In May 2010 I reported right here on the pages of RobZerrvations that I had stopped taking my Lexapro. As you may recall, it wasn’t for depression, but anxiety. I admit that it was always hard to convince a traveling insurance company nurse that anxiety was the problem, not depression. They usually look at you when you say you’re taking Lexapro, nod their head, jot down a couple notes on their paper, and a couple weeks later, a rejection arrives in the mail that your triglycerides were too high, so you’re not going to get insurance.
Yes, that actually happened to me. I suppose I could have been dishonest and pretend I wasn’t on the stuff, but after nine years, it was part of my life. I’m not sure that going cold turkey was necessarily a good decision. The withdrawals weren’t all that bad to tell the truth, but I was only popping a 10 mg pill.
Still, it was a bit trippy. But now that two years and six months have passed by, it’s time for a quick update. OK, not so quick. I can’t seem to do anything here in less than 1,000 words, but for the sake of brevity, I will try to hit all the high points and call it square.
First, Lexapro is something I would never take again. I had no idea that it had as many side effects as it does. There’s the weight gain, you lose a lot of your sex drive… well, why go any further?
I still have the weight. I guess I can’t blame that on the Lexapro after all this time. But at least I got my “hornies” back. I never really noticed the old sex drive taking a dip, but it was hard to tell. After all, I was involved with Diablo for most of that time so I will never truly know if it was the Lexapro that affected my sex drive or the object of my desires, or lack of desire. I can say that it’s really hard to want to get it on with someone who is pissed at you the bulk of the time you’re married. Oh, well. I don’t think they make a pill for bad relationship choices, though I bet we would all stock up on them if they did.
Back to my post-Lexapro life. It took a long time for that stuff to get out of my system. Longer than they say. I would guess it took about a year to year and a half before I was feeling like my old self, but with improvements.
Improvements? Yes. Surprisingly, things have changed in my life. I can only point to the Lexapro as the tipping point.
Before I took Lexapro I would go through manic highs and lows, often within moments of each other. I had a horrible fear of heights, falling and water. I was a bit OCD, leaving the house and wondering for hours whether or not I had left the stove on, even if I hadn’t used the stove in days.
When I started taking the drug, all this went away. As I said, I lost all sense of consequences too, which would explain why I was no longer was afraid of heights, falling and water, or the things that could happen if I did fall or drown. I became very devil may care, largely because I didn’t appreciate any of the dire consequences rational people consider before they make major decisions in their life, such as say, moving to Florida to chase tail.
Now that this stuff is finally out of my system, some things have changed back, other things haven’t. For instance, I am no longer afraid of heights, falling or water. I don’t think I will truly ever love water, given that my brother drowned in it, but I’m not afraid of it.
I can only assume that all those years on Lexapro rewired that part of my brain. Some of the OCD is back. I do check my pockets in the morning several times to make sure I have my bus pass or my keycard to get into the building. And I have on more than one occasion gotten out of bed to check the deadbolt on the door, even though I was 95% sure I had locked it.
My highs and lows are back too. But they aren’t manic any more. I don’t go from a high to a low as quickly either. If I were to put my highs and lows on a scale of -100 to 100, then I would say I used to go from a -90 (low) to a +90 (high), sometimes in a matter of moments. Today, it’s more like -40 to +65, which is much more enjoyable for those around me. Perhaps more important, there are usually reasons for the lows and I can identify them. In the past, I would just go low and stay there, making everyone miserable around me. Hey, I didn’t get the pirate nickname Hurricane for nothing.
Best of all, I understand consequences again. I get the fact that certain actions can bring negative consequences. I try to avoid these whenever possible. And if I do have to engage in these actions, I tend to think it all through before I ever open my mouth or a moving van door.
Can I really say I wished I never went on the stuff? Given the improvements, it’s hard to say that with any surety. I kind of like the way I am now. If I had never taken the stuff, I would have never rewired my head. On the flip side, if I had stayed away from Lexapro I would have never left Seattle on a moment’s notice thinking that life in Florida with someone I barely new would be somehow better.
I guess I know which would have been the better course in life. But I can’t say that it all wasn’t worth it. After all, I got my consequences back but I’m not afraid of heights anymore. Which is a very good thing when you work on the 26th floor of a skyscraper with floor to ceiling windows, which bends in the wind like a flagpole.
In the Emerald City, high on life and slightly seasick after the windy day we just had,
– Robb