Giving It Up

I actually felt a little scared typing in the title of this post. I didn’t want to jinx myself.

My head still feels weird, tingly, like my brain is being microwaved, but I haven’t had one of those horrible pits of blackness in a long time. I am not blogging *much* here, but I thought I’d mention that part, in case somebody’s wondering if it ever gets better. It does.

I have definitely noticed, though, that healing and suffering both tend to come in waves. The weird thing is that the waves of misery get farther and farther apart, and they get less and less severe. Sorry to go all XKCD on y’all, but you end up with a wave like this.

Note that over time, it approaches something like a smooth, straight line, resting comfortably in the sunny region.

So if you happen to be in one of those low, low *low* places, remember to breathe, and wati it out.
This too shall pass.

Some years ago, Roseanne Barr said she didn’t like antidepressants because they made her tolerate things that shouldn’t be tolerated. I think she’s probably right, but I’m kind of sick of noticing all the shit in the world that is intolerable. I think maybe if I’m going to live in this culture, I should take the damn drugs, so I can stand it.

I haven’t been updating much, but apparently five people read this blog in the past week. That’s amazing! Maybe they were bots. If a human comes, would you leave a note, so I know? That’d be so weird!

Anyway, I don’t know if I mentioned that the black hellish darkness from hell comes in waves. I had another wave, but it was, as friends on paxilprogress.org promised, less severe and shorter.

So if you’re having weird experiences after giving up drugs, now that 1. Yes, it’s real, and 2. Yes, it gets better.

Angel

Withdrawal from SSRIs, or “Discontinuation Syndrome,” as the literature calls it, can result in lots of symptoms, including:

anxiety
crying spells
mood swings
irritability
strange dreams
poor concentration
memory loss

dizziness, vertigo, lightheadedness
headache
paresthesia (electric shock-like tingling)
dystonia (gait instability), tremor

nausea or vomiting
diarrhea
chills, sweating
fatigue or lethargy
body aches

I can’t believe it, but apparently it’s true. There is an end to these waves of horrible misery. Folks at PaxilProgress.org reassured me that it’s normal to experience a wave of black-hole-horror at around 4 1/2 - 5 months off, and that it might last six weeks or so, and sure enough, it happened. During that six weeks, I’d have these weird experiences of gut-wrenching misery, which would appear and disappear without warning. Anyway, they’ve been gone for over a week. Yay!

I’ve experienced two distinct kinds of “depression” since quitting the drugs. One is when I experience a feeling I’d rather avoid, like fear, or, worse, shame. Then I can feel like my heart is pounding or my head is going to burst. If I’m a little more aware, I might feel intense sadness and fear, but more often I react to it by being irritable and yelling at people for things I judge to be transgressions. I’ll shame them, to avoid seeing my own shame. This is really hard to look at, admit to, but these are the feelings and experiences I’ve been covering up with my addiction of choice, antidepressants.

But the black holes are another kind of “depression” that just weren’t present before I started taking SSRIs. It’s a dark cloud that descends over me and suffocates me, and then, in a day or so, lifts for no apparent reason. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that it’s complete insanity. I just can’t imagine that life can be anything but horrid and miserable, and I want nothing more than to die. When this happens, so far I’ve stuck to my conviction that my kids and family need me, and I must not kill myself. It gets difficult though, because I begin to forget that they need me. But even when I manage to remember the truth, I will sit and rock and cry and wish that I could go to sleep and not wake up. Or I will just wait. I’ll sit, and stare, and wait for death to come.

And then, after some hours, I’ll look up and say, “What the hell was that?” And suddenly, I’m sane again.

I know the shrinks say that this is just “depression” and it’s the reason I was given anti-depressants in the first place. But I never experienced this before starting the drugs. I know so many other folks who say the same thing. And even folks who were put on the drugs for some other diagnosis besides depression say that these depressions came on as soon as they began withdrawal. (I began withdrawal years ago, because I would “forget” the meds for days or weeks at a time. Turns out this isn’t a good idea.)

I’m wondering how many folks were just a little melancholy, having feelings they didn’t know what to do with, and then were completely screwed up by anti-depressants. In fact, I’m wondering if the drugs have helped anybody.

Wow, today was hard. I’m 5 months off the Celexa, and friends on paxilprogress.org tell me that that’s a very common period to have a wave of horrible symptoms, and that it will pass.

I woke up thinking that my pain was just going to get worse and worse until I couldn’t move anymore, and that my house would get messier and messier until I couldn’t live in it anymore, and bills would keep piling up until we lost everything. This horror and hopelessness has been so oppressive…

I decided this morning that I was going to go back on Celexa, and posted about it on the forum at paxilprogress. But I am happy to report that I got through the whole day without taking anything, and things actually started looking up. It’s always mysterious to me how I come out of these black holes, but I did, once again.

Lately, I’ve felt like I could constantly see something horrible out of the corner of my mind. But for most of today (after the earliest part) I’ve felt very aware of the darkness, but in the place where the darkness is usually lurking, something light was lurking instead. I could remember, for example, the theories I have about how we are all one and stuff. And even though I couldn’t *feel* it, remembering it helped me to climb out, I think.

I’m very grateful, tonight, for so many wonderful people who made my day better. An amazing husband, great children, a truly inspiring Zen teacher, and all those folks on Paxil Progress. I am so fortunate. Thanks, universe!

If addiction is using experiences to avoid feelings, then we all do it all the time, don’t we? Don’t we use TV, eating, shopping, exercising, working, even doing laundry, to avoid what we are feeling?

I guess I think mindfulness is the opposite of addiction. When we’re in zazen, maybe we’re doing our best to face what’s real with us, and that’s when we can say we’re not pursuing addiction. When we’re remembering to bring that zazen out into our everyday lives, maybe we’re not pursuing addiction.

But boy, is it hard to bring that mindfulness to every moment. It’s hard to experience something painful, and turn to face it instead of turning away. And that’s why I’m writing here, I suppose. To give myself some compassion along that journey.

Addiction has many meanings. People will argue about the difference between physical and emotional addiction but it’s really a continuum. The body and the mind aren’t separate things. What it comes down to is that addiction is when you attempt to avoid immediate pain, causing yourself more pain in the long run.

Who would have thought that I’d find a great summary of avoidance on a U.S. Goverment website? A military site, at that? Anyway, this Veterans’ Administration page talks clearly about avoiding emotions, and how it can lead to difficulty.