That Time I Quit Prozac....

Welp folks, that did not go as planned....time for a little chaos. With my clean living lifestyle, I had a desire to stop taking the antidepressant that I've been on for over a decade. I'm doing everything right nutritionally and felt like I was in a good place mentally so at the beginning of last summer I began weaning myself off Prozac. By the end of August I had stopped taking it altogether, and it was fine....until it wasn't. Good LORD that was a tough lesson!

If you know me, you know that by nature I am a very positive and upbeat kind of girl. The last 3 months of the year I experienced a lot of life hardships, financially and emotionally....and I barely made it through. It was a slow decline, with a rapid drop off mid-November and through the holidays. I became a different person - I was uncomfortable around others and it was a struggle to force myself to smile and feign happiness. I was crying at least once a day, couldn't get out of bed, struggled to leave the house and basically had a black cloud over me for two straight months. I know all the tools for positivity but my brain could only focus on the negative things that were happening in my life and even breathwork and meditation couldn't resolve it. None of my tools were working! The crying, good grief, out of nowhere I would start crying about my current life situation and then my day was done, I couldn't lift myself up and out of the hole. I tried exercising, and it helped a little but I felt this huge weight over me and I couldn't find the good anywhere. I kept reviewing mistakes that I had made and my brain was completely overruled by the part of myself that says I'm bad and don't deserve love and happiness because I self-sabotage. Almost every shower I took incited a cry session, which was weird, like the water cued the water in me to come out.

There were a couple weeks of "bottom" that began just before the Thanksgiving holiday, when my dad was visiting from Florida. I get a lot of my personality from him, he's a happy go lucky guy that keeps things light and fun....and I was on the brink of tears picking him up from the airport. I actually skipped Thanksgiving dinner because I was in such a bad place mentally, I couldn't fathom the thought of subjecting others to my gloom and doom. I'm telling you, I couldn't see the freakin sun, it was terrible. I went to a sunrise at the beach, my absolute favorite thing ever, and almost started crying, not because of the beauty but because it didn't make me happy. What was happening?! Where was the upbeat and happy girl that people love to be around?! She was gone, dude - GONE. A friend had come over one night for dinner (likely to check on me because I had gone pretty dark), and she mentioned that even my voice was different, both in terms of what I sounded like when I spoke and the actual words I was speaking. Yikes, so it was clearly obvious that something was wrong.

Just before Christmas I had lunch with some friends that I used to work with, one of our friends and her husband were visiting and we made the plan to get together weeks in advance. I love these people, they are MY people and we do not all get together often. I almost cancelled on them the day of because I was crying all morning. I made myself go, cried in the car on the drive there, and showed up to lunch late and a shell of myself. I had been hemming and hawing for a week or so about going back on the meds, and my friends helped me see the benefits of doing just that. Someone made the analogy that if I couldn't see, I would wear glasses and that this was no different and that hit me hard. Of course I would wear glasses if I needed them to see, so why TF am I stubbornly not taking a medicine that I need to be happy?! I know why, I hate big pharma and believe there are natural solutions for a lot of things that they want you to take their drugs for and everything has a side effect that requires more drugs! But it is absolutely true that some medications serve a wonderful purpose and we need them in order to be our best and healthiest selves, and it seemed Prozac was that for me.

I started taking it again when I got home from lunch that day and no word of a lie I caught myself smiling naturally 5 days later. I suspect that since I was on it for so long, and only off for a few months, it didn't take too long for my brain to readjust. I also took a heavier dose that first week to help pump it back into my system and then cut back to my normal dose. Today I'm back to my old self, thank GAWD. Truthfully, I still have the same hardships, nothing has changed, but my brain is able to focus on gratitude and see the beauty in my daily life. I had my annual physical with my primary care doc of 15+ years and I explained what happened. She said I did everything right, that we don't know if we still need something unless we try to go without it, and that the way I weaned for months was exactly what she would have suggested. That made me feel better about the whole thing, and we talked about how I could give it another shot in a couple years if I still desire to eliminate it. It was a tough lesson though, I truly believed that I could 'mindset' my way through anything...but it was like I didn't have control over my own mind! So, here we are, I need a SSRI drug to be my best self, and I'm okay with it. I much prefer happy Stephie and need her to stick around for this next chapter.