I'm in my own personal version of hell right now. I've been on antidepressants for at least 5 years. I had suffered with various degrees of depression since I was a teen. Eventually I found that I couldn't function as a wife and mother in the manner that I wanted to in that state so I did something positive about it. I found a psych and got put on prozac. Things got better, lots better. Then the generic form of Prozac came out and insurance would only pay for that and I think my body also was building an immunity or something and the generic didn't work as well. Dr. switched me to Zoloft, and slowly started raising my dosage every 6 mos. or so. Even when the generic came out it still worked for me. Until the last year or so and it seemed to be working almost too well. I was in a fog a lot of the time. At first I attributed a lot of my mental fades to menopause brought on by my hysterectomy. Also I wanted to care about things but I just didn't. I've also put on almost 40 pounds since going on the meds. On top of all that, my sex drive has crashed and burned. Again, I was tempted to attribute that to the hysterectomy but it was circling the bowl for a LONG time before that, actually, the hyst. helped things for a short time. Also my drinking has really started to get out of control over the past couple years. More on that later...
All that said, when my Rx ran out 3 weeks ago I didn't refill it. I read accounts online about the pros and cons of going "cold turkey" versus weaning yourself off gradually. Neither way sounded pleasant and I'm all for quick and dirty so there you go. The effects have been both good and bad.
WARNING!: There will be definite instances of TMI in the rest of this post. You were warned.
Stage One:
Emotional symptoms of withdrawal: Giddiness, almost a constant feeling of being intoxicated or high. Ex. on the way to church the first Sunday I said something that struck me as funny and started giggling and snorting like a drunk bimbo on VH1.
Physical symptoms: extreme gastric distress. Stay close to a toilet and be sure you are well stocked up on Charmin. Bloating and gas that is like you've had a bean burrito for breakfast, hard boiled eggs, chili for lunch, and baked beans and beer for dinner. Subsequently your nether regions start to feel like a baby that has sat too long in a dirty Pampers.
Stage Two:
Emotion symptoms: Manic phase begins. The fog is lifted and you can not only see but actually give a shit about the state of your surroundings. You start doing something about it. Cupboards, cabinets, closets, basements, etc. etc. are cleaned, purged, organized and downright standing tall. You stay up until 3am changing, updating, downloading, tweaking and otherwise messing up your blog. Once you've messed it up and put it back to rights, you begin making daily, sometimes hourly entries and obsessively check in multiple times a day to see if you received any comments. If you aren't careful, paranoia can start to set in. You also begin to realize what a slacker mom you've been lately and start monitoring you teenager's web usage and follow through with the elementary age daughter's work habits and make her start getting her homework done on time, practice her musical intrument and make both of them start to pick up after themselves.
Physical symptoms: The flaming ass of doom is starting to get some relief. Desire for alcohol is actually diminishing. Now that you can actually feel emotions, good and bad, your desire to artificially create those amplified feelings through intoxication dimishes. Appetite and hunger seems to be dimishing too. Sleep patterns are still a little wonky because of the manic stage, some nights you can't fall asleep and are up super early and later in the week you pay for it with fatigue.
Stage Three:
Emotional symptoms: Holy Crap! You have emotions again! The manic stage is still in full swing but at times is getting dangerously close to obsessiveness. (see: blogging insanity above!) The depression is starting to make itself known again too. When you do allow yourself some down-time you begin to worry about stupid things. Feelings of inadequecy are coming back, you worry that if people really knew what a whack-job you *really* were they wouldn't like you. What if you lose your "funny" and just become "angry" instead of "snarky." Little things like a innocent comment overheard in a group of friends or *odd* reaction to a question about your child from another parent/friend hurt your feelings.
Physical symptoms: The worst of it are over, or so you think. You are motivated to walk with your friends at the dog park (except when it is 5° outside!) and meet your BFF at the gym. The exercise helps you sleep better and keeps the endorphins up. But then you get this pain in your back. At first you think you overworked or pulled something at the gym. Then the next day it feels like your bra hook has chafed you. Then it itches and you realize you have a rash of some kind. You put some stuff the derm gave you last winter for a similar rash. Then even your softest jammies feel like they are make from fiberglass batting and the "rash" feels like hot burning size 000 knitting needles poking in your back and it is spreading around to the side, under your arm and even your boob is on fire. Enter the internet and a self diagnosis of shingles.
Currently I'm somewhere in the midst of Stage Three. After two nights of being up well past midnight and awake before 7am, I went to sleep before 10pm last night and slept like a hibernating bear. If I hadn't needed to follow through on the promise I made my youngest dd's teacher yesterday to be sure she was at school at least 15 minutes before the bell rings with all her needed learning materials and completed homework, my overly full bladder, my dh's alarm also waking me, and the pain in my back and right boob, I'd probably still be there now at 2:30pm. For the first 4 hours of my day today I felt very fragile. I was so fatigued, physically and mentally. I kept finding myself crying, because of my emotions and because of my physical discomfort. I feel like I've been run over by a train after being rode hard and put up wet.
I don't know what the next stage will be. I have an appointment with my psych Dr in a couple weeks. I really don't want to be on these meds any more. If worse comes to worse and I realize that I have to be on SOMETHING, I'll look into a different one, probably Wellbutrin. From here on out the only monkey I want on my back is this one.
As far as the shingles thing I guess I'll have to suck it up and make an appt. with my GP. I'm not sure if there is anything they can really do for it. It is a virus and there isn't a real "cure" only treatments.
For now I'm just going to try to keep on keeping on (you are all saying to yourselves, stop with the stupid metaphors and cliched sayings, you sound like Dr. Phil!!!) I think an afternoon at knitting circle tomorrow and more stash enhancement might be some pretty damn fine therapy too.
You got guts, girl. Speak the truth. (We can take it!) Knitting circle awaits you and your flaming boob of pain. Bring it on...don't make us have to come hunt you down!
ReplyDeleteI admire your candor, and I LOVE your humor. I felt bad laughing at your withdrawl symptoms, but then I realized that's what you wanted us to do! My own cold turkey experience was more like stepping out of a giant bodysuit of nice and finding that the flaming bitch I thought I'd conqurered was still in there all the time, snarling and gnashing, awaiting her chance escape the Pollyanna suit and make her presence known. Needless to say, it didn't go over well with my family. As far as the obsessive cleaning, my husband would have been very glad to see that, but unfortunately, that was not a symptom I share with you. It might take the health dept. to induce a cleaning spree in me. Fortunately, I'm blessed to have a maid.
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