Withdrawal Diary episode #10 February 26, 2022

Last weekend, the weekend of February 19, things were going well enough, I guess.

We'd decided, weather be damned, that we were going to have a barbecue - go out and get a couple of steaks and treat ourselves.
I was kind of riding a wave of happiness with the way Pristiq had been working for me.
After all, my mood seemed to be leveling off, my outlook was brighter, and felt like I seemed to have more pep in my step, so to speak.

We decided last Saturday that I would give the gym another go of it.  
The last couple of times I had gone, things were dodgy at best.
I'd only done cardio: some time on the treadmill, just to get my body moving again.
I was anxious to achieve a new sense of normality, where being on 150mg of Zoloft for so long, I'd felt kind of bogged down.
I was also taking Wellbutrin to try to counteract that haze, but it wasn't working the way I'd hoped it would. 
It was like taking a placebo; fundamentally ineffective.
The trip to the gym with my wife turned out to be yet another exercise, pardon the pun, in futility. 
Again, I did a solid hour of light cardio, and again, I went home and found it hard to wind down. 
I was in a sweat that just wouldn't cool. 
Taking a shower proved to be challenging, as I experienced the odd-to-me sensation of my arms tiring out while I washed my hair. 

My hair is very long, down to my waist. 
I like it that way because I feel a spiritual attachment to it, not unlike how many Natives do. 
In fact, I wear a braid often as a kind of tribute to them, beyond the obvious practical reasons. 
The hair I have on my head right now is the same hair I had since 2010, and maybe a bit earlier. 
The '10s were a rather tumultuous decade for me healthwise and socially. 
But especially, it was during those years that my daughter endured her teenage years, the most formative years of anyone's life. 
To me, my hair signifies that I was there with her through it all, and she with me, along with my beloved wife, of course. 
I can look at pictures through that decade and see the hair on my head and know that same hair is still attached to me, literally. 
When I pass away, I want to leave behind this same braid of hair that I now have to my daughter, and forever be with her like I was during those teen years of hers.  That, to me, is spirituality in one of its finest physical forms. 

Anyway... it was exhausting doing the washing/conditioning/drying of my hair, to the point that it was even accelerating my pulse. 
I still wasn't cooling down even after showering. 
I went into the bedroom and laid down on the bed after putting underwear on, and just tried to get my breath and calm down. 
I was bewildered at this effect I was feeling - and it wasn't the first time. 
Every time I came back from the gym now, this is how it seemed to be. 
Why?? 

The following day, I cooked our steak dinner on the barbecue outside. 
I don't profess to be a great cook by any means. 
The steaks were thick, and I cooked them a long time, but not long enough, apparently, as I had to return them to the grill after bringing them inside; bearing in mind, also, I'm cooking them in the dark, and it's harder to see the wellness to which they're done. 
I prepared baby potatoes to go with them, and we wound up eating that first while the steaks continued cooking.  Once they were done, we quite enjoyed them. 
Over the past week at that point, I'd chosen to take a probiotic supplement called Align Advance, over the regular Align supplement, because I was having bowel issues, or not going to the bathroom enough. 
It's quite unlike me to be stopped up like that. 
When it came time to go to bed that Sunday night, I took Utopia oil, which is a 50/50 mix of THC and CBD cannabis, which greatly helps me with sleep, but seemed to be ineffective since taking Pristiq. 
But I was desperate for some kind of respite from the insomnia I'd been experiencing, beginning with coming off of Zoloft back in late January - and also, I ought to note, we decided to take part in the dry February challenge, where you don't drink alcohol at all for the whole month. 
We'd decided to extend that through Lenten season, as well, so no drinks until Easter arrives, at least. 
Not only does it do our bodies good, but it does our bank account a favor, too. 
Not that we ever drank a lot. 
I haven't been drunk since I was a teenager, and don't ever see that changing. 
I feel a lot better getting a high from Utopia oil. 
Far safer and more natural with the benefits of the CBD that comes with it. 

