LexaNO

*Long post alert. If you have no interest in reading about anxiety issues and SSRIs, come back tomorrow!*

PLEASE NOTE: NO INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS POST IS INTENDED TO SERVE AS MEDICAL GUIDANCE. I am in NO way a trained professional. This is strictly a recap of my own personal experience. If you are struggling, please enlist the help of a trusted friend or loved one and your doctor!

I have always been a private person.

Actually, that might not be true, but my family has always been very private and I lived that way for a long time too. It doesn’t come naturally for me to speak openly about things…definitely not the tough things.

Now, in my old age, things are a little different. I see the value in talking about things that may be easier left unsaid. I would have been so very glad to stumble across an article like this when I was struggling, but there weren’t many (any?).

So without further ado, this is my story of anxiety and the medicine that was intended to help. Spoiler alert: It did for a while, but then it got bad.

As a kid, I knew that something was different. I was a worrier, but it was more than that. I didn’t do well with attention and I had incredibly low self-confidence, but still, there was more. A middle school art teacher once told me that I was ” too high-strung, but wildly talented.” (How nice of him.) High-strung was an adjective that I was familiar with, my mom used to joke that it was a family trait. It never occurred to me that it was something that was making life harder for me.  It certainly never occurred to me that it could be addressed for a happier and healthier life.

As I got older, the “something different” worsened. Eventually, life happened and my anxiety was kicked into high gear as I graduated from college and in the years that came after. I remember my first panic attack…at the time, I couldn’t quite identify what was going on, but I knew it was something much more menacing than too much coffee.

Eventually, the combination of a wildly demanding job, thoughts and memories that could no longer be suppressed, and just a little too much time spent alone in a company vehicle  left me with a situation that I could no longer ignore.

I talked about it with some friends…I was shocked to learn that so many of my closest girlfriends were taking low-dose SSRIs for similar issues with general anxiety.

Eventually, I bit the bullet and made an appointment with a local PNP. I paid out-of-pocket to keep the whole matter below the prying eyes of my family’s health insurance and was pretty damn proud of myself. The only problem was, I hated her. She didn’t listen to me, she was rude, she was insensitive. Defeated, I walked away with a prescription that I didn’t trust and feeling more alone than I did to begin.

I soon realized that my own general practitioner may be able to help. After hearing about my symptoms and daily struggles, he readily prescribed a low dose of Lexapro, one of the newer SSRIs that was touted to come with fewer side effects than some of the others. I filled the prescription that same day, but I held onto the bottle for months. I was glad to know I had it available, but I wasn’t ready to do anything with it.

I will never forget the day that I decided that I was ready. I threw a prayer up to God and swallowed the tiny white pill at a busy work event that was far away from home.

It took one day for me to feel…funny. I wasn’t hungry (for anyone that knows me, this is a big deal. I never stop eating!) I felt like I couldn’t focus, I was hazy, and I had an unsettling lump in my throat that felt like a looming cold that never took hold. Later that week, I remember sitting at my desk, staring out of my office window in a total daze. It was like my personality had been knocked down twelve notches. I assumed this was just the initial adjustment–which it was. SSRIs take weeks, to settle in and take full effect as the neurotransmitters in your brain adjust.

I proceeded to take the medication for nearly three years after that. It wasn’t until I was 40 pounds heavier, unhappy with literally every facet of my life, and couldn’t bring myself to stop eating (or to jump on a treadmill, for that matter) that I realized what was different.

I had no patience.

I couldn’t cry.

I was tired all of the time.

I had an unrelenting appetite.

I acted out of character.

I didn’t care about work.

I went from scheduling literally every moment of my life with some activity to doing as little as physically possible.

I felt like a bystander at my own wedding. Moments that (now) make me cry INSTANTLY felt as plain as shopping for groceries.

There was one instance in particular that not only changed the course of my career for the short-term, but also raised a bright, glaring, fervently flying red flag that something was very, very wrong. It was the moment that ultimately led me to quit the medication.

But quitting it wasn’t easy. I was taking a relatively high dose and it took months to stop it completely. My physician initially recommended that over the course of a month or less, that I go from a full tablet, to a half tablet and then stop. I had actually tried to get off of it before in this exact same manner and it didn’t work. I told him this. The withdrawal was painful and intolerable. At the time, we were planning our wedding (which was far more stressful than it needed to be because  #humans), and I just couldn’t manage.

