For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with cognitive therapy. Here’s a simple way to put it: I’m learning to change my thought process, to work myself out of the well-worn grooves of negative thought. I’m goingto be honest and tell you that I’m not very good at it. Not yet. It’s kind of like learning to play an instrument. Youcan’t just pick it up and be magical and have a verse-chorus-verse complete with dreamy interlude and devastatingstrum. You have to practice. You start with the scales and you do them over and over until you can’t see straight.Then you force yourself to do them some more. You work your way into it. A process that commands patience. Oneof the most difficult forms of patience is the kind you have to have with yourself. Hence my jerky, sputtering start.
My therapist insisted that when I walk through a doorway, I tell myself two things. Two basic things which one,maybe, shouldn’t have to tell themselves. I say maybe because it isn’t always a given. I walk through a doorway and tell myself: I am a lovable person; I am a valuable person. It’s a belief that I have to hear from me—when my therapist suggested this I was quite irritated and angry. I didn’t understand it because I didn’t think I could do it. That is, until, the first time I did it. And even right now I lean back and forth slightly between making this entry something private, or making sure anyone can read this. My growth might strike you as ridiculous, but I’ve got to quit caring about that. See, you can put weight to things—on purpose and on accident. And some things carry a weight we aren’t aware of until we try to lift them, until we put them into our hands and try to step forward. That’s the best way I can say it. No pivotal beam of sunlight found me instantly. No trumpets sounded. But with my next step I believed it. You wouldn’t believe how many doorways one walks through in a day, until you start counting.
I’m going to say it until I can’t see straight. Then I’m going to walk through some doorways and say it some more. This isn’t for you, or for this, or for that. This is for me. In some ways, this is for everything because sometimes one change can trigger a long line of necessary.
Two important anniversaries coming up next month.October 2nd marks my 7th year living in Pittsburgh. Seven years! The kneejerk comment to that is, of course: I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I moved here at the age of twenty. Oh, that means it’s been seven years since I owned a car. Sweet. I wonder if I’ll ever own a vehicle again. To be honest, I don’t think I want to.
I have a lot to say about being here seven years. I’m glad that I kept a livejournal for years and years, because I have a neat little pdf file of memories. Things I would have otherwise forgotten about. Wow. Seven years. All of my twenties in the 412. It’s kind of amazing. I’ll write more about this later. Like I said, I have a lot to say on the subject.
The other anniversary falls on October 10th. My last dose of Paxil.
this picture snapped right before taking my last dose
Again, I have so much to say about this. Not now, though. Soon. I’m thinking of something to do, some way to acknowledge the anniversary. Gotta find a way to celebrate survival.
Woke to my cat leaning back dreaming on the pillow next to me. Of catnip and tiny custom cabbie hats, I’m sure.
Coasting over the bridge, the sun kept defiant back to me. Two wheels cut the shades of shadow into rotary dials and wind bit and pulled saline from eyes. There is something brave about moving(for the moment that’s all my brain will give me).
Met my lady in gray for lunch. We spent a while walking, looking for something open and with power. Find a seat at the Soliders&Sailors memorial, and everything is that same color and we’re trying to cheer each other up. Walk down the big steps and part ways. Swallowed by students, to the shudder of elevator zipping up&up to my skyhover desk. An absurd amount of paperclips.
Reading about writing courses.(I like that sentence) I do this until my eyes ache.
I start the strangest letters in my head. The best though: Dear words, welcome to returning. If your fear is afraid then you have nothing to worry.
U.S. Paxil probe broadens
June 20, 2008
By Tracy Staton
More government watchdogs appear to be boarding the Paxil investigation train. The Justice Department is coordinating a probe that includes Colorado’s Justice folks and the Boston U.S. attorney’s office. GlaxoSmithKline had already disclosed the Colorado investigation and confirmed the rest in today’s Wall Street Journal. Investigators are gathering documents and depositions about Paxil’s potential link to suicidal behavior, at least in part from plaintiff’s lawyers representing families suing the drugmaker, and about GSK’s portrayal of those risks to doctors and the FDA, the WSJ says.
Glaxo says it’s cooperating with the investigation and that it can’t comment further. In the past, the company has said that it “acted properly and responsibly” in testing Paxil and passing on trial data to regulators.
