I went off of Lexapro. This little experiment was admittedly short lived - only 5 weeks long, but it was the right choice. Last week it was down hill fast - by Friday, I was well on my way to not caring if I lived anymore. I wouldn't say that I was suicidal, but I was headed in a very depressing direction. I've posted lately about feeling depressed, unmotivated, lethargic, apathetic, blah - well, unfortunately, this was attributable to the Lexapro. My psychiatrist was on vacation, the new one I am trying to see apparently wrote my phone number down wrong and couldn't call me back - so, rather than initiate a psychiatric emergency, I made the decision to stop myself. My brother thought I might need to taper off of it - as did my sponsor, since most people do or you can have flu like symptoms, but I of course decided to just quit - no tapering, and risk the side effects. I wanted it out of my body so bad that I literally couldn't stand the thought of taking even a couple more.
So, day three, no Lexapro, and guess what? No side effects. No nothing. I slept better, I can go to the bathroom again, thank God (yes, unfortunately, I am the queen of uncommon side effects - apparently Lexapro makes me unable to go to the bathroom, and every doctor I told this too just looked at me funny), and, I am happy to report, my motivation has returned. Could it be that this is already out of my system? Yesterday I felt great - went to two AA meetings, went shopping, did laundry, went to work, cleaned - I did more this weekend than I did the entire 5 weeks I was on that stuff. Tonight I left work at 7, made dinner, emptied and loaded the dishwasher, played the piano, soaked my feet, packed food for tomorrow - all in an hour and a half.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It's hard to say. Frankly, I feel just like I used to. This morning I was crying in my office, right now I feel fine. Tomorrow morning I will probably wake up feeling great and believing anything is possible, and by the time I go to bed tomorrow, I'll probably be devastated and crying on the closet floor. More than dreading the return of the anxiety I have lived with my whole life, I am dreading this return of my crazy and sort of unpredictable and very rapid mood fluctuations. Up and down and up and down. I do feel some amount of anxiety actually, but I only felt relief from that for about a week and a half on Lexapro and then slowly but surely it crept back in. I actually can't tell what my level of anxiety is at the moment. Is it better or worse - the same - I feel like this whole experience has confused me and I'm not sure anymore how to label it.
Even though I feel some amount of something - sadness, mixed with anxiety, a little fear, fear is always in there, no matter what else is going on - I feel like I have a better handle on all of this at the moment. I am not opposed to trying another drug, but for now I think I am going to sit tight and just let myself level out a bit and see just how level, or not so level normal actually is. I suspect it will be what it has always been, which is not very level. At any rate, I feel renewed motivation to figure out how to deal with this stuff - so at least that's a start. I know that I can't return to feeling the way I was feeling before I went on Lexapro, or at least I don't want to return to that - which means, something has to change. I have to change something.
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