So, I take the oil and we turn the lights out, handy to midnight. 
Three o'clock in the morning comes around, and I awaken to what seems to be the urge to go to the bathroom. 
It didn't seem to be a big deal. 
I parked myself on the can and waited for the train to show up, in a manner of speaking. 
And I wait. 
And I wait. 
Suddenly, I break out into a cold sweat and start breathing heavy. 
"Oh my God," I thought, "I'm going to be sick." 
I was sure of it, it seemed imminent. 
But in pure denial of what seemed to be the fact that I was going to throw up, I breathed heavily, and hoped it would just pass. 
Well, it didn't. 
Not quite.  
Pain in my gut was accelerating.
Nothing was coming out either end. 
I started groaning loudly in pain, wondering what on earth was causing all of this to happen. 
I'd done everything right, after all. 
Trying to get good bedrest, my diet wasn't bad at all, I was trying to get exercise, I even took up reading to calm the mind. 
I turned the TV off in favor of listening to music for the past few weeks. 
The wife and I both enjoyed the change. 
Ultimately, none of this seemed to have any positive effect on my physical well-being. 

The pain I was experiencing was not unlike that which I've experienced with kidney stones, but this was something other. 
Finally something came out, but certainly not the five or six days worth that accumulated in my belly. 
I got up to clean myself off, and everything spun, electrical flashes appeared in my sight, and I went down like a bag of rocks, clocking my head on the bathroom sink on the way down. 
I'd actually passed out. 
I was able to land right back on the toilet in some attempt to keep upright. 
Janice heard from bed my striking the sink and got up to find out what was happening. 
What she says she found was me in a semi-lucid state, eyes rolling back, white as a sheet, and my body completely limp. 
I did come-to when she called to me. 
I continued sitting on the toilet groaning in pain as Janice questioned if I was going to be okay, what was wrong. 
I could barely talk! 
I tried mumbling something like "I've gotta go"....trying to get rid of all the waste that had accumulated in my gut over the past week or so. 
But nothing was happening. 
I tried and tried. 
A half hour into this, finally movement was happening.  I never realized until that night how much shit the human body could store until it all seemed to finally start moving at that time. 
It just came, and came, and came. 
The intense relief I felt when it was all over was almost euphoric. 
But when I got up to clean myself off again, there was blood in the bowl and dripping on the floor. 
Janice helped me up and supported my totally weak body back to bed, and took care of things in the bathroom. 

I still felt pain. 
My lower abdomen was hurting, and spasms began happening every ten or fifteen minutes. 
Every time I experienced this, I felt the need to go back to the bathroom. 
Each time I went, I expelled blood, and that's all.  
Back to bed.... another ten or fifteen minutes, another spasm, more blood. 
This continued for about 15 cycles, at least. 
Janice had to go to work, so I was on my own with this for the day. 
At one point, I'd gotten fed up, and decided to endure the pain until the spasm passed. 
All that did was accumulate more blood for when I'd eventually go back to the bathroom. 
I began to wonder what the freakin' hell was going on.  The blood was bright red, so it couldn't have been very deep into my lower abdomen, but it literally squirted out of me when I went to the bathroom every time.  Although the pain in my gut had subsided, these spasms in my lower abdomen had not. 
By the time the wife came home in the afternoon, I'd begun training myself to abstain from going to the bathroom, even timing in between visits. 
I would endure the spasms and just try to lengthen the time between visits. 
The wife called the doctor, but he wasn't in. 
She would try all week, in fact, but he was never in. 
So I was on my own. 

Janice insisted that I would have to go to outpatients, but I completely resisted. 
Our daughter very recently experienced hellish pain of her own, vomiting uncontrollably every twenty or less minutes, not able to move, and she was treated HORRENDOUSLY at the French hospital here in Moncton.  
She was at outpatients experiencing extreme pain, vomiting uncontrollably, and they wouldn't let her own mother stay with her, to which Janice was ready to floor them.  Our daughter had to be left there to fend for herself in her condition. 
They even kicked her out of the wheelchair they put her in with a container she was vomiting in, because "she was taking up valuable space"! 
She was in the waiting room like this for hours and hours, before she finally gave up and had her boyfriend come pick her up without even having being seen. 
She was being shafted by the health care system because of Covid protocols, to which medical staff there offered absolutely no remorse for their treatment of her. 
My daughter could have been dying, and they wouldn't have lifted a finger to help her. 
Literally. 
She suffers from some kind of reproductive condition not unlike what her mother endured for many years in the early '00's and beyond. 
It didn't seem to matter how dire her condition was at the hospital, though. 
If someone with cold symptoms came in to the ER where she was, they got top priority treatment over everyone else over the fear of this goddamned Covid nonsense. 
All of this only heightens my anger toward the unvaccinated that are filling the hospitals and plugging up our health care system. 
Their choice to not get a simple needle or two could very well have cost my daughter her life because of their ignorance toward the science that is desperately trying to get us out of this fucking mess once and for all. 
And don't even get me started on the right wing who are peddling conspiracy theories, and even some on the left, who disappoint me the very most, to anger at this point. 

