Before we talk numbers, I just want to reiterate something — the word about. Yeah.

See how I’ve used it in the opening sentence?

About two weeks ago.

Why the lack of specificity, Summer? you’re asking.

Well, it’s simple: I plumb forgot to write down the date I began splitting my pills. Oops.

It’s been something of a happy accident, in truth. When I withdrew from Paxil, I documented everything in strict detail. I was on the lookout for brain zaps, nausea, and fatigue.

My nervous system, already hypervigilant by default, kicked into overdrive to help me to track my withdrawal side effects. Was that a twinge of dizziness? Did my stomach just turn? Why did my heart just flutter? I feel warm. Am I warm?

Remember, there’s a difference between “vigilance” and “hypervigilance”, and that difference is usually a panic attack. The former is healthy; the latter is dysfunctional. (Too damn bad the latter comes so naturally to me.)

VIGILANCE: TO ACCEPT OR REJECT?

Don’t get me wrong: There are still benefits aplenty to journaling one’s efforts to withdraw from an SSRI. It’s a great way to track your symptoms and learn to predict how you’ll feel on day 3, day 4, or day 5 after a dosage cut.

It’s sort of like the menstruation tracker of the mental health world (sorry, men; I mean no alienation), only we’re replacing abdominal cramps with brain zaps. (And, unfortunately, we’re keeping most of the other unpleasant period-ic artifacts, but without all the blood. Which is, well, one strangely optimistic way of looking at SSRI withdrawal…right?)

My point is this: I’ve forgotten to keep a detailed journal — in part because life is keeping me busy with life-y things like work and buying a house and stuff — and I’m wondering if I’ve suffered less because of it.

Yes, I can still recount the side effects from memory, but the absence of a physical notebook page waiting to soak up ink might have had a positive effect. It’s sort of made the first dosage cut a bit less salient. Less overt. More back-burner stuff.

I’m not sure, frankly, how I’ll choose to continue: to write and archive, or to try and remember. Memory is fallible, but archiving is, well, heavy. Sometimes.

Before I get into a philosophical inquiry about the nature of human memory, I’ll get down to business. Here’s the summary of my symptoms:

_________________________

DOSAGE CUT #1: 30 mg to 25 mg

Date: 4/27-ish. Or something.

Symptoms: I felt fine the first day, but I definitely had a good round of brain zaps and fatigue for the five or six days that followed. The zaps faded out at the end of the week, but the fatigue stuck around for a bit longer. Also, there were a few headaches and even a migraine.

No nausea, and — well, wait. Maybe a little bit. A little nausea, but so tolerable a sensation I hardly noticed it because I obviously didn’t even remember it until I began typing the last two sentences.

How I handled it: I slept for longer than usual to try and keep the fatigue at bay. I don’t think it worked. I remember drinking more caffeine during these past two weeks than usual.

Also, way more Excedrin. I don’t think it worked, but it felt like a rational choice. I postponed much of my work to the evening hours because I felt dumpiest during the daytime.

Next reduction: Not sure yet. After I close on the house that I’m buying. I don’t want to have a case of the sleepies while I’m trying to sign mortgage paperwork.

_________________________

Have you ever withdrawn from an SSRI medication? If so, how did you track your withdrawal? Did you track your withdrawal, or did you approach the process more non-nonchalantly than I? Let me know in the comments.

I hope you’ll follow along on my journey to zero milligrams — or, well, as close to zero as I can get before that crazy “pregnancy” thing I want to try.

Photo by Chris Blakeley

I really wanted to do another “Win Wednesday” post yesterday, but I couldn’t. And why, you might ask?

Well, I was hanging out on the bathroom floor with a box of saltines, a bottle of Pepto Bismol, peppermint oil, anti-nausea wristbands, Xanax, ginger candy, Pepsi, ginger ale, and Emetrol.

I’m deathly afraid of the stomach virus to the point where I have a legitimate phobia of throwing up. Believe it or not, this fear is incredibly common, and it has a name: emetophobia.

EMETOPHOBIA: THE FEAR OF VOMITING

When I first learned it had a name, I felt less alone. I didn’t feel weird for engaging in bizarre preventative measures to prevent me from throwing up (even when puking would probably make me feel better).