According to the WSJ, the probe is particularly focused on Glaxo’s submissions to the FDA about Paxil and suicidality when the drug’s approval was pending. Investigators also were anxious to get their hands on some documents, under court seal, that disputed GSK’s research conclusions on suicidality risks. GSK gave the Justice Department those documents, stipulating that they not be passed along to the FDA.
You’ll recall that last week, Sen. Charles Grassley demanded an FDA investigation of Paxil’s 1992 approval. That followed a years-long U.K. investigation that recently ended with no charges against GSK because British laws on data-sharing are unclear.
It is not enough to just wake up, not enough to pinch a forearm hard to believe.
I do believe that winter holds its own sort of stillness and simplicity–when all you are doing is trying to stay warm and keep heat. The world can trickle down into maintaining the act of shiver. Sure, there is that. And that is so far away from now, the now without sleeves on a porch as the clock ticks more into night. There is this kind of stillness, the July kind, the midway through.
I know that citing some sort of normalcy never works. We have no norm to work with. Maybe this is better known as habit? Personal stillness, simplicity, is important. I’ve kicked against it for so long, long enough to misdiagnose it–maybe a new form of crazy, maybe some sort of broken, some sort of numb. I have struggled with that, wondering if prior years on medication caused a residual dent, tied the nerve endings into bows of matted splints, dead bits like scissor legs in a permanently opened yawn. But no. It is just finding a place, finding a comfort–the go-between of mind and heart being better understood, as opposed to lost. A misunderstanding is not a loss. It is just encouragement to continue the search, to keep the ear all siren to the ground. Stillness in self is not a fault, but better yet a chance to take in surroundings. To listen more, to receive more, to give more. To find out what is important.
Maybe the hardest lesson learned(at least for me): there doesn’t have to be chaos, constant. It isn’t necessary. It isn’t proof. Beyond a crude spit-shine, it does nothing for heart, for soul, for pride, for strength. Contentment is not complacency, and one cannot constantly view their hardship as another chance to hide. Eventually, something will make you still. You will have to face it. Staring down a shadow does not make one famous. The worries do not disappear themselves. The worries are not made of stone; what is malleable, find hands. Take care of your instruments, soften this with them. Shape what comes.
found testimonies that I can relate to..all too well.
the following post is from a Paxil forum, posted in 2000:
Well, I made it. It has been nearly a year now, and I have survived. To date, I have managed to get 6 other people off that damned pill or one of it’s bastard brothers. It hasn’t been easy. One poor guy was put on it by his doctor to help him deal with the stress of having a light case of asthma. The doc kept upping his dosage over a 6 month period because he was feeling increasingly violent towards his girlfriend for no reason and finally attacked her and his mother(something he had never done before.). After that, he sat down and read all the information I have been putting together for the past 10 months. He is on suicide watch and is taking himself off slowly because his doctor refused his request to get off the stuff and instead upped the dosage.
Anyway, in all my searching, I have found a few books and authors that helps those trying to understand what is happening quite a bit. “Toxic Psychology” is wonderful. It deals with ssris and other drugs of that nature. I think every doctor should have to read that book instead of quoting what the drug reps tell them.
As to myself, I can now read an entire book without crying from confusion, and I remember what clothes I have on. I no longer think about killing myself or those I love and my sexual drive is recovering slowly.
However, I am still living with the effects of this pill. My children are a little distant from me because of what that pill turned me into. I have placed them in councling and it seems to be helping. All of it, all the negative feelings they are expressing, go back to the time I was on that pill. My marriage is in ruins and my husband of 16 years and I are discussing divorce. Too much happened, and he too is hurt. My liver has recovered well, but my heart has not. There was serious damage done to it and my new doctor doesn’t know if it is repairable. I am still packing around most of the wieght even though I go to the gym every week and workout. My doctor has tried medicine to bring it down because of the heart damage, but I have only managed to loss about 15 lbs.
There is life after Paxil, but you have to fight for it. Hard. And then, during this battle, you have to face what damage was done. My motto has always been that which does not kill us makes us stronger. It has never been more true.
You can do it. Alone or with a new doctor, you can do it. Turn it into a quest. Research, research research. Find others in your circle of family and friends that are on the stuff and show them the information you find. Give copies to your doctors. Make every day of the withdrawl a fight to study and learn. Get angry. Write letters. Tell anyone who will listen. Keep a diary. Write in it everyday. Everything you feel, no matter how horrible. Pages and pages. I did. And it helped alot.
