Another day.

It's July 6th 2020. Tomorrow, I will be seeing K and her baby for the first time since she left for Victorica before Christmas 2019. She'll be one of the first friends I see since quarantine began in March. I've seen J for short spurts outside, but nothing lengthy or substantial. 

It will be good to see her and little A, who is about 6 months now I believe. Last time I saw him he was about a week old, and I laid on her couch with him on my chest while she ran some errands. He was warm and soft. And having him on my chest was very soothing. 

Tomorrow is also the first say that the local second-hand store opens. It's been difficult getting by without it since I try and buy most home goods second-hand. K needs to furnish her new apartment, as well as cloth the baby, so hopefully, the line up won't be too crazy. I expect it to be though. 

I had taken Mondays off for all of June, os this week is the first week where I go back to a full five day a week workweek. It's hard. At least I am not too busy at work these days, so I can breathe and walk the dog and puts around a little bit. End of year was pretty brutal, so I appreciate the slower pace.

I feel as if I am getting dumber. I haven't read a book in months. I have trouble committing to television and movies let alone anything more complex. I am trying to make a point of writing more often, but I am still in the stages of forced automation and not anything beyond that.

When I lay in bed at night, I feel as if I could write so much. I have these thoughts I always feel could be stretched out into something poignant, but maybe that's just the lucidity of incoming unconsciousness. 

The tedium of every day is something I need to plan for. I started setting my alarm in the morning again. For the last few months, I have been letting myself sleep in, but I can feel my days getting shorter and going back to work will get difficult if I just give up completely on acting like a functioning human. 

I am now on the last of my Effexor,  I am pushing it to one 37.5 mg pill every 4 days. I guess I will eventually go to 5 and maybe cut from there... Not too sure. 

It's difficult to say if I feel more depressed. I just feel depressed - but differently. I don't feel as clouded. I don't know what the major differences in me or in my demeanor are. It's difficult to really assess. I started weaning off right before the pandemic hit - and then I was quarantined and isolated - so those who would usually be in a position to comment on my mood are all at home, texting me. 

It's also been an especially stressful and depressing couple of months. I've been on social media a lot, following Black Lives Matter protests and the resulting increased police brutality and overall fuckery of Karen's and Trevor's and those who refuse to wear masks and those who like calling the cops on black people in public spaces. American politics as a whole has been a garbage fire for years now, but every day is a fresh hell. And Canada isn't perfect. Things happen here. There's always something.

Apparently, it takes me a lot of time to process things because this isn't new. It's been 4 months. I guess now the dust is starting to settle and I'm beginning to accept that the new normal is going to be working from home.

I have to think about what I want my days to look like, long term. Not just in survival mode.

Writing and living, but also not living.

I am on the last few weeks of weaning off of the drugs. I am taking 37.5 mg of Effexor every three days. I am trying to push it to more, but the last day (day 3) is pretty sketchy. I might need to wean off for longer.

It's been a few brain zaps here and there, and feelings of disembodiment. Sometimes I get dizzy or feel nauseous. But we've also had heatwaves on and off, so that could also be contributing to the feelings of nausea.

What a time to be alive.

I have been working from home since March, so we are coming up on 4 months. At first, it was just trying to figure out what was going on. But I am going to have to accept that this is a new reality. If I stay in my current role as a Financial Clerk, I can, in theory, expect to work from home in permanence now, or, potentially go into work only a day or two a week. This has benefits and drawbacks.

Only one friend has been laid off, but work insecurity has been an ongoing stressor. Friends with kids have had to live with their kids 24/7. Travel has been canceled, stranding one friend in Victoria with her parents, with a newborn. School closed. Daycares closed. Isolation. A web of stressors and pitfalls.

I have a job and a steady income, so I am grateful for that, but I also feel guilty about the job insecurity of most, and my feeling stressed at all, considering my relative safety.

I am grateful for my brother's solid employment as well - so our family is well supported.

I am grateful for my mother's health, and for our ability to afford our mortgage.

It's difficult to stay abreast of the news. Black Lives Matter protests are daily, and it seems every day there is a new name immortalized as a hashtag by police violence and murder. The sick irony of being "immortalized" as a hashtag for being murdered by police.

Living through a quarantine means also living with videos of people acting like utter psychopaths about wearing a mask in public. Why is it so difficult for so many to just be decent?

Today's dystopian news includes Johnson and Johnson's baby powder being a confirmed carcinogen that has been causing cancers for decades, and though it will no longer be sold in North America, will remain available everywhere else in the world, because corporations are without scruple. There's also a large number of elephants that have died and scientists are trying to figure out why. This is everyday life. Staying home. Working. Reading the news. It's difficult.

