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Thanks for the love

Over this weekend I'm taking the Sertraline down to 50MG QD. I'm hoping the chronic fatigue, emotional liability and deregulated appetite abate. I am so far behind in so many things, even my plants are suffering. I'm sleeping less well. I'm dangerously distractible. I have some very important financial decisions and responsibilities I've been neglecting. More and more I'm convinced I do not have a serotonin deficiency. I do so poorly on SSRIs. Once I'm off this last one, I intend for it to be "the last one."

Excellent deductive reasoning!

Thanks

You reminded me of a teacher I had in Art School. He derived pleasure from making the girls in his class cry. He chose a few golden children from the boys in the class. They could do no wrong. I knew I and some of the other ladies in the class were way more talented than they. Every class this teacher would slither around the room heaping praise on the boys. He would them pounce on a woman at random tear the paint brush from her hand and slash a big X across her work, while howling "NO, expletive, expletive, expletive!" As soon as he got one of us to cry, he would go back to praising the boys. It didn't take too long for me to realize this teacher was a sick Fu*K! I ditched his class till I got called down to the office and ordered to go back. He watched me enter his class like a spider watches a butterfly. He waited till I had set up my easel, squeezed out paint on my pallet, and started to make a perfunctory effort at the assignment de jour. Then with a coldly calculated stare of contempt he said "What are you doing here?" I replied with my very best smart @ss tone of voice "You ordered the front office to tell me to come back to your class." to which he replied "do you want to be in MY class? I answered with all the venom I could muster "Noooooooo!" He flew into a rage! Veins bulging out of his neck and his temples. Skin red as a beet. Howling "Get out! Get out! Get out! as he made his evil way through the maze of easels and other students, I grabbed my stuff and split before he could reach me. I could see one of the other ladies starting to cry and I shed a tear for her. If I were more of an activist I would have led a formal protest against the low life misogynist. I should have. I regret that I did not, but I had other priorities at the time. Older and wiser I now realize sometimes it takes more than just setting an example. Sometimes risking personal loss for the greater good is the right thing to do.     

It really is a bit trickier on the phone. I mostly just click around till I stumble across what I'm after.

Give http://self-compassion.org/exercise-2-self-compassion-break/ a try. Link around a bit. See if you find something that helps. I've decided to take the advice of Dr. Kristin Neff. It's all stuff we've heard before, but simplified and spelled out so we can practice it even in the throws of an EF.

I find Richard Grannon entertaining and informative. I listen to him often. I started reading a bit on his site. I was just about to reply to his "Marriage is unfair to men" video when I had to leave for work. Good advice, if you view it from both perspectives. I may need to pay for his course on assertiveness  before I interrogate a prospective spouse as he suggests. It all seems so practical and business like the way he puts it. I married for love. We stayed together till death did us part. Ten years later I'm still in love with my dearly departed husband. 

I'm conflicted about contacting my doc again. the last message I left on his phone could have gotten me locked up for my own good. My group therapy starts up again in a couple of weeks. My group T was never enthusiastic about meds. Sertraline is not helping. No antidepressant ever did. I’ve lost years of my life being switched from one to the next. I’m frustrated, confused and afraid. What will be left of me when the last of these drugs has drained out of me? Who will I be? I'm not functioning at all well now. I stumble through each day. I’m so tired it hurts. I walk out the door without things I need and haven’t the motivation to climb back up to my third floor apartment to get whatever it is I’ve forgotten. One day I actually stood dumbfounded beside my car trying to think how I could possibly get in and drive without my keys. Is this brain damage permanent?  I feel like changing my motto to “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.”

[not]

Still stuck at 75MG QD. I feel tired most of the time. My body never could tell the difference between fatigue and hunger. The more fatigued I get the less I am able to be mindful. While my doc had me on 150MG QD I was so nauseous I had difficulty eating and lost a few pounds. My blood pressure dropped to 80 over 67. I may have been on the verge of serotonin syndrome. If I'd gone to emergency they would have taken all my meds away from me allowing me to experience withdrawal from Klonopin as well as Sertraline. Without my Klonopin I'd go into convulsions. At that point I would have been strapped down and inappropriately medicated like Libby Zion. Search Libby Zion to understand why I chose not to go to emergency. I'm feeling down. I had hopes for Sertraline. My docs and Ts tell me meds area not going to cure me. I need to do the work of grieving my losses. My grieving is why they put me on meds to begin with. Am I missing something here? If I'm supposed to grieve in order to heal, why put me on antidepressants? I don't understand. I didn't go to medical school. The more I think about it, the more cynical I become. How can I not view the mental hygiene industry as just one big racket and it's practitioners as a mob of con artists?

Tried to titrate down to 50MG QD too soon. I feel impatient, annoyed unprepared, sleepy, confused disorganized, undecided, detached, distracted, groundless. Doc called yesterday. Wants me to call him if I feel "not safe" again.

Be afraid, be very afraid! http://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-05-2013/drugs-that-may-cause-memory-loss.html 

I've been meaning to start listening to the Spartan Life Coach for some time. Now I know why he is so highly recommended. Thanks for the link.

I am currently titrating down the amount of Sertraline I’ve been prescribed. So far the only consequences seem to be that my vision is less blurry, my ears are not ringing as loudly, I’m noticeably less gassy, less nauseous and I don’t have to run to the toilet ten times a day. I’m experiencing a decrease in emotional liability. I’m less susceptible to obsessive compulsive devouring of unhealthy sudo-foods. I’ve started eating fruit and vegetables again. I’m still not sleeping regularly and I’m still forgetting things left and right.
Sertraline appeared to be the least harmful SSRI that I had been subjected to yet. Lexapro made me want to kill myself. Cymbalta made me want to kill my doctor. Other SSRIs made me hallucinate. At a low dose Sertraline actually seemed promising. My former doctor kept insisting I could not possibly be experiencing any benefit from the extremely low dose I was taking. Gradually over the course of a year my prescription was increased from 25MG QD to 150MG QD. During the first four days on 150MG, my vision got so blurry I could not see to read or do my job. The ringing in my ears became unbearable. I had projectile diarrhea, nausea and very loud gas from *.
After a perfectly innocent accident I panicked and made an unfortunate series of bad judgment calls resulting in my almost being arrested. I experienced emotional liability, self-loathing and suicidal ideations. My doctor was away. Rather than fall further down the rabbit hole, I chose to decrease the amount of Sertraline I was taking. By the time my doctor returned, I was sufficiently rational to convince him that I was “safe.” For the uninitiated, if any healthcare provider decides you are “not safe” you can be hauled off and confined to a psych ward indefinitely. Before you tell your T that you $e1f #@^m or intend to kill yourself, practice counting backwards from one hundred by sevens. 

For me it's the opposite way around. It makes me feel transcendent, beyond normal cognition.