Emotional Umbrella

Maybe just skip this post if you want to.  Go read about ants or black outs or Russian search terms again.  Or maybe just the first part of that.

I’m down to a tiny little daily lump of Luvox now, but the  brain shivers appear to be getting worse.  Much worse.  Very, very nauseatingly worse.  I am now in the process of struggling to accept that I may have to begin taking a much higher dosage again and start the whole process over even more slowly once my system normals out.  It’s already been a month.  It’s supposed to take much less than that for people who have been taking WAY higher doses of medications for a much longer period of time.  The dose I started with when I began my very gradual reduction is the level that people are supposed to be okay with stopping cold turkey.  And of course, there’s that lovely added cherry that my p-doc flat out told me that people “never” have withdrawal symptoms with Luvox, unless they’re taking a very high dose or have been on it for a very long time…And even then only if they stop suddenly.  “I mean, this is medicine, so you could be the first, I guess.”  That is actually what he said.  Then he read me a paragraph from the official compendium of psychiatric medications describing what discontinuation syndrome is, and how you can only get it if you are taking a high dose of meds and stop cold turkey.

On the plus side, that grey and numbed out, going-through-the-motions feeling that I mentioned a few days ago?  Apparently that’s a pretty common side effect of this too.  That’s good.  It was weird.

I feel very lost right now, and absolutely trapped between a number of truly bad possibilities.  If I try to just tough it out, the verdict seems to be that I could be stuck with the withdrawal symptoms for anywhere from one week to several months.  And given my history, I wouldn’t be banking on my being anywhere near the one week side of that.  In fact, given my history, I would probably be more likely to break through the barriers and set a new record for long-term effects.  This is not an option.  The physical symptoms are getting steadily worse, and I have been where they lead before.  I know how my body responded the last time.  It was Hell.  Pure, unadulterated Hell.  I’m not sure that I could survive that for more than a week.  Even that week itself would be torturous.  True, there is a chance that it wouldn’t get as bad this time, but seeing as it’s nowhere near as strong at the moment, and I already sort of want to put myself in a coma to avoid the sensation, I’m not willing to take that risk.

So that leaves taking more meds.  But how much?  The safest option for avoiding those physical complications would be to start over completely; take my pill again until things balanced out, and then go at it over a period of….what?  Several months, maybe?  Longer?  Clearly this time was WAY too fast for my particular chemistry.  But taking the Luvox again means being on the Luvox again.  The Luvox that made me spend all day every day either sleeping or actively fighting to keep from sleeping, and made me more depressed, and took away my enjoyment from activities.  Do I really want to commit myself to an extended period of that?  And for sure then I know I won’t be making any progress towards getting better for months.  Additionally, as much as the latest phase of withdrawal gets physically torturous, the previous stage was equally torturous on an emotional level.  Remember that post a while back where I mentioned wanting to smash my head through a window in such a way as to embed as many shards as possible?  Tortuous like that.  I feel like repeating this process over a period of months just means that I might be drawing out that insanity.  And the only thing that really kept me going this time was knowing that in a week or two it should end.

I could try taking some Luvox, but less.  I worry that this would just be the worst of both worlds, though.  The last time this happened, the physical symptoms didn’t respond for a number of days after taking an additional dose of the meds.  So I wouldn’t know for a few days whether the lesser pill was doing anything, and if it really does continue to get worse, those few days could feel like an eternity.  I cannot tell you how scary it is to even consider having to survive a few days of that.  And even if the lower dose eases the symptoms somewhat, it might not be enough to make them go away.  At which point I still have to start fresh with a higher dose, I will just have delayed the process and caused myself extreme discomfort for an extra couple weeks.

I could try taking Prozac instead.  Some people say it’s easier to wean off of.  I still went pretty emotionally crazy when my Prozac dose went down, though, and my pdoc said that he’s encountered people who had trouble getting off Prozac sometimes (in contrast to the Luvox.  Which is symptom-free, apparently).  I’m not sure what dose of Prozac would be equivalent to the amount of Luvox I was taking either, and I wouldn’t want to undercut it or overcut it by too much (the Luvox dose was 50mg.  The starting dose of Prozac was 10 or 20).  I think this may be the current front-runner.  It still means that I will be condemning myself to months of extreme fatigue and horrible anxiety, though (because Prozac and I get along just that well).  And potentially an additional awful transition period and whole new batch of extra side effects from starting new meds.

So far I have dealt with this dilemma with some grade-A swearing and a well thought-out crying fit.  I don’t want to sign up to lose months of my life again.  I was just barely starting to get some tiny shreds of life back.  I feel a little like a soldier who has finished his tour of duty only to have the plane home turn around and take him back for another four years.  I am staring down the single worst weeks of my life (and I had some doozies before this), and signing up to potentially go through them all over again.

And my psychiatrist?  I called.  He’s on vacation this week.