Sexy Lexy

Why have I been awake since 5, feeling alert, feeling fabulous?

Yesterday I took half a Lexapro: I'd been off for a week and a half.

An obsessive researcher, I spent 2 hrs yesterday morning scouring Google for any combination of the following: Lexapro withdrawal Lexapro withdrawal flu
Lexapro withdrawal symptoms

I won't provide all the links, but basically, what CAN'T you blame on withdrawal. I've lurked for years on websites with names like "crazymeds.com," happily reading the stories (from articulate to angry and badly spelled) like so many truffley treats. I like stories!

Yesterday I read the story of the mother of 15-yr-old girl whose doctor had prescribed Lexapro for TMJ (!!!), and who now, trying to come off it, had flu symptoms, craziness, misery... Also a pregnant woman who went off Lexaro when she found she was pregnant and then was TOTALLY FREAKED OUT AND MISERABLE and then when back on and then went back off because she didn't want the baby to be addicted and then was basically at the end of her rope. It was her husband who was writing in.

Flu symptoms don't seem to be commonly mentioned as a side effect of Lexapro, though it was mentioned as a side effect of Effexor... but anyway, I had achey muscles, hollow muscles, a burning face, and these things seemed much too shakey for me to move around much on. (Has anyone out there been on Lexapro? Anyone else associate flu symptoms with withdrawal? Other insight?)

After I read the stories I went and lay down on the bed with my legs sticking off. CV came in and said kindly, "I know where you're coming from. That's depression."

"No, I'm just tired," I said. Then I got up and went into the kitchen and got out my bottle of Lexapro. I set it on the cutting board, then pulled a pill out and split it in half along the score line.

Then I took some pictures. Oh happy tableau!

Then I popped half a pill.

A bit later, I tried to download my still lifes with Lexapro, but my computer had misplaced my photo library. My computer still can't find my photo library. AND I DO NOT MIND THIS. I AM NOT CURSING, NOR THROWING ANYTHING. I in fact feel quite benevolent toward my little computer and if worse comes to worse and the archive is lost? Well, I will be a little sad, but what can you do. Also, I THINK I backed it up onto a cd. But I'm not sure.

Either way, I'M NOT FREAKING OUT.

Which brings me here: maybe I'll keep taking this substance, for the time being at least. Bottles will last twice as long if I only take the pills half at a time.

Of course, then it seems like my experiment failed. But I read that withdrawal symptoms can last two months. Two months! I'll wait till it's summer and I can run every day. In the meantime, cutting down to 5 mg already made me TOTALLY more energetic, since my entire life I've been a buzzing bundle of nervous energy that 10 mg just took the edge off. Even at 5mg, I'd reassumed a lot of the frantic pace and moodiness... but also lost some of the desire to sleep 11, 12 hours at a time, then take a nap.

I considered for years whether I needed medication, but of course decided that I was simply weak-willed and undisciplined. Coming off the Lexapro and paying "bare attention" (as my meditation books say) to what happened has convinced me otherwise: I'm one of the crazy. The fluctuation of mood, the agitation inspired by small setbacks, the crippling inability to start doing a task I wanted and needed to do but just COULDN'T... these things were not willed and were not in my control.

I can feel how meditation, disciplined exercise and eating, helps to address this, also journalling, and patience, but IT'S SO HARD. Probably too hard, is what I've come to. And dangerous... I have to drive home late at night from the city, and it's dangerous to feel like I just don't have the energy, and agitation makes me eager to get things over with, careless.

Okay, so I'm going to blame the speeding ticket I got last week on Lexapro withdrawal.

I don't know if I'm entirely happy about this all. I've never been one to knock the medication industry or the prevalence of medication, though I *DO* suspect they're over-prescribed** and of course the price gouging is unconscionable. (Remember, I only started going off the meds because, since I got no teaching this semester, I lost the health insurance that pays for meds. Academia, you need to work this out! All grad students and adjuncts should get totally free scripts. Also professors. Actually, EVERYONE should. And that whole thing where my insurance companies are being bitches about paying for "pre-existing condition" things even though they are supposed to waive that for grad student appointees who had health insurance before? And how the old health insurance company hasn't sent the documentation of this fact even though I've been calling them for months and they claim to have sent me two copies already? That's all totally fucked up! When I don't have meds, I'm dangerous, and more likely to ram someone's car in the back because they're driving like an asshole, and how would you like to have to pay for THAT? Hm, Aetna? Also, what's up with the now that I'm only a "grad student" and not an "academic appointee" you won't pay for my birth control thing? If I get preggers or have to address the consequences of being preggers, that's coming out of your pocket too! )

I'm not against, nor can I remember ever having been against, medications as such. I don't wanna join the "down with these evil poisons!" bandwagon you encounter on some withdrawal sites... but it is kinda weird how dependent you get on them.

Now see. This is why I haven't blogged much lately. I've been quietly and unannouncedly withdrawing, and haven't had the energy. But also, I have only common ground to cover... anxiety, profession, health insurance, medication.

In this context, it's pretty interesting that I've begun reading A Scanner Darkly, a Philip K. Dick novel in which there are the heads and the straights, and the heads are all on drugs. Specifically, on "Substance D," a synthetic concoction without which the heads will experience SUCH SEVERE WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS THAT THEY WILL DIE.

It's really not that far-fetched, people. And Lexapro is copacetic with the governments but marijuana isn't? The most dangerous heads I know are all on LEGAL drugs.

Incidentally, A Scanner Darkly is becoming a Waking Life style animated movie. (Via Fimoculous.)


**Amended to say that: hm. It seems like these meds must be overprescribed, because it's seemingly so easy to get them prescribed. Here's me to my doctor: "I have a stomachache." Here's my doctor to me: "Want some anti-depressants? You're intelligent. You tell me."

On the other hand, I love them, I love that I can be, like, CALM. Never a possibility before. And, if anything, I think MORE of my friends/family could benefit from meds, rather than fewer. When you hear of drs. prescribing meds to 15 yr olds for TMJ, that's one thing. But...