Hey! Who turned out the lights?

(Listen up Tom Cruise, you creepy cucumber)

Things have been getting a little dark around here. I know it's hard to believe, but I have not even shared the half of it. Mostly because I really like all the people who read this blog and I don't want to be the cause of anyone wanting to jump off a bridge after listening to me, and also because it's too raw right now. It's been a week of revelations, which sounds way more biblical than it was. Which, by the way, I hear there are talking donkeys in the bible (ask Pam Kitty Morning to tell you how she knows)...why did no one point this out to me earlier? I might have really embraced this whole brimstone and self flagellation thing the serious Christians go in for, I mean, talking donkeys are cool!

Anyway...lots of revelations, one running into another into another like a stack of carefully placed dominoes gracefully collapsing into each other. It took me by surprise because I didn't know I was setting any dominoes up. I wasn't looking to dive deep into the dark scary places of my life. I generally do everything I can to not dwell where there is no light. But sometimes you have to go there to retrieve important information about yourself or others in order to grow as a person. I didn't think I could grow any more, being fairly rotund already, luckily it's merely spiritual growth I'm speaking of.

Lately I've been asking friends if I could possibly be premenopausal because I've been feeling really emotional, way more than is usual with me. Kind of like every day is a PMS train wreck. I've been more short tempered than usual. Not only that, but my brain keeps getting darker and darker, like there's a dimmer switch and someone is messing with it to freak me out. My brain has started playing old ugly records from the past, broody records it used to play nonstop before I started taking medication.

And then it hit me yesterday: I have been taking only a half dose of my Welbutrin for three months. I thought it was going really well. I didn't immediately want to chain smoke which is what's happened in the past when I've missed a week's worth of my afternoon dose. I thought "maybe I don't need it anymore. Maybe I only need a half dose because I'm doing fine." Why should anyone stay on medication if they don't need it?

A great lesson has been learned: People like me need to commit to staying sane for life and brains do not miraculously heal themselves. Neurotransmitters do not suddenly see the light and start delivering the right amounts of norepinephrin to the right parts of the brain and nervous system. There are some of us, and we usually know who we are, whose brains need support for life. Life support. When I stop taking enough support for my head, the lights begin to dim. It gets dark and grim in here and soaked in self loathing. When I take enough of it, my head clears up as though from a terrible sinus infection, the lights come on and there's room for sunshine and fun. When I take the right dose and stop messing around with it, I function well. Like a normal person. I love it when my brain works like a normal person's.

The other day I felt like a crack addict because I had also been off of my Paxil for about three days and it was making my head twinge, a little like sudden fuzzy light-headedness for half a second that would recur every other minute. I sometimes forget to get my prescription refilled in time. I didn't do it on purpose. Paxil is for the anxiety. I started getting scared that the withdrawals from Paxil could get dangerous. I'm on the lowest dose they can prescribe, yet it works powerfully well for me. It is well known that coming off of Paxil is much harder than coming off of other psych meds. I was at work on Sunday looking up information on the dangers of quitting Paxil suddenly and I kept coming across hysterical accounts of people telling me that I might actually have to kill myself because it's that bad. All I could think is "Wow, these people are really hysterical, they sound like they should be on Paxil!"

I went to a big party on Sunday night and was so preoccupied with wondering if I was going to pass out or suddenly feel the need to impale myself with a cork screw (there were lots of those around as the party was largely peopled with wine industry folk) that it was difficult to make small talk. I kept wanting to ask people "Hey, just out of curiosity- do you happen to take Paxil? Could you spare a pill?" or to say "Oh yeah, it's great meeting you, could you excuse me while I fall in a heap on the floor? I'm not sure, but I could go into seizures too. But don't worry, it'll pass." Shit, you can't take me anywhere. I felt like crawling under the tables to look for paxil dust. I think that crowd was clean.

I could spend the rest of my life trying to plot a way to live comfortably without medication, I could continue to mess with my meds and see if I can just be normal without them. I could do that. But the same thing will happen every time. The lights inside will fade into an eternal winter. Or I can stay on the meds for life and accept the fact that there is no cure for mental illness, there are only tools to help us live more comfortably and healthily. Unless I was some kind of hair-shirt wearing self flagellating Christian, or some kind of smug non-drug taking cult member of Scientology, why on earth would I treat myself so poorly?

As for the rest of the revelations...I feel certain that over time I will let it all out. But for right now I am going to let them settle down while I get back in the groove of living life with all the lights on.

The next installment of "The gentleman's guide to buying gifts for women" will be coming up in a post or two, just in time for some frantic last minute shopping.

I'm making a coffee toast to all of you people out there who have struggled with the whole medicated life issue- stay the course and decide you're worth normal brain activity and remember that if the doctor told you to take a medication to keep your heart pumping- you'd do it and wouldn't feel weird about it. Your brain is an organ just like the heart, if it needs medication to keep working there is no reason on earth to feel like a toad about it. You can always come here to my blog to rest your small talk and know that around here the norm is to be a lot crazy, but happy. Just don't ask me to share my Paxil because I am not a Paxil pimp. (Plus I don't have any extra.)

And if people give you attitude about taking psych meds and imply that it's the same as popping a few Quaaludes every day, or tripping on LSD, go ahead and let them think you're having more fun than they are. It makes some people's lives so much more interesting to imagine all of us medicated crazies as drug addicts riding a giddy wave of narcotic induced euphoria. It would disappoint them to know the truth. Let them have a little excitement.

Except for Tom Cruise, I have a special little hell devised just for him. Little slime bag.