Lexapro Update

Also, a recipe for a special kind of symptom-diminishing fudge!

Besides S*x* B*b*s*tt*rs, my public comes to my site seeking guidance on "Lexapro Withdrawal Symptoms." So here's an update:

Nada.

I haven't had any Lexapro since a week last Monday, mostly because I ran plumb out, my bank account has in it $50, I owe the bursar for the university nearly a thousand dollars and they really would like me to pay 'stead of charging more Lexapro to the account, and the stupid student insurance I had to buy when my department failed to have any classes for me to teach hasn't paid for one drop of my Lexapro, because of that whole "pre-existing condition" thing that basically means, if you ever had a prescription for anxiety or depression before, tough shit, we don't have to pay for it now. (The rationale for this, for them not having to pay for medication you might need, totally eludes me.) So instead of the 400 bucks on insurance, I should have just kept the 400 bucks for MEDICINE. Live and learn.

That makes this day 11, and I read somewhere online (can't now find the link) that the height of terrible symptoms peaks at day 10.

Symptoms? Haven't really had any. Unless you count crying, which I did once the other day at the end of a beautiful sunny day because a paper I needed got thrown away, and once for 30 seconds today when Blogger cut out for a few seconds and took my entry with it. But that could just be the PMS. (Here you can read about when I first started tapering, and here and here for more about my experiences with lexapro side effects and lexapro withdrawal or withdrawing.)

A couple of weeks ago I had a really bad... allergies? Cold? I slept all day, then summoning my meditative belief in the power of the mind, I decided that I'd go to bed early, and that when I woke up the next day I'd be healed.

All of me. Sinuses and mentality.

"Decided" isn't right. "Felt."

Then I was. Oh, I still have my allergies such that I kind of feel like someone has strapped water balloons inside my neck, and I'm kind of mad about having to go to work, the work which is not my work.

But I'm not obsessed with feeling bad. I have too many books to read and things to write!

So maybe it's all seasonal with me anyway, like with my winter-loathing dad. It's sunny now (well, RIGHT now it's overcast, but it's been a sunny season lately) and so all is well, or at least I don't attempt to diffuse any criticism from the outside world by reciting "I hate myself" under my breath. I hate myself so you don't have to! Stupid, I decided. You just go right ahead and hate me, I'll be over here eating a spinach bialy.

Thus, lexapro-withdrawal-symptom seekers, you're not necessarily doomed. I'm off, and I appear relatively fine. I can go running when I have time, it's warm enough now.

Other sites provide the horror-story list.

Though also with suprprising hope! This from one of the sites above:

I will be completely honest with you, my wife and I just smoked a joint, and I feel outstanding. It does not stop the shivers, no..... I am not sure what these things are.... it is almost like another world trying to get in..... the pot just makes them more tolerable.... it seems to help you just go with it.....

And then:

Author: Ellie
Date:   03-30-05 10:24

Weed totally helps!


 THC - Totally Helps Completely
Author: Jack
Date:   03-30-05 10:38

HEY FOLKS LISTEN TO Ellie !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It came from the Earth, it is one of the few things the scientist have not been able to screw with.

There is not a single documented case of anyone dying as a result of Marijuana usage. Historians can trace usage back to several thousand years "BC" (mind you BC bud is some of the best out there.....)

You know why the docs, government, and drug companies don't like it????

You can grow it if you can grow tomatoes!!!

Legalization would collapse the US alcohol industry, the US tobacco industry, the US PHD Counseling industry, and the US Pharmicuticals Market.

Don't get me worng folks, it does not cure the brain shivers or the rage, but it makes it SO MUCH MORE TOLLERABLE.....

(Names changed to protect privacy.)

And there you have it, folks. A home remedy endorsed by the withdrawers, also by Christians.

Also, inadvertently, by Alice B. Toklas, the "Recipes from Friends" chapter of whose cookbook includes a recipe for

Haschich Fudge
(which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)


This is the food of paradise... it might provide an entertaining refreshement for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. [Blurt's Note: Ha!]

Take 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved ina big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.

Goes on:

Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties, but the bariety known as canibus sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa... in the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin... has been observed even in city window boxes. it should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.

According to Laura Shapiro in Something from the Oven, "[A]ssembling the book had been nightmarish for [Toklas]. She called the job 'miserable' and 'tormenting," barely met the deadline, and had to beg her friends for a chapter's worth of recipes just to make the ms. long enough. She sent all the recipes to Harper & Bros. without bothering to test them, nor did she proofread teh manuscript, which was probably why she overlooked the recipe called Haschich Fudge, contributed by her friend Brion Gysin, a painter..."

Toklas was reportedly "furious," since "fans and skeptics alike had been wondering for years whether Stein was on drugs when she wrote, and now they thought they knew," but if your withdrawal symptoms are bad, you might just give it a whirl...