Anyway... I would not go to the hospital like my daughter and wind up alone in the waiting room in this condition for hours and hours, only to not be seen because John and Jane Doe had to get priority over me because they didn't get their fucking shots. 
In effect, if I was in serious life-threatening condition, like my kid could have been but wasn't - thank God, I could well have not been here typing this right now.  You might be reading an obituary of me instead, had it been something terminal. 
So, I resisted Janice's pleas to go to outpatients. 
If I'm going to kick the bucket or something, I'll do it here in my own bed instead of a damned waiting room, waiting in futility for someone to give a fuck. 

I decided to do some kind of searching on the web for signs of what might be going on with me, when it occurred to me, I've always had hemorrhoids, to an extent. 
What if, I wondered, one of them broke open during all this straining I did the night before? 
The more I looked into it, the more it made sense. 
I found articles online that mirrored the same symptoms I was experiencing regarding the bleeding. 
It had to be that. 
Just to be sure, I didn't want to eat anything until I figured this out somewhat. 
Then, I began to get suspicious of Pristiq. 
Upon doing a search for bowel blockages associated with it, I wound up finding more than enough information linking Pristiq with extreme constipation. 
It didn't help, of course, that a day or two before all of this, I experienced one of my classic neck-knot pain episodes, which brings on relentless migraine-like pain that's hard to treat with any success. 
Icy Hot rubbed on the local area helps, but only numbs it a little. 
So I tried taking Tramadol, an effective pain reliever that's more or less a micro-dosing of stronger opioids like Percocet. 
It didn't work, and I waited the required eight hours before trying something else. 
So I opted for Percocet that I had left over from my surgery last year for throat surgery, that I hadn't even taken.
I kept it on hand in light of my history with kidney stones.
Percocet and Tramadol are notorious for their constipation side effects. 
That, combined with the bowel blockage issues Pristiq is known for, evidently, and you have a ticket for the Crazy Pain Train that I rode on that fateful Monday morning.  Suddenly, it all seemed to make sense. 
But the wife was adamant that I be seen by a doctor about all the bleeding, which up to that point, I'd done a lot of. 
I said I'd consider it the next morning, but I'd attempt to sleep Monday night via Gravol, which always knocks me out for a considerable time. 
Not to mention, I was a little nauseous from all of this anyway. 
I figured that if the body does its best healing when you're asleep, one Gravol would give it an extra boost. 

So I took the Gravol, and 14 hours later, woke up to Janice coming home from work that Tuesday. 
I had to go to the bathroom. 
She wanted to go with me to see what I'd produced.  There was indeed blood, but much less... I ate a banana, then later a bowl of herbed chicken and rice soup with crackers, and waited. 
Finally, the next time I went to the bathroom two or three hours later, I had a regular dump! 
And only a trace of blood from the surface area. 
The bleeding had essentially stopped. 
I ate another banana and a handful of Hawkin's Cheezies, and everything seemed to settle down. 
I slept that night after taking oil, and rested quite comfortably. 
Now all that was left to figure out, was WHY.  
Why did I wind up in such dire condition? 
What really and truly brought this on?
  
The last dose of Pristiq I took was that last Sunday night. 
I haven't taken it since. 
And I won't.  
Although it did bring reason into my thought patterns and seem to calm me down, whereas before I'd start blubbering at the sight of a dog crying on the internet.
I resolved to myself that never again would I take an SNRI, which is the class of drug that Pristiq falls under.  Previously, I'd tried Trintellix, another SNRI, and Janice would tell you that stuff is manufactured by the devil in hell himself. 
So would I. 
But stopping Pristiq would bring on a whole other chapter in withdrawal, which is why I'm writing this on this particular blog page. 
I was prepared, in a limited way, for what withdrawal from this drug and its challenges would bring me.  Although I'd only been on it six days, this is a powerful psychiatric medication that no one ought not to take lightly. 
But no matter what you think you're prepared for in the batting cage, if you aren't controlling the settings of the pitches that are coming at you, you could very well end up getting yourself very hurt, especially if the machine is out of control. 
And out of control I went. 

