GET AN AFTERLIFE

Lately, pretty much since I got back from Seattle, I haven't been doing very well at functioning. Properly. Like with eating, sleeping, and getting out. All these things are more difficult than they should be.

I blame bio-chemistry.

Apparently, (I haven't actually seen it), the major headline in the Sun this morning was EFFEXOR DRUG WARNING DEATH SCARE, or something to that effect. I'm told Effexor is freakishly toxic and dangerous, all of a sudden. It's put a lot of people in the hospital.

I've been on Effexor since I curled up and died in, oh say... 2003? I credit it with bringing me back from that and, after a long waiting period of zombie-like bummerness, fixing my head to where I could start to imagine having a life again, and I've been on a high dose ever since.

Anyway, my concerns are these: I want to get off the stuff, finally, but getting off Effexor sounds like a fucking nightmare, and the last time I told my doctor I was considering it, he actually upped my dose. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, he told me. Withdrawal symptoms by 6pm every day? You need a little taste at 5:30!

He's not entirely crazy though. Because, and here's where my second concern comes in, if I go off the stuff, what if I get depressed again? And for the uninitiated, I'm talking about incapacitating depression. Depression like somebody's marble ceiling has fallen on you in your blubbering half-sleep, and it would take a figurative crane to heave that sucker off your poor little broken (mashed flat) heart. Yes? Yes! And all this fear is further emphasized by how I've felt for the last week. Which is crappy. Like mini-clinical. Like nostalgia for days of serotonin depletion long past. Ah me.

Here's how it always goes: Life is good, then not so good. Things don't work out for me the way I've planned. Something happens to my brain. Things will never be good again and how could they be? Because look at me! I'm a stupid! Then I can't do anything, and things pile up, (lending more weight to the whole theory of how fucked-up I am), and eventually I have to drop whatever I have going on (school, friends, work, writing), and take TWO YEARS to drag myself, kicking and whining, out of the mess of my own head.

Actually, and even worse, it's never me who does the dragging. I mean, come on, like I'd be up for that? Which is where the support system (I prefer "sensitive scaffold") comes in.

It starts with my parents. Goddamn saints of understanding that they are. (As I see it, they kind of have to be, because it's from them I inherited my whole ungainly mess of self. Including, but not limited to, rheumatoid arthritis, bad eyes, clinical depression, procrastination like you've never seen, and an ever-hovering disposition toward addiction. Some Lorazepam and Coca Cola? Yes please! But. And yet.) I'm grateful, incommunicably grateful, for how much my parents have helped me deal with my shit. I can't even imagine where I'd be if they weren't around. If I'd be anywhere at all.

Because of my parents being so totally rad about their gloomy-ass daughter, my support system also includes the two (stout? Let's say stout) pillars of therapy and anti-depressants.

And I believe in anti-depressants. Even if Effexor killed me tomorrow, I'd be (dead, but) convinced that the right match between drug and patient helps people get better. Better from the bad place. Yes indeed.

My problem is that I'm ridiculously sensitive to drugs. Not in the good way. Not the "Tylenol cured my soul-destroying migraine" and "that's good weed, man" kind of way. I never seem to be sensitive to the beneficial effects of medication. Just the bad effects. Side effects.

So the two times I've been really, seriously clinically depressed, I've had a hell of a time finding a medication that doesn't do more harm then good. All around me my depressed friends will perk up after a week of Prozac or Zoloft, when all those pills do for me is make me faint five times a day and want to vomit at the smell of food. Actually, they also sort of help my mood, but I'm told dangerously low blood pressure and anorexia (minus the nervosa) aren't acceptable compromises.

What I'm getting at, I think, is that if I go off Effexor now (when I'm not even remotely cheery) and I do get depressed again, like in a few weeks when my year-end portfolios are due, I'll be screwed. Because the search for a decent drug will start all over again. And that takes time. And I've already lost too much time, seriously important youth time, to all of this.

So basically, I don't know what to do.

I have a lot of appointments coming up that might help me figure it out. At least one of my half-dozen doctors (brag) should be able to tell me something I want to hear, right?

Really, I don't think I'm getting depressed again. I think my medication is fucking with me, that's all, because maybe I missed a dose recently and couldn't handle it. But that doesn't make me feel any better about how little I got done on my reading break. Besides pass FF12. Which is kind of depressing in itself. Not the game, I mean, but having put 90+ hours into it, and being sorry that it's over. Because nothing numbs the pain like a good rpg, children. Nothing but some kind of numbing agent. Maybe.

I have a list as long as... my hand or something, of people I have to call. People I want to call, even. But I don't have the energy for it. Nor do I have the energy, apparently, for email. And clearly I haven't been posting here. Or writing. Anything. Oh god.

But maybe this post is a start? A good sign... post? OR SOMETHING?!?