There is life after Paxil, or Prozac, or Zolofft and all the others.
To date over 19 million Americans are on ssris. That number is expected to double in just two years. And more and more doctors are refusing to take their patients off it, instead upping the dosage or switching them to other ssris. Someone has to stop it.
Who better then the ones that have been through it.
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It took me too long to decide, I should have decided the first day I took this drug. I have lived for 12 years in a life of unreality. I have been off Paxil now for three months, and I am just starting to remember life as it really is. I really believe these Perscriptdion ADs are just a part of the Capitalistic System, and aren’t really there to help the people but to help the Drug Companies. I think a cup of coffee or tea, a joint, or a glass of wine is a more natural, and reasonable way of medicating through stressful times. I was a Paxil Junkie for 12 years, it made me a Zombie. Never again will I go along with establishment methods of solving problems with the use of Chemicals, a big mistake. I know you will appreciate your decision when you look back on it years from now.
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It has been 2 years since my paxil hell that lasted more than 6 months and I am still paying the price.I used to be a Registered Nurse with a MBA, yeah I still have the degrees I just can use them. I was fired from my job and landed in jail because of my inablility to make sound choices and the lack of caring about the outcomes of my actions. The world is all rosey while your on Paxil. Your life falls apart and you are left with the pieces. I feel robed of my life. I went from making over 1200.00 a week to 200.00 a week. I have lost my credit, my house, and my ability to have a good job ever again.I am more depressed now than before I took Paxil.I can never have my reputation back, but it would be nice to be compensated for my pain and suffering and the destruckion of a great life once lived.I am angry and hurt and lost and confused.I have a hard time with each day, knowing it will not get any better.I want to curl up in a ball and never get up.
But I have a child to raise and I can’t hardly do that any more.
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Last year, as I was facing my final two semesters of college, I thought I’d seek assistance for being a little shy. I thought it’d be helpful to lose the shyness so that I could better function in the seminar classes that I had to take prior to graduation. Further, I believed that it would help me when I finally went out to look for my first big job. I talked with a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and they finally gave me Paxil. Paxil makes one do things he or she wouldn’t normally do. It makes you care about little to nothing other than, perhaps, making yourself happy. One just stops considering the consequences. Prior to taking the drug, I had a 4.0 GPA, a perfect driving record, perfect credit, and got along well with just about everyone around me. Within two weeks of going on it, I received my first ticket for allegedly running a stop sign. The police officer actually had me get out of the car because my eyes gave him the impression that I was on Meth or drunk. Another cop pulled up in a second car to cover me from another angle, while holding a flashlight on me. They treated me like I was dangerous or something! When I told him that I was taking Paxil, he informed me that I could be arrested for being under the influence of it. Eventually he let me go.
Finally, I was cold toward my family and friends. I was not too worried about hurting anyone. People became objects to me. I had no emotions. I felt little to nothing. My thoughts were not right. When you don’t care about anything, you can be a destructive individual. When I finally tried to come off the drug after a couple of months, I had difficulty doing so. I became very sick with flu-like symptoms, but I never get sick from the flu. For about a month, I threw up three to four times a day. I couldn’t get the thought of dying off of my mind. My regular physician couldn’t help me get better. So I eventually entered the hospital. After a night there, things started to get better. I threw up just a few more times. Even though I quit the drug, I couldn’t make the consequences magically disappear. They’re still there, and a model life has been destroyed. Now I’m shy again. And who knows? Maybe Paxil damaged my brain. I don’t feel like I’m as sharp as I used to be. Thank God I didn’t physically hurt anyone else or myself (other than the minor injuries sustained in the auto accident). I imagine that it can be much worse for others, especially those who have serious personal problems prior to taking the drug.
The great-painful part of frostbite—when the bends and limbs start coming back to life.
The side effects are very very close to being over, if they are not already gone completely. On my walk from the bus to my work building in the mornings I can feel myself actually reacting to things and sounds around me, including the music coming through the headphones, the air, the people, the crosswalks. Pardon the obvious oddity to this sentence, but I am feeling the most that I’ve felt in a very very long time.
