Giving Up

Posted on | September 21, 2009 | 6 Comments

I have been agonizing over this decision. Agonizing. I took a bit of Zoloft today with the idea of getting back on it AGAIN.

Here’s what happened. I got off of it in May, largely because I was feeling so great. In June, I enjoyed a period of being fairly manic and especially creative. I spent July and part of August crying. I got over that, and had a couple of good weeks, that I am very confused by. Because now, things are just getting worse. One thing is that I have little motivation to go to work. I know why. My unmedicated self is very bored by my job much of the time. At an alternative school, it’s very GOOD when there’s not excitement, but I’m not a one-on-one type of teacher, and unless we’re crowded, I don’t get to teach groups. I called in sick today out of boredom. I have a cold, too, but the reality is that a cold wouldn’t ordinarily slow me down like this.

The other thing is the anxiety. I don’t think I can blame all of it on cutting down on Ativan a bit. That would make me anxious, but I don’t think it would bring all of these dark thoughts into my head. Like, I was at JC Penny trying on some clothes in a locked dressing room and had this thought that I could die in there and they wouldn’t realize it until that evening. That sort of thing. I turn my life into a horror novel with these thoughts, which seem to come out of nowhere. I don’t have them near as often with the Zoloft.

I also have this social anxiety I didn’t have before. I wasn’t always very social, but I wasn’t having panic attacks just thinking about being social, either. I also feel afraid to be alone, which is a HUGE change, because normally, I love alone time.

I also get this paralyzing anxiety out of nowhere. It is truly awful.

The thing that really pisses me off is that I didn’t have the social anxiety thing, and the alone thing before I started the Zoloft in the first place. I had some of the dark thoughts, but not as many. I know it changed my brain to make it where I have to have it or suffer these consequences.

When I took the pill out of the bottle today, there was a new warning on the bottle that I hadn’t seen before. It said, “Use during the third semester of pregnancy may cause serious health problems or withdrawal symptoms in the newborn.”

I took 50 mg when I was pregnant with Sage. I was having panic attacks and of course, couldn’t take Xanax. He was a “difficult baby” to say the least. He could never just relax, poor guy. Then later, he was diagnosed with sensory integration disorder, which is how I feel coming off the stuff. I could beat myself up some more for taking it, but recently I read that excessive stress in the mom can literally cause the babies brain to be smaller and cause problems. So. If I had known all of this beforehand, I wouldn’t have had him. And I’m glad I had him, so I suppose I need to stop obsessing about it.

The hard thing about this is accepting that I have a disease that may not ever go away. Everyone has always told me that I’ll “get over it someday.” I just don’t know. The way the Ativan withdrawal has been going, (and probably protracted Zoloft withdrawal too), I see it being a couple of years just getting off the stuff altogether. And then some more time for my brain to adjust. The brain may be plastic, but it doesn’t mean that it will go back to the way you were before. Perhaps an approximation, that’s it.

If I could just find a balance. I want to have more memories, more dreams. I want my creativity. Pacian commented that creative people often have stuff like this or worse. I’m angry. Why do I have to pay the price of crippling anxiety or being dulled by medication? I don’t like my choices here.

I can’t stand the idea of being physically addicted to anything. So I’m still hoping that even if I get back on the Zoloft, I can quit the Ativan, or at least take much less of it, the Zoloft being the lesser of two evils.

It bums me out that exercise, an exemplary diet and bucketloads of supplements aren’t making me “normal.”

Okay. Pity party over for now. I know I’m going to struggle with this though. I need to concentrate on being thankful for what I have.

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