Twenty-four years of sobriety. And almost that same length on a prescribed dose of an anti-anxiety medication, one that we now know shouldn’t be taken for more than two-to-four weeks.
A decade ago I was taking six different medications for different reasons, now I was down to just one. With all of my awesome tools in yoga, tai chi, healthy eating, prayer and meditation, I felt pretty terrific.
I wanted to be medication-free. I might have a few days and nights that were less than perfect, but my body would just balance itself out eventually, right?
For a few weeks last fall, I had been weaning myself off…and on Halloween, I took my last scrap of a pill.
How a propos, since what manifested in the next two weeks was a fucking horror show.
By mid-November, I was a wreck. I wasn’t sleeping more than an hour or two a night, if that. I had facial tics. The skin on my back was burning. I couldn’t take a deep breath. I had pain in my joints, loops of weird obsessive thoughts, an icy heart, nausea, inexplicable feelings of Armageddon, coupled with total apathy about my life. I was shaky, saw flashes of light whether my eyes were open or closed, and had the feeling that my whole body was thrumming.
I consulted no one about this. And I can’t believe I did not think that these symptoms were due to my weaning off that one little pill.
It was migraines, right? Or I needed more protein. Or it was too much caffeine. Or Seasonal Affective Disorder.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Then, of all the crazy things, I read the new Matthew Perry autobiography on my Kindle one sleepless night. Why, I have no idea. I’m not a “celebrity tell-all” kind of a gal.
But Perry described some of the very same symptoms I had…and he took a similar medication (in addition to the booze and illicit drugs he took as well). He said that while withdrawal from opiates sucks, it won’t kill you.
But coming off of this medication could kill you.
I was at my doctor’s office hours later. I was told I was lucky to be alive.
So now I am under the care of several doctors as well as a coach (someone who has been down this path and has published books on this and has some fancy letters after her name), and on a few private forums and websites filled with other people on the same journey. Any question I have can be answered in confidence.
However, and I can’t stress this enough – this is not my life. This is not my identity; it’s not who I am. It’s just part of my fun, crazy, beautiful existence. I try to look at it peripherally and not put it on a pedestal in the middle of the living room to be admired.
For now, I am fragile. I’m great one day and not another. But it will get better. I will get better. I know it.
Thank you for listening and your support. And thank you, Chandler Bing. Could I BE any more grateful?