For example: chewing some ginger gum at the first sign of nausea. Wearing anti-nausea wristbands in the car even before you feel nauseated. Always carrying a tin of peppermint Altoids in your purse or pocket.

Just in case.

Yesterday, as I lay on the bathroom floor in a mess of misery and fear, I turned to YouTube for distraction. First, I watched cute videos of small animals.

Then, for some reason, I entered “emetophobia” as a search term.

And I’m glad I did. I found the following videos by user ScaredToV, an emetophobic woman who details the extent of her phobic fear of norovirus and all things vomit-related.

Watching her videos actually made me feel better. It was comforting to know that, as I lay frantically worrying about how ill I felt, my pathological fear isn’t unique. Watch as ScaredToV explains how emetophobia impacts her life — especially her life at work as a restaurant server:

I completely identify with this girl. Do you?

OUR UNUSUAL QUIRKS

I’ve memorized, unintentionally, each and every stomach virus I’ve ever had in my life. I can tell you how old I was for each one. I can tell you what month of the year it was when I threw up.

I can describe everything: the toilet, the food(s) I ate beforehand (and puked up), and what methods of distraction I used to keep my mind off of the nausea.

(Seriously, I’m not kidding. Let’s take my horrible stomach virus at age 6. The time: December, in the evening. At t-30 minutes, I was at the mall with my mom. I sat on Santa’s lap and couldn’t remember what I wanted for Christmas. Then, mom drove me home, I told her my belly didn’t feel good, and I puked up orange soda into a peach-colored toilet all night. I laid on the living room couch while my mom watched Dallas. I even remember having the shakes after each round of throwing up.)

Obviously, getting sick isn’t pleasant for anyone. But for emetophobes, it’s downright horrifying.

And even before the virus actually begins affecting the emetophobe’s body, the ruminations can be painfully disrupting.

Again, here’s ScaredToV with a story about eating Easter Dinner at her brother-in-law’s house. She found out at the person who’d prepared the Easter meal was recovering from the stomach virus:

If you’re afraid of vomiting like me, I hope you find this videos to be helpful. They don’t provide any tips or advice, but I so greatly identify with this woman’s stories — and perhaps you will, too.

(Be sure to check out the International Emetophobia Society, a web forum dedicated to bringing together emetophobes from all walks of life.)

Photo: Ciron810 on Flickr

Yes, my husband and I are buying a house. Oh, the excitement! A house of our very own. A house where we’ll raise kids and grow old together.

We’re buying a house!

(Well, we’re trying to.)

It’s a buyer’s market in many areas of the country, but I’m lucky enough to live in the 7th-fastest growing metro area in the US. Translation: seller’s market.

Bah.

Having an anxiety disorder affects my life quite enough the way it is. Throw something as big as house hunting into the mix and it’s very easy to become overwhelmed — with the process, with the decisions, and with the somewhat-manic fear of missing out on the perfect home.

Here are my tips to help you get through the house hunting process with as little additional anxiety and stress as possible:

1. Allow yourself some time. Don’t rush. If you can, start looking for a house well in advance of your lease running out. It might be a pain to pay a few bucks to break the lease early, yes — but what’s a month’s rent compared to a 30-year mortgage on a deadline-driven compromise house?

Giving yourself time will allow you to stretch out the process a bit without a lease renewal date looming over your head. It will also help you to make more logical decisions and avoid the dreaded FOMO (see #5 below).

2. Get yourself a buyer’s agent. A buyer’s agent is a real estate agent who represents you, the buyer. (The agent’s name displayed on the real estate company placard outside of the home represents the seller, and might not have your best interests in mind.)

A good buyer’s agent will help you conduct the search, send you new properties as they come on the market, take you around to do walk-throughs, and manage the bidding process and any negotiation.

Typically, the buyer doesn’t spent any money out of pocket to work with a buyer’s agent — the money paid to the buyer’s agent is drawn out of the selling price of the home (and ultimately, then, is paid by the seller).

In sum, a good buyer’s agent will create order out of chaos.

3. Make a priority list before you even begin looking at homes online. Sit down (with your partner, if you’re buying jointly) and decide what your minimum requirements are.  How many bedrooms will you need? (Think ahead — any kids in your future? How many? Will you have frequent guests?)

