What getting off your meds is like
This is my third day without my med.
I thought it would be prudent to talk about what going off my med has felt like so if I ever thought about going on one again, I could come back and read this and realize that coming off it is even worse than the bad feelings that made you go on it in the first place.
Very brief backstory of why I have taken antidepressants for the last 15 years:
Mom thought I might be depressed when I was 18 and had a breakup that I was apparently acting a little nutty about. So we went to her doctor, who, if my memory serves me, was basically a Stepford wife. A very thin, beautiful, and beautifully-made-up, rich middle-aged woman who seemed happy in a very detached kind of way - in other words, the kind of woman all my spidey senses tell me tohate immediately distrust, which is probably not great when you are there to talk to her about depression and trust her judgment on whether you are depressed.
So she put me on Lexapro, which I took for about 5 years until I had an even worse breakup that sent me totally off the rails. As in lying on the couch scream-crying for hours, writing a 4 page handwritten letter describing how I wasn't really crazy, just really depressed, and please don't leave me, and leaving it on the guy's doorstep (I really don't think I used the mailbox), then going to the Humane Society and adopting a dog. (That kind of going off the rails is very scary and awful but if it results in getting Tucker, one of the best dogs who ever lived, it was worth it.)
Finally I stopped crying long enough to remember "Sad. Go to doctor." So I did. This doctor was middle aged hippie/homeopath type and I loved her and she put me on a much more serious antidepressant called Pristiq. (The main difference between Lexpro [an SSRI] and Pristiq [an SNRI] is that Lexapro keeps more serotonin in your brain to keep you happy, and Pristiq keeps more serotonin AND more norepinephrine in your brain, to give you slightly better chances of being happy than on an SSRI). Then a year or so later she doubled the dose. So I was now seriously dependent on a lot of a medicine that gave my brain more of two neurotransmitters that were responsible for keeping me happy.
That was back in 2009. I did well on Pristiq for the next 8 years.
Then, last year, something in my brain started to unravel.
I was on a weekend trip to Asheville with my quasi-boyfriend K for his birthday, and we were about to go to the Biltmore, which I had never been to before. I had woken up at the ungodly hour of 6 that morning and started reading all about the Biltmore and was so excited to go see it all.
When we got there, I waited in the car while he went in to get our tickets. And sitting there in his truck, I turned. Dorian Gray style. But in my head.
I got my phone out, opened a new Note, and started writing. Here is what I wrote:
11/5/2016
Feeling very sad. Irritated. Sad after gave K his birthday presents. Feel like he is critical of me. Feels like he is not interested in me. I'm invisible to him. He doesn't talk to me. No conversations. Doesn't make me feel special. Should break up with him. I'm very lonely. Want to be by myself or just go to sleep. Have to try and be happy today because it's his birthday. Just feel so sad and lonely. Just want my dog and to sleep. He will probably think I'm crazy or moody or nuts and that it's no wonder I'm single. But he is not interested in me anyway so why should I be surprised?
When he got back to the car, I had my sunglasses on and had basically pulled it back together and so he didn't know about my meltdown. We had a good time at the Biltmore except I cried randomly a few times and he had no idea what was going on.
After the tour, it was time to go to the restaurant where I had made birthday reservations. Except we didn't have time to go to the restaurant, because we took the trolley to the wrong parking lot before the winery or something like that, which he blamed me for but I blamed him for because -- well, you get the picture. The important thing is, we didn't go to that restaurant, and at the winery I got very, very angry at him about it. I started crying in the wine tasting room and couldn't stop. I also couldn't talk to him because I knew that would make even more of a scene.
And did I mention K is basically the nicest person in the whole world? Ruining the birthday of the nicest person in the world when he has paid like a thousand dollars to take you to Asheville for his birthday is a highly recommended strategy for feeling like the worst person in the world.
I somehow managed to calm down enough (now that I think about it, maybe it was all the wine samples) to realize it really didn't matter what restaurant we ate at.We went to one there at the winery, it was great, and the rest of our weekend was OK.
(Here is how it finally ended with K: the election happened and I dumped him after learning that not only did he vote for Donald Trump, he was happy about it. K was great in many ways, but I just can't deal with that.)
So then I started dating someone else in December. J was another variation of the nicest guy in the world. We mostly had great conversation and lots of fun and I dearly loved his chilrdren, who dearly loved my dog, and it felt like a match made in heaven except I sometimes found myself getting very angry/irritated/impatient with him, and that it felt a lot like the way it had felt with K.
Then I realized these feeling always happened during PMS.