I am trying to take some time today, now to write. To journal and to just start a daily practice again. When work is slow, I can take a few minutes and write on my laptop (not the work computer) and try and just purge some of this internalized nonsense.

Before this quarantine, I had plans to start a new kind of therapy and to start getting my shit in order. Life is a mother fucker, and I should not be surprised.

Let me work from a prompt, this is my horoshope from Chani:

Over the past couple of years, what you’ve been able to eliminate from your life is as powerful as what you’ve added to it. What you said no to was hopefully a statement of affirmation to yourself.

Major advancements are a compilation of many small decisions over a long period of time.

With July’s eclipse in Capricorn and Saturn spending the last 6 months of 2020 here, the finishing touches that you are putting on your recent self-improvements are mighty and magnificent. In order to fulfill such a task, you’ll need to get incredibly honest about the parts of your life you’ve been too afraid to tackle. The patterns that you no longer want to repeat will now be pronounced. It will take a practice of consistent and considerable mindfulness to do so, but you are built for that kind of intensity and this is the moment to apply such talents.

I think what I find especially difficult is "over a long period of time."

I don't know if the story of my life is just one of the struggle of my weight and of my traumas. Is that all I'll have focused on? I'm 36 man. Thirty fucking six. I am approaching 40. Mid-life. 16 years of my life have been void of romance and companionship, sex and joy because of one fucking problem I cannot seem to let go of. Is this it? If I have not been able to move on for 16 years, does that I mean I am resigned to another 16? To the rest of my life on this earth - as just giving up and being unable to enjoy something enjoyed by billions of other people? 

This intensity of mine - it is isolating on a good day. I am hard on myself. How do I disengage from patterns when they are so well entrenched in my being?

Here I am, stuck at home, with myself. How is it I can love myself in some ways and hate myself so profoundly in others? How am I so disconnected from my body, and how can I learn something new? 

It never ends. There is no off day. It doesn't get any easier. Maybe it does, for some and those able to move forward, up and out. But I am not one of those people. 

Some days I feel like I am losing my mind with patterns of the same day over and over. The same problems, the same coping mechanisms. The same pains. How can 16 years have passed both so quickly and so slowly?

Are my only two options resolving myself to being lazy and fat, or re-committing to an eating disorder mindset that had me at a more manageable body weight? Regardless of the choice, my eating is disordered. My eating will always be disordered because I know it's all or nothing. I know where I come from and what happens to me. I know what my coping mechanisms are. 

I had to limit my eating, and workout every day to be large, nut not overweight. I will never be small, or dainty. Never overly feminine or slight. That is a given. I am big-boned regardless of how much fat I carry.

And if I were to lose weight - would the rest of my life be an obsession with keeping that weight off? I think the question is moot and the answer is no doubt a resounding of course. 

My weight is hitting me differently lately. At first, I was in denial of my body and my weight. I just didn't see it. Now I see it. I see it and I feel it. It is difficult for me to move. My back locks. I do not fit in many spaces. There are so many things I cannot do and places I cannot go.

I want to snap it all away. But this is my eternal fucking narrative. 

37.5

I've been on the dose of 37.5 mg of generic Effexor for about a week. The initial first few days involved a bit of brain zapping, so one night I took a 75 mg pill in order to soften the withdrawal. 

I'm actually pretty surprised that these are the first zaps I've had since I started weaning off on February 3rd. 

It's been an odd, unsettling time. It's been a benefit to me that the mandatory quarantine came while I was weaning off of drugs. There are days I've napped or laid down to assuage brain fog or dysphoria. 

Then again, how does the added stress of working from home, quarantine, end of fiscal year and the cloud of a global pandemic affect my brain?

Every weekday I watch the national address at 11, and the provincial one at 1. Some days there are new horrors, some days relief packages. I check the CBC tracking system.

They show statistics of infection and death. Reminiscent of a sports stat. 

Every day is absurd. It's frightening. Parts of it are incomprehensible. I am grateful for government work and the stability of it. I am grateful that my mother is well and near me. I am grateful that I live in a country that takes the epidemic seriously, and has enacted measures swiftly, and backed by science. 

I have these personal daily movements, within a fishbowl that is lining a windowsill looking onto other fishbowls and it's unlike anything else I've ever experienced.

I have a few weeks of 37.5 to go, and another appointment with Dr. Paul in a few weeks (Dr. Paul is replacing Dr. Rishi since the latter is leaving his family practice and will be going private). 

I'm at home every day, so you would think I would be able to take the time to sit and write, but sharing my one room kitchen and dining space with my mother means my limiting my common space time to work and necessities. As I write this she sighs audibly on repeat, since she is doing some sort of paperwork that irritates her. It doesn't take much for me to get irritated. 

