As most of you know, I deal with both depression and anxiety disorder in my daily life. I’ve been on and off meds for them since I was about 16. The drug that worked the best and for the longest has been, up until recently, Effexor. It has reached the failure point, though. I keep going up on dosage and nothing happens.
So my doctors decided it was time to get me off the Effexor. I’ve gone off it once before, years and years ago, before they knew quite what an ordeal it was. I went off it basically cold-turkey then and spent several weeks thinking I was going crazy and writing poems about pain and darkness. It was delightful, really.
Now that the drug is not new, there’s a protocol for going off it and I am following that protocol. I started this week going down a notch on it and started taking the starting dose of my new medicine Trintellix alongside it.
Day One: Euphoria. It was like I was Harry Potter and I’d just taken the Felix Felicis potion. I could do no wrong. Everything felt right and good. I did a couple doctor visits, all the laundry, and the dishes. Got it all done quick and easily with energy to spare.
Day Two: The Utter Blackness of Despair. It started even before I’d properly woken up, that feeling of doubt so deep that even moving my foot to start getting out of the bed felt like I was making the worst decision of my life. My brain was telling me all the bad things that could go wrong every second of the whole day and reminding me of every mistake I have ever made. In addition to that loveliness, I felt like my blood had all been taken out and replaced with Listerine or Icy Hot. I was literally writhing in discomfort all day. I mostly wallowed around feeling awful, but did manage to get a few necessary things done, like calling and cancelling all those things we never use, like my gym membership, magazine subscriptions, etc.
Day Three: Seems to be a little bit of a combination of day one and two. I’m back to feeling a bit euphoric, like it might be a really good idea to drive to Frisco and shop at IKEA this afternoon before driving back home and picking up kids, but tempered by the brain whispers telling me that I need to have money in the bank to shop and that IKEA takes way longer than 90 minutes. So since I seem to have motivation again, I am spending the day writing and getting some random housework done before getting started on a cross-stitching project of the Star Wars logo.
Lisa Holcomb 