How many bathrooms? How many square feet? What are you most willing to compromise on — location? Size? Condition? What are your “must-have” features?

Make this list, give it to your buyer’s agent, and begin searching online for homes that match your priority list (and your budget).

4. Don’t get attached. Once you start looking at houses in person — especially if they’re not occupied — you’ll find that it’s very easy to daydream your way into occupying the space. (My couch would go here, my desk would go there — oh, imagine sitting in that corner and watching television! Oh, I could see myself waking up in this bedroom. Oh, that window is perfect for my plants! And my curtains! And my cat!)

It’s difficult to resist the urge to fall in love, but remember — checking out a house for the first time is like a first date. Falling in love too soon can set you up for a huge disappointment if the seller doesn’t accept your offer.

Try to maintain a “yeah, I could live here” attitude that doesn’t tie too deeply into your psyche with an umbilical cord.

5. Don’t get trapped by FOMO — the Fear of Missing Out. We often hear about FOMO and the internet, but it’s perfectly applicable to the house hunting process.

If you’re living in a seller’s market (like I am), you’ll have to get used to looking at a house at 9 a.m. and then finding out at noon that someone else has put in an offer, and if you want the house, you’ll have to put in an offer that same day, too.

Maintain a clear head here — don’t jump in unless you’re absolutely sure you want the house. Things can get pretty competitive. Don’t fall prey to the game.

If you truly do love a house, put in an offer — but don’t put in any offers simply because you think there won’t be anything else worthwhile coming on the market soon.

There will be. There always will be.

That whole “there’s always more fish in the sea” thing is a trite platitude when it comes to romance, but in the house hunt, it’s practically the golden rule.

Earlier, I wrote about how I began to struggle with panic attacks again — in a pretty severe way — about three years after withdrawing myself from Paxil, an SSRI medication that treats anxiety disorders.

Then, after some heavy-hearted contemplation and a few shed tears, I threw up my hands and swallowed my first Celexa pill. I felt terrible about doing it. Even with the first pill, I knew I was taking out a loan — a loan with interest. Celexa would give me a break from all the anxiety, I reasoned, but just like with Paxil, there will come a day during which I’ll have to pay it all back via the horrors of SSRI withdrawal.

I felt ashamed when I began taking the Celexa. It wasn’t the “I’m ashamed I’m on psych meds” shame that no one ought to have; it was more like “I’m ashamed because I’m doing something I’d promised myself I’d never do again” kind of shame. And now, I (and only I) would be responsible for whatever might happen. With Paxil, I was uninformed. With Celexa, I knew what I was getting into.

And I didn’t feel like I had a choice in the matter.

SO, WHY ADMIT ALL OF THIS NOW?

The reason I’ve now decided to, uh, “come out” about my current SSRI use is this: my husband and I want to make a baby soon.

And I don’t want Baby to swim in SSRI soup and have to suffer from withdrawal symptoms when he or she enters this bright world of ours.

So, I’ve just begun weaning myself off of Celexa.

This is going to be an interesting journey. There are so many unknowns: will Celexa withdrawal be as difficult as Paxil withdrawal? What kind of side effects will I experience? Will I be able to endure the agony of pregnancy without an SSRI to buffer the experience?

What if my body is constantly anxious — is that good for my baby? What if I have a panic attack while pregnant and Xanax isn’t a quick-fix option? How will I handle myself? How will I handle working? I want to breastfeed my baby, so, I’m looking at a non-med period of well over nine months, right?

Ugh.

Look at that. I’m already thinking about breastfeeding and I’m not even pregnant yet.

Sigh. That’s just like me, getting caught up in the what-ifs of a future that doesn’t yet exist.

Anyway. Back to the present.

IT’S TAPER TIME

I didn’t have a blog (well, not a public one, at least) when I withdrew from Paxil.

But I sure as hell have one now.

I’ll be using this blog to chronicle my journey, to seek out (and, hopefully, provide) support, and to introduce a little glasnost into the common-but-not-oft-discussed-publicly experience of SSRI withdrawal.

As I’ve said before: fool me twice, shame on me. I certainly can’t go back in time and un-take Celexa that first weepy time, so…here I am. I accept the shame and I accept the consequences of my decision. I want to get pregnant, but before I do, I want to be as med-free as possible.