The energy I do have I try and put on my work hours during the work week. It's difficult. We're in end of year. We're at home. All of our work processes are changed. It's just a mess. It took several weeks before we had a team meeting, and even longer to get any sense of what was expected of us from management. We are considered essential services since we're finance, and it's been a shit-show of patchwork and problem solving. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to navigate. 

I walk the dog twice a day, at least. Trying to get some air and break up the weekday. 

We await the apartment downstairs, which should be vacated for May 1st. That, with it, will bring a few to pay the former tenant off (a long, arduous story that has been) and after it the forthcoming bill I shall expect from our lawyer. How much will be reclaimed of me? I expect several thousand. Will it be three or five? Only chaos knows.

I no longer have one thought at a time. I don't know if I ever did before. It will be a question of time and experience to see how I feel weaning off of the drugs will affect me, both mood and personality wise. 

I've been at home, quarantined since March 16th. The first three weeks of which my mother stayed with my brother. I was lonely, but content. Having her here brings both benefits and irritations. Once we have the empty apartment downstairs, she will have a project, which will help me immensely. 

Forward. 

Weaning down: Day 9.

Checking in.

9 days in and no side effects so far.

Extremely surprised - but hesitant to even mention it since I could potentially lose my frigan mind at any point in time.

Cautiously optimistic. But barely.

Weaning down.

I asked a GP to write me a subscription for a lower dose.

I was on 150 mg, I'm now on a 75 and a 38.5, totaling 113.50.

I will try this for 6 weeks.

I am on Day 3.

So far so good.

Early days, real skiddish about what tomorrow brings...

More by @sosadtoday.

From her column on Vice:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Depression.

Started from the Psych Meds, Now I’m Fucked

Well, the Effexor piece (the second one) is nice and depressing, since I know I have that to look forward to if ever I mess with my meds... I've experienced a day of 4-day withdrawals from a  high dose and I felt legit detached.

Her other piece is another good example of writing to describe depression.

If you like her pieces, read her book. 

On "brain zaps."

Man oh man.

So, turns out I'm not the only one.

When the Antidepressants Are Worse Than the Depression over on Motherboard, written by Martha Stortz just spoke directly to me.

Last year I went away for a few days with family, and I forgot my SSRI (Effexor). Well, by the 2nd day I wasn't feeling great, and by the 4th I was hearing "zapping noises" in my ear canal/brain, and felt totally dissociated from the physical world. I ended up having to have my mother drive home because I didn't feel able to drive. I got home and took a pill and went to bed, to try and shut down my brain while the drugs made their way back into me.

Stortz discusses her experiencing weaning off of her SSRI similarly (though I did it 

cold-turkey/unintentionally):

Every day after the first step down was a struggle to get out of bed. I was often nauseated and I suffered from constant “brain zaps” whenever I moved my head, a phenomenon described by people withdrawing from SSRIs as an electric buzz or a shock. I couldn’t pay attention at work and cancelled any social interaction in favour of sleeping. It was almost like being depressed again but worse, because short of going back on the antidepressants and delaying the inevitable, there was nothing I could do to control the withdrawal symptoms.

Referred to as SDS (SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome) Stortz refers to an Italian/American study that shows SSRI withdrawal is worse that initially assumed.

The review showed that SDS can happen regardless of the type of SSRI. Furthermore,
gradually weaning off the drug doesn’t diminish the chances of discontinuation syndrome. Symptoms, which include nausea, rapid heart rate, and hallucinations, usually last a few weeks but can persist up to a year.

... 

I wish there had been more dialogue surrounding SSRI withdrawal so I had known what to expect, however. At no time did the doctor who put me on the SSRI discuss possible withdrawal symptoms, nor did the doctor who took me off the SSRI. Without that full disclosure, I was totally blindsided by the withdrawal symptoms, the severity of which is potentially dangerous for a person with previous mental health issues. If I didn’t have such a strong support system and even stronger Google skills to figure out what was going on, I would have likely assumed SDS was just what real life was like after SSRIs and either resumed SSRIs indefinitely or fallen back into my old withdrawn, anhedonic habits.

Seriously though. You hear "zapping." That isn't a reassuring experience for someone dealing with their mental health.

"Oh, so I legit hear things now."

What a fun step forward!

The "zapping" ended when I started taking my meds again. Since then my dosage has actually gone up, and I'm feeling better depression wise, I'm more functional. But, if I forget a dossage, I do feel SDS pretty quickly. And there's so little known about the withdrawal of SSRIs, and the long-term effects, it isn't very comforting. It's a risk. The alternative is, non-functional.

It's assumed dealing with depression is more important than the possible outcome of long-terms SSRI use. I hope to shit they're right in that assumption.