Living for Disco

During my first wrestling match with depression about ten years ago, my doctor put me on Prozac. Prozac didn’t do much for me except make my hands sweat, and turn me into an emotional zombie. I stopped taking it. Nothing happened. It was as straightforward as that.

During my second wrestling match with depression last year, my doctor put me on Effexor. I wrote about the debilitating initial effects on this blog some time ago, as well as the cavalier attitude of my doctor, who said “I knew I shouldn’t have given you that information leaflet. Just take the bloody pills”.

Effexor has really been a miracle drug for me. It lifted me out of a hole, and made me feel normal. I was able to make rational decisions, and approach daily tasks like food shopping, and washing up, without weeping with stress and confusion. I stopped having fruitless, angry conversations with people in my head. Life improved.

Unfortunately, now that I’m ready to stop taking it, I’m discovering that I am physically dependent on it. I didn’t know when I started that Effexor withdrawal can be a very long, painful and traumatic process, but boy, am I learning now.

It goes like this (and this isn’t from a sudden stop – it’s from a slow tapering of the dose as recommended by the doctor):

Stage 1: Brain Shivers.

I have discovered that someone has given a name to this unsettling sensation. To be honest, though, I don’t think ‘brain shiver’ really describes it. It is more as if you’re going along happily as normal, and you suddenly decide to turn your head to the left. Your brain is not ready for this, goes “Whoah there, cowboy!” and refuses to move. Your eyes feel a bit squiggly, and you are momentarily disoriented. The sensation, which is amusingly ticklish at first, worsens the longer you go without the drug. It usually results in

Stage 2: Nausea

Intense, although never actually followed through by the stomach, so not even throwing up will relieve it. Tends to happen suddenly, in shops or meetings. Inconvenient. Followed quite quickly by

Stage 3: The Shits.

There’s no delicate way of putting it. Suddenly, the contents of your intestinal tract have turned to liquid, and begun to boil. Understandably, your intestinal tract no longer wishes to accommodate this bubbling, toxic mass. On no account should you mistake this feeling for trapped wind, unless you have a change of underwear handy.

And as if these physical manifestations of withdrawal weren’t distressing enough, you also have hideous emotional symptoms.

Imagine, for example, that your perspective shifts suddenly, and you come face to face with your worthlessness. It becomes a logical deduction that anyone who says they love you must be lying, because frankly, why would they when you’re like this? Ergo, they are certain to abandon you unless you start behaving like a rational human being. Unfortunately you no longer have any idea how to behave in a normal fashion. It feels like being trapped in an invisible box.

Fortunately, I have a very understanding fiancé, who listens to me ramble on in tearful lunatic fashion, and when I ask him anxiously what he is thinking, he says things like “I was thinking that I’d like to go base jumping off El Capitan”*, which is just so irrelevant to my personal internal crisis that it is like being offered a firm piece of ground to stand on.

This phenomenon can last between anywhere from ten minutes to (in my case) four hours.

Also, I like to rant, but I’m now occasionally afflicted by brief, but irrational bouts of absolute fury. I can now empathise with screaming, purple faced toddlers in Sainsburys. We are as one. It’s almost zen.

Other, more minor side effects include uncontrollable teeth grinding, sudden bouts of intense apathy, memory loss, time-slips, loss of concentration… the list goes on. At this rate, I’m going to be toothless and temporally confused by the time I’m 35.

This has now become a personal challenge. I simply can’t stomach the idea that this one small pill is causing me so much trouble, even though once it made life so much easier. I’m not belittling the wonderful transformation to my life that Effexor effected, but why does it insist on hanging on in there where it’s not wanted? It’s like the one remaining drunk guest at the end of a really great party, and it’s really objecting to being evicted.

So here I am, stepping into the ring for a battle of wills against my own brain. It doesn’t get better than this.

*I am assuming that this is not necessarily translatable as “I wish to die, now, please”.

I’ve been doing really well for the last few months, as far as being depressed goes. By this I mean that generally I’ve been happy. There are some days, naturally, when the washing up glares malevolently from the sink as if bent on destroying my mental wellbeing, and just waking up turns me into a bitter, self-loathing witch. However, these days they are pretty few and far between.

That said, there are a few reasons why I might have another appointment with my psychotherapist, who I haven’t seen since May. See if you can guess which one it is:

1. I have the fear about going home. I’m worried that I’m going to miss Namibia more than I have bargained for. I think sometimes that I take the vast blue skies, the balmy days, the hazy mountains and the splodgy bright bougainvillea for granted, and once I go home, everything is going to seem eternally grey.