I will now play the best cards I can lay down.

For more on motherhood, mental health, and meds, check out the lovely Anne-Marie over at Do Not Faint.

Patience is a virtue, they say.

And I lack it.

Even when I’m feeling relatively calm, I have trouble waiting. (Lines, waiting rooms, and restaurants are the worst. How long do I have to stand in line? When will the nurse call my name? Will they bring my appetizers before my blood sugar drops to zilch and I begin to panic?)

But this week, I had a small waiting-related win.

I had woken up early to meet my husband and our realtor to sign some paperwork. (We’re in the process of buying a house! More on that soon.) I’m more of a night owl these days, so morning energy doesn’t come easily.

We finished up our paperwork and I decided, on a whim, to take a drive to the mall. I had some coupons to use at CVS for some dirt-cheap makeup and a free candy bar, and I also wanted to browse through the bookstore. (Even though gas is expensive, and the mall is a good 15 miles away, I can always rationalize spending money on gas. If it helps to keep agoraphobia at bay, it’s worth it.)

I drove right from the realtor’s office to the mall. I parked in a strangely-empty parking lot, got out of my car, walked to the mall entrance, and tried to open the door.

Locked.

I looked at my phone. It was only 8:30 am! The mall opens at 9 am, said the sign on the door.

Laughing, I realized that I’d never had this problem before. I’m never early for anything. I’m not a morning person. Normally, whenever I do go shopping, I’m rushing around trying to finish up before the store closes for the night. I’ve never done Black Friday and I’ve never had to loiter around waiting for a store to open in the early morning.

This felt weird. What now?

I walked back to my car and sat down in the driver’s seat. The idea of waiting for a whole half hour, 15 miles from home, in an empty parking lot? It started to make me nervous. The usual train of “what if” thinking started heaving down its slippery track: what if I panic and there’s no one here to help me? What if I get lightheaded and I have to make the 15-mile drive home? What if I panic because there’s nothing here to distract me from panic? (Hello, circular logic.)

My nerves started buzzing. The adrenaline began pumping. What should I do? How could I possibly wait for an entire half hour? Time drags when I’m anxious.

But with a little distraction from my phone, I made it work. First, I called my father to update him on the whole house-buying situation. Elapsed time: ten minutes. Then, I checked Facebook.

And that did it. It’s easy to get lost in Facebook (especially when you’re trying to be productive, right?) — I spent a good twenty minutes browsing posts about my friends’ kids and dogs and cats.

Even though distraction isn’t the ideal anxiety-management technique, it worked for me. It kept me from giving up and going home. It helped me to pass the time until the mall doors opened.

Wins are wins no matter how small. How did you overcome anxiety or panic this week? Share your story in the comments or on Twitter with the #winwednesday hashtag!

Photo: Tom Magliery

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Why not devote an entire day to focusing on our accomplishments [instead of our bumps in the road]?

Enter “Win Wednesday“: a day to reflect upon the past week and share our successes — no matter what their shape or size.)

It’s here! Happy Wednesday.

Today, we’re not just celebrating the midpoint of the work week — we’re here to celebrate Panic About Anxiety’s inaugural Win Wednesday.

The rules are simple:

1. Read about my own “win” for the week (if you’d like).
2. Post your own win in the comments below (and on Twitter, if you’d like, with a #winwednesday hashtag).
3. Read about the wins of your fellow anxiety sufferers (and cheer them on)!

Define “win” however you’d like. Tell us how you overcame anxiety this week, even if only for one fleeting moment. Perhaps you bravely walked down to the end of your driveway to collect the day’s mail. Maybe you managed to talk to your boss without getting a nervous stomach. Or maybe you made it through a grocery shopping trip without meds.

No matter how “large” or “small” the success might seem to the “outside world”, your success is 100% valid here.

I BOUGHT PASTA AND CRACKERS

Yep. That’s my win for the week — I bought pasta and crackers.

I went to the grocery store on Sunday night because, well, I was feeling confident. (Although I’ve beat agoraphobia into a [seemingly] lifeless pulp in some ways, it still manages to rise up and grab my ankles occasionally. Grocery shopping used to be off the table for me. Now, I can manage, but still with some difficulty.)

