Did I need medication? Or did I need someone to talk
to? Someone, that is, who would do more than charge the
going rate for nodding and whip out a prescription pad
before the first fifty minutes were up. Was I physiologically
depressed? At an innate biochemical disadvantage? Or
was reaching for the pad just the way things were done
because the doc had been well patronized by the drug reps
and had plenty of samples in her file cabinet?
I don’t know, and I never will know. I took my first Prozac
and took flight.

I went out like a turbocharged dorm geek after the last
exam, a recluse set loose on the world with the sudden
hubris of ten presidents and all the pent-up primal urges I’d
been sublimating since the onset of puberty. I was a stalled
career flounderer set going again by a little green-andcream-
colored Pulvule that made me feel so good I called it
vitamin P.

In fact, my brain was never quite the same after I zapped
it with that first course of SSRIs. Those initial months on
Prozac when I was thin-thin and wildly productive and
fascinated by everything and feeling every minute like I’d
just been fucked—they didn’t last and they never came
again.

Pretty soon my brain adjusted, and pretty soon I got puffy
and lethargic, taking four-hour death naps in the afternoon,
gaining weight, and guzzling coffee just to keep my head
up, and maybe, if I drank enough, get some fleeting
glimpse of the former glory.

My doc upped my dose to the max, and then we added
other antidepressants to amplify the effect, until I was a
bug-eyed, constipated, jangle-nerved sloth writing rants in
the closet at 4:00 a.m. because I’d slept all afternoon and a
soft cell was the only place I felt safe. I got kinda twitchy and
geriatric when I ate, my fork shaking wildly all the way from
the plate to my mouth.

My doc and I tried a lot of other medications along the
way, and I had all the classic side effects. I went hypomanic
on the Prozac, so we added mood stabilizers to even me
out. I lost interest in sex, so we tried another
antidepressant, Wellbutrin, to bring me back. We switched,
jiggered, and recombined, looking for that perfect pickle.
But if one thing didn’t give me a rash or panic attacks, then
it made me gobble salty junk food in the middle of the night.
I tried most of the majors, and burned through their effects. I
got scrawny, then fat, petrified, then out of control, sexless,
then sex-obsessed.

Finally, beset by attacks of crippling anxiety, I got a scrip
for Klonopin. The velvet hammer. A relative of Valium and
Xanax, and the best drug I know for what ails you, if you’ve
given up on all the rest. Just pop it and bonk—you’re out.
Sweet dreamless sleep.

But even this didn’t last.

Eventually the dope just doesn’t work the way it used to.
Even Klonny needs a boost to keep hammering you. And
that’s when they start referring to you in whispered tones as
“medication-resistant.”

blyger skrev:Ok jag märkte inte minsta av flouxetin och när dom glömde/inte kom sig för att skriva ut nya i tid så slutade jag huxflux utan problem

Miche skrev:

blyger skrev:Ok jag märkte inte minsta av flouxetin och när dom glömde/inte kom sig för att skriva ut nya i tid så slutade jag huxflux utan problem

Jag märkte inte heller av den, men min familj led... Riktigt hemskt med minnesluckorna.