2. I have the fear about what’s ahead. What happens when I go home, start a new job and a new life with a new man? What if it doesn’t work out? What if I don’t get this job and have to work in MacDonalds, or sit transcribing insurance dockets from an old tape machine for 2.50 an hour? What if the pair of us find that we can’t live together? What if what if?

3. I’m worried that I’m still on the anti-depressants. I don’t want to be on them for much longer. I’d like to stop now please.

4. She wants to find out how my international blind date went.

Answers on a postcard. The correct answer wins a packet of smarties.

UPDATE! So, no-one got the correct answer, which was, in fact, number 4. She wanted to catch up and see how I’m doing, particularly as she was interested in the outcome of the date. So, while I am worried about those other things, it’s certainly not to the extent that I’d seek professional help. I’m just a worrier, naturally. I think I’ll keep the smarties.

I’m not sure why, but right now I have no words.

Usually ideas for blogging just pop into my head uninvited, the words jostling and pushing, assembling and reassembling themselves as if they have a life of their own, until I’m ready to put them on the page. For the last two weeks, there have been no ideas. The words have migrated south for the winter. I don’t know when they will be back.

I wish I knew why this was happening. I feel bereft without them, a little empty.

I just don’t know what to say.

I think I may have mentioned that I have been a little bit down lately (for ‘lately’, read ’since last May’). I have been trying very hard to ignore the insidious whisperings that emanate from the dark side of my conciousness, but recently I’ve needed a little help. I have tended not to talk about it on here that much, because let’s face it, whinging is boring, and god forbid people think I was that.

So I enlisted a doctor, who gave me some pills. The pills made me sick for a while, and then they made me high. I am no longer high, which is occasionally a disappointment, but I expect it is for the best. My doctor’s bedside manner leaves something to be desired, though. Coming as I do from the UK, I would expect to be given some reason for the prescription of the particular brand of drug that was supposed to sort me out. My doctor just gave me the brand that seemed to sponsor his office accessories and so, a little sceptical of his motives, I looked it up. Apparently its side-effects include nausea (check), sleeplessness (check), constipation, anorexia, heart palpitations and… permanent dependence! Woo-hoo! When I phoned him up to express concern, he said “I knew I should have taken the information leaflet out of the box. Just take the bloody pills.”*

My doctor, in turn, enlisted a psychotherapist. My psychotherapist is lovely. She gives me free tissues and lets me blather on about myself for an hour a week. She gives me homework to do, which includes things like “Go to the supermarket” and “Clean out your fridge” - things I have been unable to face doing for some time. My fridge, thanks to her encouragement, no longer shelters the jar of gherkins that was in it when I moved in in November 2005, or the last cheese slice from the packet that I bought inadvisedly last January. My ex-bloke once promised me, when we were still together, that he would eat all of those repulsive plastic abominations so that they wouldn’t go to waste. I felt like sending it to him in the post, with a note saying “You missed one”.

My psychotherapist has in her turn enlisted a homeopath, who is also wonderful. She has given me a bottle of energised pills with ’sepia’ written on them, told me to assess my earthly gifts, and forbidden me from wearing stomach jewellery (except “on high days and holidays, and when you want to seduce someone”). She has also told me that I should no longer eat pies. I am still sceptical about this. Surely it cannot be right?

Anyway, there seems to be an army of people now looking out for my mental wellbeing, which makes me feel alternately comforted and guilty. I’m not about to go on and on about being depressed, as this is no fun for anyone, not even me and the good lord knows how I looove to talk about myself. However, it seems that it may be a part of my life that I have to accept if I want to get over it, so I’m not going to avoid the subject either.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of, after all.

*I did get a second opinion, in case you’re worried.

She put the ends of the stethoscope in her ears and told me to lift up my shirt; she said she wanted to listen to my liver. I fully expected that my liver would sense an opportunity for salvation and would be screaming “Help! Let me out of here!” as soon as the stethoscope descended, and hoped that it wouldn’t embarrass me.

Fortunately her attention was distracted. “Oh, dear, dear, dear no” she said, pointing an accusing finger at what I was about to discover is my manipura chakra, which controls higher emotion and energy.

It appears that one of the problems I have been having in combating depression is that I have a metal object stuck right in the very centre of my spiritual being.

If I want to get better, I’m going to have to remove my belly-button ring.