There I am, feeling confident and all, rolling through the store with my metal cart and grabbing everything on my shopping list. Wheat rolls? Check. Bananas? Got ‘em. Lox and cream cheese? Okay, that was an impulse buy (and a very tasty one).

Still, item by item, I checked groceries off of my list. Onions. Sausage. Yogurt. Check, check, check.

I was down to pasta and crackers. (The crackers weren’t on the list; I needed something to go with my lox and cream cheese, though.)

WHAT IF WHAT IF WHAT IF?

I sort of froze in the store when I realized how full my cart was. The usual fears, like weeds, crept up into my conscious awareness: what if I panic in line while stuck between the conveyor belt and the candy and other shoppers? What if, before I even get to that point, I get lightheaded in the pasta aisle? There are too many choices in the pasta aisle. Goddamn pasta aisle.

And, of course, I’d planted the seeds in my own head: suddenly, I got lightheaded. I started to sweat. I felt a pronounced sense of vertigo.

I had two options: first, I could abandon ship and run out of the store to my “safe place” (my car).

Or, I could pause, gain composure, and then continue on (with the knowledge that, if it gets too bad, I could revert back to Option One at any time).

I stood still for a moment and played with my phone to distract myself from my body’s unrequested adrenaline dump. Then, I plotted my course of action: first, pasta aisle. If I survive that, then, crackers. I need pasta for dinner tomorrow, but I could always eat lox and cream cheese on toast or something.

Yes, I may be panicky, but I’m also stubborn. I rolled along to the pasta aisle.

Pasta. Check. (Those adorable little stars, too: “pastina”, they’re called.)

Then the cracker aisle. Sea salt crackers? Yum. I’ll take them. Off the shelf, into the cart, and I was done.

The anxiety faded and I took a deep, full breath as I wheeled my loot toward the front of the store. DONE. DID IT. GOT SCARED BUT DID IT ANYWAY.

And that’s what matters most.

To talk about your wins on Twitter, use the hashtag #winwednesday.

It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

Well, let’s counter all of that exhaustion. It’s time to focus on the wins.

Enter “Win Wednesday”.

Admittedly, I’m sort of borrowing this concept from an ADHD forum on the social bookmarking and forum website Reddit.com. There’s a “subreddit” (or sub-forum) specifically for folks with ADHD — and each Wednesday, users post their “wins” — no matter how small.

Every success, after all, demonstrates progress — right?

Users reflect upon the past 7 days and share those brief-but-stunning periods of clarity, productivity, and organization that many ADHD’ers are constantly seeking. Here’s just a few examples from a recent Win Wednesday post:

• “I cleaned my desk off, and the area around it!”
• “Since the start of the year, I’ve gotten away without doing the reading in a lecture/seminar based course, because I’m bright and wily [sic] enough to get good grades while bullshitting my way through conversation. But tonight, I actually sat down and did the whole reading. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.”
• “I actually studied last week and got 84% on a math test.”

“WIN WEDNESDAY” FOR THE PANICKY CROWD

I think Win Wednesday would be perfect for us anxiety and panic sufferers. It’s so easy to remember the bad times while discounting the good times, isn’t it? Why do we do such a thing?

Drs. Rick Hanson and Rick Mendius, in Positive Emotions and Taking in the Good, note that our preference for paying more attention to life’s less-than-stellar moments is an artifact of our primitive brain.

But why?

Well, negative experiences pose more of a threat to our survival. Close encounters with wild animals are a great example — remembering the god-awful experience of being stared down by a too-close-for-comfort mountain lion is probably going to singe a bold mark in your mind. That bold mark, in turn, primes you to be on the alert for mountain lions and better prepared to GTFO when you spot one.

If you don’t, you die. (A pretty intense incentive, don’t you think?)

OUR MODERN ANXIETY TRIGGERS

We still have the same circuitry, unfortunately, despite the fact that today’s common threats — deadlines, unreasonably demanding bosses, and bumps in the night — are far less life-threatening.

This is a problem for us. Today. In 2013.

It doesn’t serve us well any longer. Does dwelling on your anxiety help you? Surely not. Does it make you feel any better about life? Nah; didn’t think so.

