7 February 2004

The Return of Spot The Side Effect

Those of you who have been with me for a while will remember that last year I started taking Anti Depressants for the purpose of aiding in my recovery from a deep, dark, killing depression. Some of my anti-depressant experiences are chronicled in the 2003 archive for TKs Musings; Those of you who haven't read those ones should page over and have a look so that they can bring themselves up to speed.

What I didn't tell anyone is that I was only on them for about two and a half months. The reason why I had to go off of them was because I ran out of money. I had just left Convergys and started at the Pizza place and money was somewhat tight for a while. The Pizza place didn't have benefits, so if I continued to use the Paxil then I was going to have to pay for it out of my own pocket, and there were other things I needed to spend the money on which were at least as important as the Paxil, so it ended up being triaged.

Now, the interesting thing about all this is what happened when I was coming off the pills. My first week on them had been a lesson in the cruelties of the pharmaceutical industry in general and the makers of Paxil in particular, but at least my friends were able to have a good laugh at my expense. You should have seen the look on Anna's face when I showed up at work on Day 2 completely and totally wired because I hadn't slept the night before. For the first time in memory I think she was actually afraid of me.

After that week of Spot the Side Effect things started to level off and life on the drug started to get good.

Then I had to come off of it. It took me seven days to get my body accustomed to the Paxil. It took me a month to come off of it, and that was one of the most interesting months I have ever lived through. The physical side effects weren't that bad, certainly no worse than what I went through during that first week. But every now and again the world would just phase on me. I don't know how else to describe it, but it just staggered me every time it did. One day when I was walking down Whyte Ave, it happened to me three times on the same block. It took me the better part of twenty minutes to walk that one block because I had to keep stopping and leaning against a light post or a wall to get my wits about me again.

After I got past that month, though, everything was fine. I was pretty even tempered, much more so than I had been before, and things bothered me a lot less, if they bothered me at all. My friends started to like being around me more, and I actually had energy to go out and accomplish things. All in all, life was pretty good.

Then I went back to Red's.

Let's get something straight, here; Red's itself doesn't depress me, but I work a job that can be more than a little bit stressful some nights, and that kind of stress can have an adverse effect on Depressive illness. From the day I went back my body started a countdown and the remaining traces of whatever Paxil does to you started to leech out of my system a little bit at a time, until we got to the X-Mas holidays and things started to bother me more than they normally should. I started getting more and more headaches. Every now and again I would start feeling these momentary urges to just burst into tears for no apparent reason.

Okay, Mike, time to get back on the meds, I think, before you regress completely and become what you were before, a walking dead man.

So, here I am, back on the Paxil, and feeling the same kind of ambivalence that I did the first time around, it's just that this time I knew why I was feeling that way. First of all, I really didn't want to play Spot the Side Effect again. Once was enough, thank you very much. Secondly, it took me a week to get used to it, and a month to come off of it. Is it just me, or does that sound like something that someone would say in relation to an addictive drug?

Certainly a lot of people have become addicted to anti-depressants. They use them too much and then become dependent on them, can't function without them. Even though I'm prone to certain kinds of addiction, alcohol in particular, I've also come to understand that the reason I'm like that is because I allow myself to be like that. All I really need to do to fight my alcoholism is not drink, it's that simple. No alcohol, no problem. I've proven that I can do it, too; It's been almost a year since the last time I had a drink.

I don't think that I'm going to have a problem with addiction to this thing, not as long as I follow the Doctor's instructions to the letter. Besides that, I've been given a pretty low dosage, because when I first started on them we weren't sure that it was going to work at all. No deviation, no problem.

But it still bothers me that I have to spend a week going onto the drug, and then a month coming off of it. However, if that's the price that I have to pay for my continued sanity, then I will pay it gladly and count myself lucky that I've lived through it. A lot of other people don't live through the same disease.