I started googling "severe PMS" and learned about PMDD and decided I had it. Then I realized if I had that, maybe the Stepford Wife and the hippie were both wrong and that I am not really depressed and that actually, PMS/PMDD is what is making my brain hate me. So I talked to my doctor Brittany about it, and she agreed that all of that sounded legit and that she could help me get off Pristiq, but that also she would be happy to refer me to a psychiatrist for the process. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so we found a clinic, I saw a therapist a couple times and told her about my issues and my self-diagnosis, then I saw the psychiatrist, who worked out a 3-month tapering plan for me to come off the Pristiq.
Which brings me to the present, on my third day without it in my system.
Here is what the past 28 hours have been like:
Yesterday morning, head felt swimmy (hello, brain zaps!) and I felt very sad. I accidentally picked a fight with Jon and more or less cornered him into breaking up with me. Then another friend said something else that set me off, and I had a meltdown at work and packed up all my stuff and texted my boss that I needed to take some sick time. I was in hysterical tears by the time I got to the car and bawled like a hyena (I know we usually think of hyenas as laughing but if you can imagine a crying hyena, that's what I was doing) all the way to Taco Bell, and then placed my order, cried all the way home, and forced myself to eat it. I slept all afternoon, then ordered a very large pizza, ate 3 cheese sticks in the car on the way home, ate the pizza when I got home and watched four episodes of Red Oaks, tried to drink a glass of wine because that's relaxing, then realized I didn't have the energy to drink it but I did have the energy to pour it back into the bottle. Small victories. Then went to bed and listened to a couple meditation podcasts, one of which was about healing through the divine feminine and letting love flow. Woke up this morning, drank some coffee, then around 10:30 remembered I had pizza. Told myself, "Maybe just two little cheese sticks!" then ended up eating 2 more cheese sticks and two pieces of pizza. All this before 11:00. Just think of it not so much as compulsive overeating (which is questionable therapy, I know, but I promise it works) but more like a really early lunch.
But guess what? When I woke up this morning today, I felt like I was actually happy-on-waking for the first time in possibly months. And especially after not having experienced it for a long time, morning happiness feels really good. So good that I even vacuumed. I suspect it's all that divine feminine healing energy flowing through me now. Maybe if I listen to her again tonight, I will wake up tomorrow inspired to clean my shower.
My head is still swimmy, but I am not telling myself what a terrible person I am, how nobody will ever love me, not even my dog. Today I even kind of feel like my dog might love me. And that feels like a step in the right direction.
PS: Is it normal to be a little sad about vacuuming up dog hair, because when you're done you throw it away, so aren't you throwing away part of your dog?
I thought it would be prudent to talk about what going off my med has felt like so if I ever thought about going on one again, I could come back and read this and realize that coming off it is even worse than the bad feelings that made you go on it in the first place.
Very brief backstory of why I have taken antidepressants for the last 15 years:
Mom thought I might be depressed when I was 18 and had a breakup that I was apparently acting a little nutty about. So we went to her doctor, who, if my memory serves me, was basically a Stepford wife. A very thin, beautiful, and beautifully-made-up, rich middle-aged woman who seemed happy in a very detached kind of way - in other words, the kind of woman all my spidey senses tell me to
So she put me on Lexapro, which I took for about 5 years until I had an even worse breakup that sent me totally off the rails. As in lying on the couch scream-crying for hours, writing a 4 page handwritten letter describing how I wasn't really crazy, just really depressed, and please don't leave me, and leaving it on the guy's doorstep (I really don't think I used the mailbox), then going to the Humane Society and adopting a dog. (That kind of going off the rails is very scary and awful but if it results in getting Tucker, one of the best dogs who ever lived, it was worth it.)
Finally I stopped crying long enough to remember "Sad. Go to doctor." So I did. This doctor was middle aged hippie/homeopath type and I loved her and she put me on a much more serious antidepressant called Pristiq. (The main difference between Lexpro [an SSRI] and Pristiq [an SNRI] is that Lexapro keeps more serotonin in your brain to keep you happy, and Pristiq keeps more serotonin AND more norepinephrine in your brain, to give you slightly better chances of being happy than on an SSRI). Then a year or so later she doubled the dose. So I was now seriously dependent on a lot of a medicine that gave my brain more of two neurotransmitters that were responsible for keeping me happy.
That was back in 2009. I did well on Pristiq for the next 8 years.
Then, last year, something in my brain started to unravel.
I was on a weekend trip to Asheville with my quasi-boyfriend K for his birthday, and we were about to go to the Biltmore, which I had never been to before. I had woken up at the ungodly hour of 6 that morning and started reading all about the Biltmore and was so excited to go see it all.
When we got there, I waited in the car while he went in to get our tickets. And sitting there in his truck, I turned. Dorian Gray style. But in my head.