From Hanson & Mendius:

“…[T]he negative generally trumps the positive: A single bad event with a dog is more memorable than 1000 good times. Speaking of dogs,you may know of the studies on learned helplessness from Martin Seligman and his colleagues, which illustrate this point in haunting ways: it took only a short time to induce a sense of helplessness in the dogs, whose brain circuitry for emotional memory is very similar to our own. But it took an extraordinary effort to get them to unlearn that training. It’s as if we are predisposed to believe the worst about the world and ourselves, and to doubt the best.”

So, how do we emphasize our successes?

Hanson & Mendius call for “extend[ing] the success through time and space”. In other words, making the successful experience (seem to, at least) last longer.

That’s the goal of Win Wednesday: to stop us from forgetting about the good stuff. To offer us a place to brag about how we succeeded this week. To give us a chance to reflect, remember, and “extend” our successes.

So, every Wednesday (beginning tomorrow), I’ll be making a new “Win Wednesday” post. I’ll share my own personal wins with you — and, in turn, I hope you’ll share yours!

Photo: Va Svak (Flickr)

The scene: late summer, on a leave of absence from my cubicle-farm workplace. The culprit? Panic. Really bad panic that was keeping me, for the most part, stuck in my apartment. Most days, I was too scared to even drive down the street to Walgreens.

I had been relying on Xanax to treat my panic attacks as they happened. I’d been diligently working through Dr. Edmund Bourne’s Anxiety & Phobia Workbook (which I would honestly recommend to anyone who suffers from frequent panic attacks), but not seeing any immediate benefit. I’d been doing therapy and trying to eat normally again. At only 95 lbs, an all-time low for my adult life, I felt unhealthy and deflated.

“Why don’t you just try Celexa and see what happens?” my family doctor said at my next appointment. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to continue taking it.”

Yeah. I’ve heard that story before. Cough cough PAXIL cough.

I went through my usual monologue: Paxil was hell. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. SSRI’s are a bank loan that have to be paid back later with interest, goddammit.

I’d received a phone call from my insurance company the day prior — the one that paid me a meager income while I was home on LOA — and they said that without being on some type of medication, they wouldn’t pay up.

“What about therapy?” I asked the claims representative. “I’m doing CBT. I just tried hypnotherapy. I’m working on my problem!”

“That’s fine, but the standard treatment protocol involves medication. If you continue to refuse medication, then your claim will be denied.”

Wow.

I’m paraphrasing, of course, because I’m trying to recall the details of a phone conversation that occurred more than a year ago. But that was the general message: get on meds, or sit at home and rack up debt without a paycheck.

So, after a lot of grief, I relented. I told my doctor I’d try the Celexa.

I cried when I swallowed the first tiny orange tablet. Here I go. Here I go again.

“Fool me twice,” I kept thinking. Over and over again.

And shame on me.

(More about my med experience to come — and why, suddenly, it matters so much to me.)

Photo: MissLeslie17 (Flickr)

I had a full-time “big girl” job in a customer service call center that, over time, began to painfully grate on my nerves. After successfully transferring to a new department (yay!) where my workday was less hectic, I found out that my entire department was being laid off — except for me and about 8 other employees — and we were all magically being transferred back to the nerve-grating department from whence I came.

The anxiety was unbearable. Couldn’t sleep; couldn’t eat. I felt stuck. Even Xanax didn’t help.

And that’s when I found myself on the Med-Go-Round again. I took a leave of absence from work and went to my doctor. In the exam room, I cried as he signed my LOA paperwork.

“I think you’d feel much better if you tried some medication other than Xanax,” he said. His concern was genuine. “Instead of treating your panic as it happens, we should try to prevent it.”

I refused. I said I just needed to rest and let my body and mind unwind for awhile.

Next appointment:

“I still think you’d feel much better if you tried some medication. Why don’t we try an SSRI?”

“No. I hate SSRIs. I had a bad experience with Paxil,” I told him.

“Well, Celexa isn’t so bad. Would you try it?”

“No. I don’t want to take an SSRI ever again.”

We discussed SSRI alternatives and, after plenty of research, I begrudgingly agreed to try a drug called Buspar. It’s an anxiety medication that many people on the internet liken to pure water — both in its effectiveness and in its side effect profile.

Worth a shot, at least. If it really doesn’t do a thing, at least it won’t get me hooked.