The brain zaps returned, full force. 
Panic attacks returned. 
With a vengeance. 
Worst of all, anxiety attacks, which I hadn't experienced since November, returned with somewhat of a ferocity.  Thursday night, I began spiraling. 
Thoughts of my uselessness began to be too pervasive for me to control. 
I felt that, being on disability now, I had nothing more to offer the world, that I was destined now to only siphon from it to survive. 
I was hereby in the stage of life where I was waiting to wither away, like many seniors do in old folks homes.  What if I can't get my exercising mojo back? 
That thought itself was scary enough. 
I was resting in bed beside Janice in the evening while she was tackling our income tax forms, which were boggling to her this year - I swear the government changes them every year to make it more and more difficult for people to get back the money they rightfully deserve. 
I jolted up out of bed in a panic, running into the wall and corners, hurting myself along the way, and eventually took off downstairs, falling down the steps in the process. 
Bear in mind Janice is witnessing all of this; what she must be dealing with, what she must be thinking. 
I collected myself and figured I'd go outside and just run, in the minus ten degree night air with just my briefs and sneakers with a blanket on. 
Janice stopped me and expertly guided me to calm down, somewhat. 
I wound up on the couch covering my head with a blanket, and Janice got a comforter to ensure I was warm. 
She continued to frustratingly try to figure out the tax forms while I lay there, festering in the bleakness of my future. 
Since I was now crashing from the withdrawal of yet another psychotherapy drug, I began to put things together. 

When I was a boy, when Dad was alive, not long before the year he passed, he fell down the basement steps in a drunken stupor once, winding up out cold on the cement floor. 
Two of my brothers heard this immediately from Mom, and brought Dad upstairs and forced him to watch as they poured all of his alcohol down the sink,which we know today is one of the last things you do in such a situation. 
I remember seeing this, vividly, as an eight-year old, or so, child. 
It was horrific, and in fact is attached to my brain as part of my PTSD, which I discovered when the wife and I watched a show called "The Leftovers" on HBO a couple of years ago, in which that same scene played out on the screen right in our livingroom. 
I broke down watching it, crying uncontrollably, recalling the memory it resurrected. 
I was literally on my knees on the livingroom floor rocking back and forth, recalling the memory. 
It pains me to recall it for this blog right now, in fact.  One other time, my Dad passed out in the bathroom one day and was seen folded over into the bathtub by a few of us, me included. 
I won't get into any other gory details. 

Now, on this night with blankets pulled over my head in the livingroom trying to 'come back', I began to put this all together:  
I'm nearing the age now that my dad died at, when he ultimately passed February 28, 1978. 
For years, I'd blamed myself for Dad's passing. 
I came into his and Mom's lives on Boxing Day, 1965, with six siblings prior to me. 
Mom had me when she was 40, Dad was 45. 
To have a seventh kid in a poor house that late in life, I figured, had to be beyond challenging. 
Clearly, I wasn't expected. 
So I thought the stress that I brought into my parents' lives just by being born was magnanimous. 
To have to provide for another. 
I didn't know when Dad started drinking, but I figured I had to have been a major reason for his alcohol abuse, thus his abuse of Mom and the siblings thereafter. 
The afternoon before Dad died, on his way home from work, he was seen sitting on the curb beside what is now Janice's parents' house, presumably contemplating.  The next morning, Dad was gone. 
Mom, Rick, Cindy and I all saw his lifeless body lying there in his bed. 
I remember shaking him to try to wake him...

"....Dad?" 

Shortly after Dad's passing, my series of head injuries began:  
The baseball.... the car accident... then another.... then another.... followed by a series of self-inflicted head injuries and other maladies. 

Stop and think for a moment what the mother of a child like this must be going through witnessing this, after enduring the kind of marriage she had.  
Not long after those tumultuous '80s ended, Mom fell ill with dementia, lost her house, and faded in front of the family's eyes over the course of the following six years.

I dealt with my own struggles along the way at the same time, which I've talked far too much about already. 
The whole point of my explaining all of this, is the thought of my causing my parents' demise began to resurface. 
I'd been labeled by some family members as being selfish and self-serving through those years as it was, contributing to the guilt I still feel to this very day.  Whether I deserved it or not is irrelevant. 
It set in motion what was to be my mindset which I still struggle with to this present day.
  
