I bore myself

Each time I am faced with the empty textarea of the blog I draw a blank or worse, the thoughts I try to express seem petty and uninspired. And they probably are. So here we go ..

I feel like an amorphous blob of ever changing emotions of which I don't seem to be in charge of. I know it's a matter of learning how to deal with them but so far mentally I'm a step behind catching up with my emotions. Does that make any sense? Probably not.

I've always been like that but not to this extent. After dealing with debilitating panic attacks for years I finally got put on paxil and things started to be a little more mellow. The panic attacks went away but I was also no longer reacting to things impulsively (good?), life became something to drudge through (bad). I had very little passion or drive (although friends would not recognize that as being the case) but I had very few highs and lows. I'm going to stop with the psych-speak now cose I am pretty much tired of all of it. This is hopefully my last bit about it. I'm stopping paxil and three things are happening:

1. I feel alive (for the lack of a better word) - it's almost like I've been sensory deprived on and off for the past 7 years

2. Some anxiety is coming back

3. I feel (do not laugh) like my mind is a wild horse I am trying not to tame but to learn how to tame

So far I have found buddhist ideas to be most helpful, especially the idea of mindfulness. I much prefer buddhism to paxil which has been a bitch to get off of. Withdrawal some say resembles that from heroin and the amount of nausea, dizziness, perceptual shittiness (can't come up with a better word) where the image your eyes see moves slower than your head, etc, in the past 2 months has been debilitating at times. But I can't really complain .. this drug has saved my life not by making it easier but by alleviating conditions which in the past have rendered me unable to function. I'm just hoping that I might be able to stop using it as it feels like I am cheating myself out of life.

It's interesting .. last time I stopped the paxil I had found out I was pregnant so shortly there after I went from a generally high dose to 0 which prompted a lot of nausea, etc, which we all attributed to the pregnancy. I did not however have any of these other symptoms. Turns out pregnancy in the 2nd and 3rd trimester acts the same way on the level of serotonin circulated in my brain as paxil. In the case of pregnancy, more serotonin gets created and in the case of the paxil the small amount of serotonin I have gets recycled (due to the pill's reuptake inhibitor 'feature') so it's the same as having more. That explains why while I was pregnant and off of paxil I really very few anxiety related issues but as soon as I stopped breastfeeding it came back with a vengeance.

But this is not a negative post. In fact I feel very liberated .. freaked out, but liberated nonetheless. Last drop down to an 1/8 of the medication happened 2 days ago and again the barrage of withdrawal symptoms are starting (takes about a month and 1/2 to really feel the effects of this change). In two weeks I pretty much have to stop taking it all together so we'll have to see what I can do to really enjoy our trip to Italy which happens at about the same time.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming ..