Jonesing for a Fix
Periodically I have to quit something to remind myself that I am still a world-class addict.
The good news is the thing I’m quitting this time is Lexapro, an anti-anxiety medication I’ve taken for about six years. I started the prescription at a super-stressful time in my life personally and professionally. My doctor said it was a small dosage – 10 mg – and the impact was so mild it wasn’t really even definable.
Okay I know you’re probably sitting there thinking, “How much anxiety could you possibly have, Selfie Boy?” Well not a heckuva lot compared to people going through terrible things like illness or injury or having your life hammered by a pandemic. Not a damned bit like that, thankfully.
But we all have our triggers, don’t we? Those stupid, unfounded fears that set off that death-spiral feeling that all is lost. The “imposter syndrome” that makes you feel like a fraud in your own life. The constant “what if?” scenarios in your head that always end with being fired for something completely crazy (which, hilariously, actually did happen to me).
We worry endlessly about our children – even when they’re grown – and fret about money and self-image and jeez we’re terrified of dying alone and pretty soon we’re spiraling down once again into the blackness.
Depression lurks in the wings for too many of us, waiting for the opportunity to turn a bad thing really awful. There’s no doubt that a couple of decades ago, depression turned Funny Drunk Pat telling stories at the bar into Pathetic Drunk Pat gagging on a mouthful of warm Kamchatka vodka first thing in the morning. I eventually figured out that fighting depression with booze was equivalent to fighting lung cancer with cigarettes. So I quit 11 years ago.
But just six years ago, even Happily Sober Pat was struggling with the stress of running a large publishing enterprise and, ironically, dealing with a loved one who was in the grips of his own serious drug addiction.
So I went to my doc and got some help in the form of that tiny little happy pill. But I did not rely on dope alone. I also went to my boss and suggested somebody else take over a chunk of my big fancy publishing job because the stress just wasn’t worth it. And I discovered a thing called Families Anonymous and with my wife’s help we learned to cope with addiction in our family. (FA is a godsend for parents and others dealing with addicted loved ones.) Last but not least I got serious about daily powerwalks which helped me a ton both physically and emotionally.
And the magic words that helped me quit drinking also guided me in so many other ways during stressful times:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
So, in these intervening years, I’ve been able to eliminate a whole bunch of the stressors that led me to Lexapro in the first place. It occurred to me recently that am quite literally running out of things to obsess about.
So I talked to my doc and she agreed I didn’t seem to need the happy pills anymore. She told me to wean myself off of them by cutting them in half for a couple of weeks, then taking half every other day for another two weeks. Easy peazy, right?
Well sort of.
As I said, the good news is I’m giving up something I don’t need anymore because I’ve mitigated a lot of the anxiety that made me need it.
But the bad news is I’m still an addict so I’m currently going through a full-blown case of white-knuckle Lexapro withdrawal.
Right now – right this second – weaning myself off a “mild” dose is kicking my ass. I can’t concentrate, I’m weak, and my tinnitus (which is always annoying) is on blast. Honestly, the physical symptoms of this withdrawal are way worse than when I quit drinking. This time I’m actually Jonesing for a fix.
The addict inside me keeps urgently reminding me it would just be waaaay easier just to keep popping that teeny tiny little pill and not have to feel like this.
But that would be wrong. So I write this to focus my foggy brain and I walk and I try to remember the single greatest lesson of old age:
This too shall pass.