In which I am on druuuuuuuuugs

Luther M. Siler

I currently have prescriptions for two brain drugs. One, Effexor, is my daily anti-anxiety drug. I’m on 150 mg; I started at 75 and eventually decided that upping my dosage a bit was warranted. I used to have a secondary script for … shit I can never remember the name, but some secondary drug that I only took when I absolutely couldn’t get my brain to shut down, generally when I was trying to get to sleep. My new doctor didn’t love the secondary prescription because apparently long-term use of that type of drug can be Bad, and while I was only taking an occasional and small dose (12 pills would last me a couple of months, easy) I generally am not the type to continue taking medication that my doctor doesn’t recommend even if some other doctor did recommend it.

Anyway, long story short, she switched me to something else the last time I went in, and I gave up and went and took one when I found myself, at 1:00 in the morning, having to research larger outdoor pools on my phone because I needed to know right now how much they cost and what sizes they were available in. That was after ordering a new pillow on Amazon at midnight, apparently, which I didn’t even remember I’d done until seeing the email in the morning. But yeah: random panic about pool prices in the middle of the fucking night is very much a “take a brain pill” moment, so I did, and I think the next time I talk to her I’m going to suggest going back to the old stuff, because I have been a pile of sludge all day today. I took my son to camp at 12:30, came home intending to hop in the shower and get some stuff done, and instead I sat in a chair and stared for over an hour. I’m significantly more human now but the first six or seven hours of being technically awake were a mess today, and not in a good way. Like, I wasn’t high, I just … didn’t want to move. I managed to get to sleep, at least, so the pill did what it was supposed to, but as it stands this isn’t something I can take during the week, which cuts its usefulness to me by a pretty significant degree.

Meanwhile, Day 3 of live-streaming Stray happens in … oh, about half an hour, over at lutherplaysgames.com, so come hang out with us:

The gift that keeps on giving

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

how-get-rid-cold-flu
WHO THE HELL EATS ORANGES LIKE THIS?

One of the lesser benefits of not being a classroom teacher any longer is that I’ve gone from missing at least a day a month due to illness to almost never getting sick.  In fact, other than an occasional one-day thing, I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely ill, and I’ve never taken a sick day at my current job.  Not once.

I have a motherfucker of a summer cold right now, is what I’m saying.  I spent most of last night too tired to get out of bed and take some medicine but also almost entirely unable to breathe, sniffled and sneezed my way through work all day,  got home from work and took some cold medicine and went directly to my son’s parent-teacher night.  I may have been hallucinating for part of it.  I’m pretty sure I picked up the boy from my parents’ place afterwards because I think I’m at home and he’s sitting over there, but hell if I remember it.

All that said:  I will announce a release date for Tales from the Benevolence Archives on Friday if it kills me.  That’s it.  No more fucking around.  It’s coming.

Assuming I don’t die.

Fuck chemistry

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

nerve-cell-pulseIt’s been a Lexapro weekend.  As in I probably ought to be back on it.  This weekend (well, “weekend”) has been an utter shitshow; I’ve alternated useless-and-exhausted with unfocused, pointless rage for much of he last two days.  I just now managed to put away about two weeks worth of clothes and other than feeding the dog today that counts as the one thing I’ve managed to do that was good for anybody other than me.  And it only barely counts because I know my wife is tired of looking at my laundry in the bedroom all the time.

The house is a fucking mess.  It’d be nice if I was either a grown-up or on the right brain meds and could make myself do something about it.  Hell, it’d be nice if I knew which fucking one was the problem.

Don’t bother with sympathy, I’m not much in the mood for it.  Just let me rant.

Adventures in Lexapro, ch. 325

Luther M. Siler4 Comments

Jeremy-Renner
The title of the .gif claims this is Jeremy Renner. As I have never seen him smile at any time whatsoever, I have reason to doubt it.

You will not believe what just happened.  I woke up this morning– before my alarm went off, a full half hour before my alarm went off– and upon discovering, to my extreme surprise, that I was awake and refreshed, got out of bed and started my day.  It is ten minutes before the boy and I have to leave for school; he is dressed, I have had breakfast, the dog is fed and let out, the cat is fed, his backpack is packed, a spot of Monster Legends has been played, and I still have time for a short blog post.

I have been tired, 100% of the time, for a year.

Is this what life was supposed to be like before Lexapro?  Is it the new bed?  A combination of both?  What the hell is going on here?

May as well tell the whole world

Luther M. Siler11 Comments

tmi.png.htmlI thought, for reasons that will quickly become quite obvious, that maybe I ought to not go ahead and fill the Internet in on certain recent developments in my life.  But I’ve been pretty open about being on anxiety medication since they put me on it, and this is related to that, so to hell with it.  A warning: if you know me personally, it’s possible that you might not want to read this.  Certain of you I’m giving license to never ever stop mocking me again, which… eh.  It’ll be okay.

So, to get straight to the point: I’ve taken myself off of Lexapro.  If I were a more intelligent human I would probably be weaning myself off Lexapro, but I’m not an especially intelligent human and I was on a pretty low dose to begin with so I’m cold-turkeying the shit.  I had several reasons for making this decision.  One of the big ones was that I’m not in the environment (teaching) that led me to need Lexapro in the first place, so the direct cause of my anxiety issues is gone.  The biggest one, though?  It turns out that one of the rarer side effects of drugs like Lexapro is…

…this is the part where you stop reading, if you ever want to not think of this when you see me or talk to me again…

…urinary incontinence.

I have had, perhaps once a month in the past six months, what I will describe as a “bloop” and assume that your imagination can fill in the details.  They have always happened when I was asleep, always when I was on my back, and have always instantly awakened me, at which time I’ve cleaned myself up, swearing profusely under my breath, and gone back to sleep.  Last week, it happened twice in two days, and what was previously merely an excessively irritating thing that I was attributing to getting older abruptly had me Googling things like “prostate cancer.”  There’s never been an issue when I was awake, although I feel like I’ve been having to race to the bathroom more urgently in the last year than I had previously.

Now, it’s a rare side effect.  But I was seriously considering calling a doctor and scheduling a prostate exam, and if I can just go off a drug I already don’t want to be on rather than enduring a prostate exam, I think maybe I’ll try that first.(*)

So I did a couple things:  I stopped taking my Lexapro and also stopped drinking pop, since caffeine and sugar have also been linked to urinary incontinence.  Not only have I had no nocturnal issues since then, but I’ve slept through the night most of the nights since then.  It has been months since I slept through the night five nights in a row; waking up at 3:30 in the morning needing to take a piss five or six times a week was also something that I had previously attributed to getting older that may have been caused by the drugs.  It’s only been a week, mind you, and until last week this was not a thing that happened frequently, but the absence of further bloops and being able to sleep through the night have me thinking I’m probably on to something.

Negative side effects of stopping Lexapro have been minimal; I was weirdly dizzy today and that’s been about it.  I haven’t noticed the anxiety coming back, really; I did let everyone at work know that I was off my brain meds and that if they thought I was behaving strangely they needed to let me know right away.  Predictably, this has led to every fucking interaction I have with anyone now involving someone accusing me of being overly emotional, because the people I work with are caring and serious grown-ups.

(*) The word first means “first,” not “only,” just to be clear.  I have since discovered that they’re recommending annual prostate exams start at 40 now instead of 50, so I actually will be talking to my doctor about that soon, and I’m not as het up about the idea as most men seem to be.  I’ll tell you about it if it’s a funny story, but I don’t expect it to be a big deal.  Just be aware that I’m not ignoring it.