Withdrawal Symptoms

I was going to write about it here, but then I decided it was too personal. Then I decided to rebirth myself on facebook and ditch the 50+ tangential friends that had accumulated on my page. I wanted to invent a new persona, a new me, which is part of what this is all about. Then, in the last 24 hours, I decided I need to separate my blog from my portfolio, so I set up rational frank to be just my quirky little blog. Welcome.

What the hell am I talking about? I’m talking about kicking an 18 year old habit, namely taking one form of antidepressant or another for over 50% of my life. I’ve been tapering off these last six weeks, and enjoying the finer points of SSRI Withdrawal Syndrome.

Let me lay it all out on the table. Cliché, I know. In my high school days I got to a point when I started fritzing out. This was alarming to my mom, as my father was a suicide. It was alarming to me too, because I grew up in this sort of shadow. So, we took a trip to the shrink and I started taking Prozac. It was great. I opened up, started enjoying life, started to feel like a person and not the shadow of someone else. Honestly, I think it was a good thing to do. I also went to therapy for a good while, but most teenagers are too afraid to really open up verbally (I know I was), so I can’t really say how helpful that was. In fact, it’s all a blur and I don’t really remember much.

College… I think I stopped taking Prozac in my first two years of college. At some point. Then I transferred to UF, felt alienated and ultra lonely, was a little afraid to leave my dorm room, thought I was going to lose my shit. So, I hit up the campus health center and saw the only psychologist I ever thought was helpful for a good two years. I got back on Prozac, started dating and having fun. Started a literary zine (I was a creative writing nut), skateboarded a lot, and graduated.

After that, I moved back to Baltimore, went back to school to study painting, got married, and switched to Celexa. Time passed, good times were had, then bad times. My stepfather (only to avoid confusion with my birth father) passed away. I found myself increasingly angry, really fucking angry. And dragging.

The doctor I was seeing at the time sent me to a psych who believed in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (basically, according to him, “if you want to be happy, think happy.” idiot.) and they recommended trying Effexor XR. It was supposed to help with depression, energy issues, and anxiety. That was the worst mistake of my life. Effexor is a little different than your garden variety antidepressant. It is an SNRI, not an SSRI. What I can say is that it was ridiculous. I spiraled up from 75 mg to the highest dose allowed — 225 mg.

This happened sometime after I had a bit of a breakdown while Jen and Olivia were in Florida visiting the parents and I started having panic attacks at work. I spent a week on the couch at mom’s house. I would flip out, then fall asleep. I think I was sleeping a good 18 hours a day. I remember trying to sort out the cables on the DSL router that plugged into the VOIP router that plugged into the phone one evening around dinner time. I dont’ remember what happened, but I started smacking the floor and speaking in tongues in front of my mom.

This prompted a trip to the ER, where they diagnosed me as having panic attacks (finally we had a word for my weird-ass flipouts falled by sleep). They gave me some Xanax and I started seeing Mr. Think Happy again.

So, I spent a year on the elevated dose. I noticed that if I missed a day, just one day, I would get extremely woozy and dizzy. This seemed alarming and I talked to my family doctor about it. He said he had heard nothing like that before. Thanks buddy. At the same time, my cholesterol started going up.

Anywho, I spent several years at that elevated dose. I tried year after year to get “permission” to switch to something else. No go. “Let’s wait a while longer.”

This year, I got fed up with it. My cholesterol has continued to be bad despite excessive cycling and altering my diet. My doctor insists it is all genetic. It might be, he might be right. But I’ve also stumbled across studies that report a higher incidence of “abdominal obesity” and cholesteremia in people on SSRIs and SNRIs.

Additionally, these drugs make a man next to useless in bed. There are kinder ways of putting it, but I like the clinical term — “soft erections”. Oh please. Fucking limp and flaccid is more like it. Lifeless.

That was the key too.

“Doc, my sex life is fucked”

“Oh, well. Let’s try Wellbutrin then. We’ll taper you off of Effexor, real slow.”

Great!

So, for the last 6 (8?) weeks, I’ve been tapering.

At first, it wasn’t too bad. I’d drop down a dose, be woozy for a week, then the second week would be a little better. Then repeat.

Things got worse after I got down to 150 mg.

The wooziness lasted longer (ten days, 12 days). I started having diarrhea, weird cramps and pains in my stomach. The withdrawal symptoms list is pretty bad (taken from about.com). Here it is, with “[check]” indicating what I’ve experienced:

• Dizziness [check]
• Vertigo [check]
• Lightheadedness [check]
• Difficulty walking [check]

Somatic (bodily) complaints include:

• Nausea/vomiting [check]
• Fatigue [check]
• Headaches [check]
• Insomnia [check]

Less common difficulties:

• Shock-like sensations [check]
• Parasthesia (skin crawling, burning or prickling)
• Visual disturbances
• Diarrhea [check]
• Muscle pain [check, exaggeratedly so after the coop building exercise]
• Chills [check, daily]

Non-specific mental symptoms:

• Shock-like sensations [check]
• Agitation
• Impaired concentration [check, mega]
• Vivid dreams [check - weird shit]
• Depersonalization – sense of unreality and loss of self
• Irritability [check]
• Suicidal thoughts [nope!]

* * *

And yet, I feel really good. I am laughing more (when I didn’t feel like I was going to fall over) and feeling really inspired. I started playing my guitar more, trying to learn music theory, jamming on a freelance project, riding my bike, building chicken coops.

I hit 0 mg almost two weeks ago. The wooziness has been really intense. I have had some really bad days, but I’m still feeling positive.

My plan? I’m going to take nothing for a while. I know this can be scary, but I feel good. And, I have lots of good people around me that I know I can trust to pick me up if I flip out.

But I really don’t think it’s going to happen.

I’ll keep you updated! also, be careful folks. you can’t just quit something like this cold turkey. tapering off was hard. cold turkey can be dangerous.