Lukewarm Turkey

For the 2.2 people that read this, I am still alive – day 2 of no happy pills. The cold turkey is feeling kind of lukewarm right now, considering I slept for a total of 2.5 hours last night.

Yesterday was a surprisingly tolerable day. Dare I say that I am much happier without the happy pills? Don’t tell the pharmaceutical company!

Other than random electric shock headaches, a deep paralyzing hunger where I fantasized about gnawing on small fat babies dipped in ranch dressing, and feeling as if my eyes were wandering in 2 separate directions, I did pretty well.

I was actually, in a good mood? I don’t think I had a thought of violently attacking anyone all day long.

CNS therapies are interesting. I have been on a few drugs in my life (mostly legal).

Ritalin – take my rage, and give it some cystal meth, and there you have it. Not pretty.
Wellbutrin – I might as well swallow a bunch of tic tacs.
Prozac – Should we talk about the hives that landed me in the emergency room? Maybe we should talk about the violent insomnia, the Parkinsonian shaking, the teeth chattering, or the fact that I could not feel any type of emotion whatsoever.
Xanax – Oh my, how I love you. You are like drinking a bottle of wine without the calories. I love you so much, that I decided to stop taking you so I did not end up on Intervention.
Ambien – This was also fun. Why go on just Prozac when you can take several other drugs to deal with the side effects? That is so much more fun. Things get really interesting when you take it and don’t actually fall asleep. Instead, you call your friend, have a 3 hour long conversation that you don’t remember, and then walk out to tell your husband that he needs to turn off the air conditioner so it stops talking to you. It’s January.

Strattera was helpful. While I went on it for ADHD, it totally wiped out my binge eating, which stopped a continuum of bad depression. For example, when you eat 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies, while you feel an initial burst of chocolate chip flavored elation, about 10 minutes later you feel like a major fat failure. And why do anything else except sit around and watch bad television when you are a fat failure? It was instrumental in getting me off of an ugly downward spiral. So thanks, Strattera. It’s been real.

Here’s my take on all these drugs (legal). When you have “mental challenges,” (I am trying to be positive and not say things like “when you are a nutcase/batshit crazy”) it is like your mind is full of junk. We are talking about dirty spandex pants, US magazines from last week, empty pickle containers, toilet paper that you bought last week that you haven’t put away yet, and a whole lot of junk mail (I may or may not be talking about the current state of my living room).

When you take happy drugs, all the junk still stays there, but the lights get a lot dimmer (or completely off, in the case of Prozac). Things look a lot cleaner, don’t they? Guess what, the crap is still there. The only way you are going to clear out the crap is if you change out of your sweatpants, brush your teeth, and clean the hell up!

I think therapies such as these are very important. They have helped millions of people. But I think a lot of people use them as a bandaid. If you slap a bandaid on a carotid artery bleed, things are going to get messy fast. The only way I ever changed was when I took action, and found the WBT! (World’s Best Therapist!)

I will get off my soapbox now, but then again, this is my blog. (My grandpa used to make me sit on phonebooks at the dinner table so I could reach the table.)

On a separate note, it is slightly scary that we might have to start thinking about childcare. DB brought this to my attention last night. I’m glad he thinks about such important things as this. He’s the ying to my yang. The rice to my krispie. The bacon to my bacon. Who knew that you just couldn’t keep the baby in a fish tank? No water of course. Just some sand. Like a terrarium, except a baby-arium.

(I do not condone keeping infants in cages.)