of august - I still have tremors 4 months later. They seem to no longer be based on physical issues, now they seem to be mostly based on anxiety and in my arms and hands, but the beta blockers are still necessary.
I was working for my employer through a staffing company, my employer offered to hire me on basically in the middle of all of this (september). I accepted, it was a pay raise and I got benefits etc. However my shaking became an issue because I truly didn't know if I could safely drive 20 miles on the interstate safely some days. My shift was also one I didn't want because I did nothing in the last hour. They wanted an ADA accomadation form to change my shift by an hour. Which is absurd - there was literally only one other person who worked my shift, everyone who worked it quit besides me in the time I was there (we're talking between 25-30 people quitting because they refused to change their shifts). I actually did complete all the paperwork but it's kind of dumb, ADA accommodations aren't meant for that. Not really relevant though. What is relevant is that my staffing agency agreed not to contact anyone who had been hired for 3 months after they were hired.
So in November my staffing agency approached me about a job that would pay 3$ more an hour and be with a different company (My workplace was rated the second worst in the US two years in a row - everyone wanted out). They told me that I would start the upcoming monday, so like the second week of november. That was a lie. They told me the next day after basically insisting that I quit my previous employer immediately that it was actually going to be on december 1st when I would start. I just sort of shrugged. The timing didn't occur to me as being weird until later on when I realized that they couldn't have had me start before then because that was when the three months was up - and that they had violated whatever contract they had with my prior employer (who literally barred every direct employee of that staffing agency from ever setting foot on the premise at some point during my tenure, which I didn't really figure out why until after this whole experience).
On the 1st I arrived at my new "assignment". It was another call center. It was a scam. It was a temporary job for anyone who wasn't a pharmacy technician and everyone (out of 20) in the training aside from 2 were pharmacy techs who had been lied to about what the job entailed - none of them were told it was a call center. Our trainer's previous job was telemarketing male enhancement products. I was one of the people who was a non-pharmacy tech. The second day of my work there they caught up on the backlog of orders that needed filed by non-pharmacy techs. On my fourth day I was called and told I was being let go. Their reason was that I hadn't been on time on the first day or something (I was on time. They just told me to ask for the wrong trainers so I wound up confusing someone for about 30 seconds. Basically, it wasn't even a reason that made sense. Oh, and also that I was going to be absent because they were firing me. LOVE that logic. Of course, I'll never work with that staffing agency again - I've talked to my prior employers and they told me the same thing happened with everyone else they hired from that agency).
At the same time as this my brother is declaring bankruptcy and he is reclaiming the car he was letting me use. He told me he was taking it back as of Christmas. My family will support me looking for a job etc. here until the end of the month, at which point if I don't have one I'll be expected to move back in with my mother with whom I have not lived with for 8 years (I'm 25). I'll be permitted to use a vehicle on a temporary basis (1-2 months) if I find a job that I need to drive to. The job market is also way better here. But basically I'll only be able to physically drive to interviews or try to get hired at jobs that require driving before Christmas. There are a few fast food places and like convenience stores/drug stores in walking distance which I guess is where I'll look Tuesday onwards. There is also a bus line but that's a bit harder to work with.
I've been contacted by a few recruiters but they're for jobs that I am not qualified for whatsoever, the closest I came was a medical imaging clerk which I am perfectly qualified for - but if you answer "yes, I have been absent 10 days from my previous job" even if your employer was OK with that and knew in advance that it was almost certain to happen- doesn't matter. No way to get around that. Never been asked it in an interview before. The only people I know in this area really are my girlfriend's family and they don't know of any openings. I'm not native to the area so it's not like I have a big pool of friends to draw on for job openings.
Basically I've been told "your Christmas present is to find a job by Christmas or get the fuck out of where you live." by my family. Over the course of november I lost about 20 pounds - I'm 6'5" and I weigh 198 now- this isn't a good thing. It was because I couldn't afford to eat. My father doesn't want to help me out financially because his wife was upset that they can't afford to remodel the house they now live in (yes, seriously). There's a bit of time from Christmas to New Years but realistically, no one gets hired in that week. This was basically my birthday present the year before. Which is how I wound up doing call center work which anyone could tell you is something I have zero aptitude for. And my Christmas the year before that was a house fire. I'm mostly just kind of stuck. I don't really know if there is anything to be done or that I can do and I despise feeling helpless.
Why the fuck I just wrote this out I don't know. I guess for advice? To see if anyone else has had that kind of experience? (Especially serotonin syndrome)