I tried Buspar for all of three or four weeks. The internet was right — it WAS like water (in terms of its benefit, at least). It didn’t do a damn thing for my anxiety level. I still felt miserable and panicky and I was scared to do routine out-of-the-apartment chores, like run to the grocery store or wash my car.

And, on top of that, Buspar had a hugely annoying side effect: the zaps. Yes, those famed “brain zaps” or “brain shivers” that SSRI withdrawal can cause. With Buspar, the zaps didn’t come as a result of withdrawal — they came as a result of me actually taking the medication. About fifteen minutes after swallowing each pill, I’d had to deal with an hour-long dizzying bout of electric shock-like sensations in my neck and head. (Multiple this by a 3x/day dosing schedule.)

My doc was more bewildered than I was about this side effect. He told me to stop taking it. I welcomed this advice.

So…now what? There I was, home on LOA from my job, too anxious to do much of anything except for watch documentaries on Netflix and train my parrot to say new words.

(What comes next, you’re asking? Something I’m not thrilled to admit to my friends who supported me during my long journey to post-Paxil recovery. Find out tomorrow.)

Photo: Fredrik Klintberg

But there’s one thing I haven’t been sharing. It’s not because I’m embarrassed. It’s not because I’m ashamed.

It’s because I’ve hit that “fool me twice, shame on me” mile marker.

I promised myself I’d never take an SSRI again after my horrible experience with Paxil.

But now it’s time for me to admit that I’m on Celexa. I’ve been on it for about a year and a half.

Like Paxil, it’s an SSRI. The same kind of drug I promised myself I’d never touch again.

Sigh.

So, how’d it come to this? After year of vociferously bashing SSRI’s online, in the LA Times, and in a yet-to-be-released documentary about SSRI withdrawal — what in holy hell convinced me to get back on one?

The answer is twofold: frustration, and insurance.

Two years ago, back when I was working full-time at a call center, things began to go south. I was whisked away from a pet project that I’d loved and dropped into a messy new part of the call center responsible for handling high-dollar accounts. I went from feeling passionate about my job to hating it within about a week’s time.

As I grumbled through redundant tasks (like adding and naming worksheets and copying and pasting cells into over 300 Excel files — seriously!), I found time to ask myself a bothersome question: why am I here? I don’t like my job any longer, but I can’t quit. I’m scared to quit. I’m scared to leave this company and my totally decent health benefits.

I became bitter, of course. What else could I become? I couldn’t force myself to be happy. I couldn’t fake it.

Here, the anxiety started to grow. Little by little, panic began to creep back into my life. First, just a small panic attack in the ladies’ restroom at work. Then, a small panic attack during a meeting.

When a more appealing job opportunity opened in another department just two floors below my current cubicle, I jumped on it. A chance to stay at the same company, keep my benefits, and deliver myself from the mechanistic call center atmosphere? Yes please. Yes!

I got the job. And I loved it. I carted the contents of my desk down to my new cubicle and started my new life. I got to do all sorts of big-girl tasks that were pleasant, yet challenging. I learned. I liked my co-workers. I was treated with respect. I was given autonomy over my time and tasks.

Then, one day, I left for lunch. I grabbed some meatballs at the local Ikea food court and then meandered around the faux living rooms, “testing” out chairs and couches, until my break was over.

When I got back, everyone was crying. Here’s why: Three-quarters of my new department had been laid off. Everyone had been notified via email while I was out prancing around in the kitschy world of Swedish furniture.

My team and I were the “lucky” ones, however — we still had jobs. We were the one-quarter of the department without figurative pink slips in our hands.

At first, I was relieved…until they told us that my new department — the non-call-center department that I so loved — was getting swallowed up by the freaking call center. The place I’d just left. The place I’d grown to hate.

And now, I was headed back.

This is where the anxiety began to grow. Little by little, panic wound its persistent tendrils around my body.

And the panic soon blossomed after I carted all of my belongings back up to the call center. I had a new desk in an old place. I tried to make the best of things. I tried to be positive.

But it didn’t work. At all.

And I mean it: it didn’t work at all. To the point where, after panicking every day at work and losing fifteen pounds because I couldn’t eat anything but saltines, I had to take a leave of absence.

(More to come later this week.)

Photo: Sharon Drummond