I got my phone out, opened a new Note, and started writing. Here is what I wrote:
11/5/2016
Feeling very sad. Irritated. Sad after gave K his birthday presents. Feel like he is critical of me. Feels like he is not interested in me. I'm invisible to him. He doesn't talk to me. No conversations. Doesn't make me feel special. Should break up with him. I'm very lonely. Want to be by myself or just go to sleep. Have to try and be happy today because it's his birthday. Just feel so sad and lonely. Just want my dog and to sleep. He will probably think I'm crazy or moody or nuts and that it's no wonder I'm single. But he is not interested in me anyway so why should I be surprised?
When he got back to the car, I had my sunglasses on and had basically pulled it back together and so he didn't know about my meltdown. We had a good time at the Biltmore except I cried randomly a few times and he had no idea what was going on.
After the tour, it was time to go to the restaurant where I had made birthday reservations. Except we didn't have time to go to the restaurant, because we took the trolley to the wrong parking lot before the winery or something like that, which he blamed me for but I blamed him for because -- well, you get the picture. The important thing is, we didn't go to that restaurant, and at the winery I got very, very angry at him about it. I started crying in the wine tasting room and couldn't stop. I also couldn't talk to him because I knew that would make even more of a scene.
And did I mention K is basically the nicest person in the whole world? Ruining the birthday of the nicest person in the world when he has paid like a thousand dollars to take you to Asheville for his birthday is a highly recommended strategy for feeling like the worst person in the world.
I somehow managed to calm down enough (now that I think about it, maybe it was all the wine samples) to realize it really didn't matter what restaurant we ate at.We went to one there at the winery, it was great, and the rest of our weekend was OK.
(Here is how it finally ended with K: the election happened and I dumped him after learning that not only did he vote for Donald Trump, he was happy about it. K was great in many ways, but I just can't deal with that.)
So then I started dating someone else in December. J was another variation of the nicest guy in the world. We mostly had great conversation and lots of fun and I dearly loved his chilrdren, who dearly loved my dog, and it felt like a match made in heaven except I sometimes found myself getting very angry/irritated/impatient with him, and that it felt a lot like the way it had felt with K.
Then I realized these feeling always happened during PMS.
I started googling "severe PMS" and learned about PMDD and decided I had it. Then I realized if I had that, maybe the Stepford Wife and the hippie were both wrong and that I am not really depressed and that actually, PMS/PMDD is what is making my brain hate me. So I talked to my doctor Brittany about it, and she agreed that all of that sounded legit and that she could help me get off Pristiq, but that also she would be happy to refer me to a psychiatrist for the process. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so we found a clinic, I saw a therapist a couple times and told her about my issues and my self-diagnosis, then I saw the psychiatrist, who worked out a 3-month tapering plan for me to come off the Pristiq.
Which brings me to the present, on my third day without it in my system.
Here is what the past 28 hours have been like:
Yesterday morning, head felt swimmy (hello, brain zaps!) and I felt very sad. I accidentally picked a fight with Jon and more or less cornered him into breaking up with me. Then another friend said something else that set me off, and I had a meltdown at work and packed up all my stuff and texted my boss that I needed to take some sick time. I was in hysterical tears by the time I got to the car and bawled like a hyena (I know we usually think of hyenas as laughing but if you can imagine a crying hyena, that's what I was doing) all the way to Taco Bell, and then placed my order, cried all the way home, and forced myself to eat it. I slept all afternoon, then ordered a very large pizza, ate 3 cheese sticks in the car on the way home, ate the pizza when I got home and watched four episodes of Red Oaks, tried to drink a glass of wine because that's relaxing, then realized I didn't have the energy to drink it but I did have the energy to pour it back into the bottle. Small victories. Then went to bed and listened to a couple meditation podcasts, one of which was about healing through the divine feminine and letting love flow. Woke up this morning, drank some coffee, then around 10:30 remembered I had pizza. Told myself, "Maybe just two little cheese sticks!" then ended up eating 2 more cheese sticks and two pieces of pizza. All this before 11:00. Just think of it not so much as compulsive overeating (which is questionable therapy, I know, but I promise it works) but more like a really early lunch.
But guess what? When I woke up this morning today, I felt like I was actually happy-on-waking for the first time in possibly months. And especially after not having experienced it for a long time, morning happiness feels really good. So good that I even vacuumed. I suspect it's all that divine feminine healing energy flowing through me now. Maybe if I listen to her again tonight, I will wake up tomorrow inspired to clean my shower.
My head is still swimmy, but I am not telling myself what a terrible person I am, how nobody will ever love me, not even my dog. Today I even kind of feel like my dog might love me. And that feels like a step in the right direction.
PS: Is it normal to be a little sad about vacuuming up dog hair, because when you're done you throw it away, so aren't you throwing away part of your dog?
Comments
Post a Comment