Now, back to the couch in the livingroom, where these feelings are resurfacing. 
I'm 56 now. 
Dad died when he was 57. 
Not long before Dad died, he'd fallen down those steps.  He'd blacked out in the bathroom. 
Then, he was gone. 
I don't know if whoever's reading this can see the eerie parallels here. 
I rose from the couch and went upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed, Janice following me in a panic. 
I looked at her right in her eyes...."I'm not important anymore." 
I said it again. 
And again. 
Then struck myself in the right eye repeatedly, which did no favors to my dear wife's stability. 
She offered to give me Utopia Oil, which I accepted.  Then I told her what I was thinking: 
That in four days from that time, Dad will have been gone for 44 years, at 57 years old. 
I told her since I fucked up his and Mom's lives, and that of some siblings, so much, I don't deserve to live longer than that. 
That I have to go before February 28, 2023. 
All Janice could do was cry hysterically and plead with me not to never let that happen. 
Such is the state of my mind while withdrawing from Pristiq. 

To continue... I slept rather raggedly that night, and awoke the next morning alone, as Janice had to work.  The feelings had barely subsided, if at all. 
I went to the bathroom, still in a semi-frenzied state, and went to flush the toilet. 
It plugged, with barely anything to flush. 
This has been an ongoing problem at our house, especially the last few months. 
You'll often hear us go to the bathroom at the house here, attempt to flush the toilet, only to hear "Seriously??"  Or "FUCK."  Or "Goddamn it!!" 
Well, with the state of mind I was dealing with at this time, it turned out to be a trigger. 
I screamed. 
And screamed. 
And screamed. 
An anxiety attack was in full progress. 
I struck my already injured eye several more times. 
I cried and cried, sobbing. relentlessly. 
I had the mindfulness to take a dose of Utopia, but it would only start working 45 minutes or so later. 
So I lie in bed, tears flowing, asking God if I'd been forsaken. 
To PLEASE help. 
I'd lie there waiting for the Utopia to kick in, and when it finally did, I turned the TV on, only to see wall-to-wall coverage of how the world is beginning to end via the Russian Ukrainian invasion. 
At least, that's what many news networks would have you think. 
This did no fucking good whatsoever for my mindset.  After watching for a few minutes, I turned it off and literally just talked to God. 

"Why is this all happening?  Because you said it would, via the bible?  If it's something that's supposed to happen, then what's the point of praying to avoid it?  Isn't determinism an actual thing, if we're to believe in the bible, that we're all assigned our own fates regardless of what we do, or what we pray for?  If the future is not set, then what determines the present, if in fact it's already determined??  What Can We Do??  Even when Jesus pleaded for mercy in the Garden of Gethsemane, he wasn't granted it then.  Why should we expect any different kind of outcome??"
 
Utopia oil can bring on such in-depth thoughts. 
I figured that what I have to do was keep my mind busy. 
I resorted to going down into our basement and retrieving a couple of totes to go through, with various items we'd pack-ratted through the years, and label each tote with it's contents in detail.
I turned on music Janice and me listen to with a list of songs that dot much of our past.  
I wound up sifting through a lot of heartfelt memories.  Not all of the days gone by were bad. 
Most were actually quite pleasant. 
To focus only on what went wrong will create imbalance that may leave you so isolated on the teeter-totter, you might feel like you're never coming down, at least not without getting hurt. 
So I basked in the memories I found. 
I cheerily logged onto our computer and typed up manifests of what was contained in the totes that I'd gone through. 
Then it occurred to me to say to God....

"....you made me do this, didn't you?  ..... Thank You... and I'm sorry.  Again." 

Then I prepared a meal of hot chicken sandwiches with KFC gravy and a side of mashed carrots for us for dinner, and baked cookies after that. 
I also resolved to restart a regimen of 50 mg of Zoloft daily, with the knowledge that it may be the one tool I have at keeping the beast of anxiety at bay, along with Utopia, of course. 
Someone dear to me told me very recently that they also struggle with anxiety, and they professed that Zoloft was also a game changer for them. 
I feel this is also a sign of what I have to do to reclaim my life. 
This brings me to today. 

I don't know if this is my last post via the Withdrawal Diary blog... only that my story is far from over. 

I think God gives us all a box of matches to carry with us through life. 
When it seems the darkness is too much, you have that light provided to you. 
But it's up to you to strike that match up and illuminate your own world. 

And I have a lot of matches left, still.