I’m thankful to not be hunched over the toilet in the mornings anymore, and my stomach pains are pretty much gone. The itchy skin, the vertigo—both are gone. I’m done. The nagging little feeling of forgetting something nightly is gone too. When a nightmare is over the waking up begins. I can’t believe I did it, but I did it. Anti-depressants deserve their own level of hell in Dante’s Inferno.
My sister and I had an interesting phone conversation last night. We talked a lot about mom, and we talked about how far gone she is now—as in removed from our daily lives and whatnot. I guess I never gave much thought to how much her stroke impacted her mental state(my mom had a stroke in her early thirties, when I was in fifth grade). I guess I only thought about the physical things that happened—her weight gain, the loss of feeling on one side of the body, how she had to learn to walk again and eat again via mouth instead of tube. I never thought of the mental toll, never “took it into consideration.”Now I am. It doesn’t change much about anything, but it does tie some things together that perhaps needed connecting. I’m sure to be chewing on it for a few days, at the very least, and writing about it.
Speaking of writing, my sister offered to do the artwork for the book I’m working on. I wish I could rightly express to her how honored I am to have her be a part of it. She is an amazing artist. Hearing her say that made my night.
I was getting laughed at the other day, while talking about my childhood panic attacks. Others found the oddity of triggers to be amusing, I guess. I had one during the summer between third and fourth grade, while staring at the ceiling fan. The fan was on a lackadaisical speed–not too fast, not too slow, just making the rounds so to speak. I started focusing my eyes on one single blade, following it in circle after circle without moving my head. It provided a pace, and behind my eyes the brain started matching it, and the heart held onto the bumper like a champ–it all came crashing in. For some reason I was convinced that there was homework–homework due any minute that I hadn’t completed–even though it was mid-July and I had nothing to do but be a kid and enjoy it. I ran all around the house, looking for someone to convince me that things were okay. I was alone. The only way to get calm was to get the hell away from that fan.
I still find that stunt from time to time, my eyes tracking up to a spin on the ceiling, and I have to resist singling out a blade to follow. It’s just going to make me nervous.
My other early panic attack came from Roy Orbison. My second step-father was a big fan. One summer we spent almost a month on a house boat in Dale Hollow, and my step-father had the live video of an Orbison performance. It’s the one with Springsteen on guitar. Anyway, he put it on the tiny television one afternoon, while my mother napped. Something about “Only the Lonely” and my mother being unattainable in her REM state drove me crazy. I had to walk down the dock, away from the scene–I had three stepbrothers at the time and I didn’t feel they had the right to see me cry. How would I explain such a thing. As I’m typing this, I just remembered another little panic instance–unrelated to Roy, but related to my mother’s slumber. Perhaps something about her naps disturbing. What’s so strange about sleep? I’m not sure but I can remember feeling as if she was pulling away from me. The year before Orbison, she was napping at our condo and “More Than Words” came on the radio. Of all songs, right?
All my moments of sheer terror were rooted in potential abandonment. As if I knew one day my mother would leave me. As if I knew my mother would always be leaving me and that one day she would become a stranger. Can little kids know that stuff? Do all children get nabbed by a fear they can’t quite express, aside from emotional response? Where does that fear come from?
Well a few people laughed when I told them about these instances of freak out from the past. They laughed. I don’t care if they laughed really, I care more about the fact that no one shared anything in return, not a shred. A bit of me hung out there in the air and rolled around the floor between all of us and so I had to do the polite apologetic stoop n swoop to clear away any remnants of spilling my heart out. Again. Always again. But that’s how I go.
I described it to my doctor yesterday as feeling like a cast member on NYPD Blue–a reference to their jolty camera technique. Talk about suck.
To determine if true vertigo exists, you must describe a sensation of disorientation or motion. In addition, you may also have any or all of these symptoms:
Nausea or vomiting
Sweating
Abnormal eye movements
The duration can be from minutes to hours and can be constant or episodic. The onset may be due to movement or change in position. It is important to tell your doctor about any recent head trauma or whiplash injury as well as any new medications you may be taking.
You may have hearing loss and a ringing sensation in your ears.
You might have visual disturbances, weakness, difficulty speaking, decreased level of consciousness, and difficulty walking.
Has anyone ever had vertigo? Any holistic-ish remedies to recommend, besides laying down, not moving, and closing my eyes? With work and everything I can’t really do that.
I said it once, I’ll say it again: Paxil can suck it.