I knew that this time, I would need to be more careful.  At the very, very end of my own titration schedule, I was literally shaving crumbs off of the pills.

But it worked. Nearly three months later, I was off of the medicine and was slowly starting to feel like myself again. It wasn’t quite that simple. I started the process in January of 2017 and I can honestly say that it wasn’t until the late fall of that same year where I really and truly felt like myself again.

Finally, at that point, the haze really was lifting and everyone could see it.

I was overscheduling myself again, telling bad jokes, crying when it made sense to cry. My patience was back, I was exercising again, I was eating appropriate portions (because, once again, I felt full at the right times and hungry at the right times).

She was back. In my mind, as I tell this story, I’m picturing a bad high school movie from the late 90s…sappy, triumphant music plays as I race to catch up to a group of friends…they’re wondering where I’ve been, but we all know it’s going to be okay now.

Gifted, once again, with my gift of passion and intense emotion (heh. I use the word “gifted” lightly….ask my husband, it can be a bit of a problem….) I cried for the moments I had lost when I was in a cloud. An ironic cloud of darkness that was intended to protect me from my own. I cried for the moments at my wedding that went by with a sneeze. For the moments on our honeymoon that I just wasn’t into. For the moments of intimacy from which I felt lightyears removed, for the mistakes I had made at the job that I loved so dearly, for the new people that I pushed away, for the pounds I had gained that would take me years to shed, for the opportunities I let slip by, and for the general life zest and finesse–that I was once famous for– that had begun to evaporate.

I felt like Rip Van Winkle. As if I had awoken from a deep, deep sleep. One in which the world went on without me. I had been stuck in a bubble, a time-warp of sorts. In the blink of an eye, I had “lost” three years.

And on came the new sort of anxiety…the one where I felt like I had let my whole entire life float away from me and desperately needed to get it back. I signed up for everything I could possibly sign up for…I was registered for my graduate program, looking for a new job that would, once again, actualize my potential. I was making up for lost time and felt like I had to do it FAST.

But then I realized that, time wouldn’t always go by as quickly as it seemed to while I was “away.” I had plenty of 20s left and I would make the most out of them. I promised myself to stop letting the little moments go by (this is actually when I decided to remove myself from social media and to enjoy the close and present instead of wondering why my dinner didn’t look as good as that-girl-who-I-worked-with-for-six-months-three-years-ago’s).

So what about the anxiety? You ask?

Good question.

Certainly, it didn’t all just disappear.

No, it surely didn’t.

But I was a little older. Better than ever before, I was able to, for the most part, pull myself out of the dark moments and to higher ground. I enlisted the help of my husband who is usually able to readily identify when I need support. Sometimes, a simple hug will do. Other times, I need a quick distraction– a trip to Target or the bookstore (it works for me almost every time) and we talk later. I also found a new therapist. He is marvelous. (We’ll talk about my old one another time…that’s a story for 20/20. …is 20/20 still a thing?).

I have promised myself to reclaim my life and make up for the lost time. Not all at once…that’s how you end up with a big fat house that you want nothing to do with (again…another story for another time), but slowly and steadily.

If you are struggling with anxiety or depression, I fully believe that there is a time and place for medications. I was IN that place…my need just didn’t go on for quite as long as my prescription refills did. I also think that there was a much better match for me than the Lexapro proved to be…I’m sure that I would have responded very differently to a different medication in the same class (there are dozens). So PLEASE do not take this post as an anti-med post. Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do. 

I urge you to listen to your body, trust your gut when it comes to doctors and medical advice, and be your own advocate. Anxiety medications need to be carefully monitored, not just when you’ve first started them, but for the duration. Take note of how you’re feeling DAILY. Monitor your weight. Enlist the help and watchful eye of someone who knows you well. And NEVER adjust your dosage without the help of a medical professional…..from experience, I knew that I needed to titrate (that’s the fancy term for “weaning off”) much slower than what was suggested to me, but other than that, I stuck to his guidelines.  

This post wasn’t easy for me to write, and as I’m sure you can tell…there’s a lot between the lines here, but I hope that it helps some of you. If even one person feels a little less alone, or is moved to advocate for themselves and find a way to higher ground, then it was worth it.

With love,

Bee(ingFancy)