Having said all that ....

Perspective changes. We learn more. Things come together...

Life has continued to educate, and I have continued to learn. And so, too, has the journey continued on its circuitous route toward the emergence of new days, realities, understandings, and challenges. Still, it is a journey filled with moments of exquisite beauty, deep joy, silence, and music, light, and wonder, and dark. None for too long. All deeply welcomed.

Since I wrote my first installation for this blog, A Whole Lot of Broken, a whole lot of things have come my way, pressed their way through me, or passed me by. I continue to work toward wellness, but with an entirely different perspective than the one I was considering when I published my opening volley. I want to thank all of you who have read the piece and reached out with your thoughts, not afraid to share that broken is something you know, too.

I grew up with broken. My grandmother, widowed early, turned to business in the 1930s to make her way as a single mom to my still-young dad. She purchased buildings, renovated them – many by herself – and rented out the rooms. After remarrying, she opened an antique store and became well known as a dealer in the 1950s and ‘60s. My family home, a huge semi-detached limestone in Kingston, was probably purchased so she’d have somewhere to put her stuff: the things she collected and then realized she wasn’t able to sell, or things found to be cracked or missing pieces when she got them home. She wasn’t beyond gluing things back together herself or painting over areas on oil paintings that had a bit of flakey going on. The girl had gumption. I was born on her birthday.  

There was a lot of beautiful in that home, too. Gorgeous furnishings arrived sporadically and unexpectedly until mom forced a stop. China and pressed glass and vases galore, all of them had a place and some of them a story. Carpets and statues and wall sconces, candelabra, paintings and settees, cupboards with mothballed coats and real Victorian dress-up clothes. It was a kid’s dream and we loved it. Until we smashed something. (Do you remember those round “clackers” – two heavy plastic spheres hanging from a ring on a string? You could get them clacking up and down against each if you got your wrist swinging them just right. Not good in that kind of house. Especially when there were matching pairs of pretty glass things. Cranberry glass things. Not good at all.)

The things I still have from that house are lovely. Many of them are glued. Some of them are chipped. A few are in a far-more lived-in condition than they were back when. The painting in our dining room is the one you see above with the ridiculously obvious repairs. China is stapled. And there are things that are just no longer of any use at all because they are too broken for words, but they are beautiful, and I love them, so they stay where they are, hidden in cupboards, or gathering cobwebs under beds.

So broken is familiar to me. Comfortable. Known. I’m okay with broken.

I have always loved quiet. But these days, I often sit listening deeply and intentionally to something I might otherwise not – an audio book or the jazz station – just to stop my teeth from grinding to grating tune or nursery rhyme that’s set up house in my tired brain, more tired for the tedium to which it’s held. On those days, it’s the whole I long for, an empty sky, the lake’s horizon, an uninterrupted sluice of asphalt pouring me past empty fields. These are the days when something a little softer, or smooth, with still-silky edges your fingers can barely help caressing, are most welcome. These are the days when reprieve (the consonants and vowels of the word “reprieve” the exact opposite to what it promises) is yearned for, sought, curled into. These are the days when broken is hard. Just hard. Especially if it did not have to be.

Many weeks after writing my first piece, I was happy to visit with a woman I know and love who I had not seen in many years. Her professional world runs alongside the pharmaceutical issues with which I had been dealing. As we reacquainted each other with our respective lives, I shared the story of my need to withdraw from amitriptyline, the drug I had been taking for twenty years to mitigate my frequent migraines. As I wrote in my first blog, it had been creating serious cognitive issues for me and the withdrawal had been a nightmare of a challenge.

Her knowledge opened me to deep concerns about the process of my withdrawal, mostly that I had been left to manage it without professional oversight. I learned that the medical community knows that far too many people die by their own hand when coming off antidepressants and that proper oversight can prevent that. It also left me questioning the increased medications I was taking when it was all over, which had introduced these disruptive side effects and left me certain that I would be on antidepressants, crippled by the noises in my head for the rest of my life. And I realized that, properly managed, I would likely never have had to leave the work I loved, broken, and still struggling to heal.

I set off on a quest for information about withdrawal and soon found that the most helpful online resources were contributed to, managed, and overseen predominantly by laypeople who had gone through the process themselves. (See resources below.) Many of the withdrawal symptoms were the same as mine; many were multiple times worse. I learned that it should have taken much longer to properly come off the medication I was on. But I’d been embarrassed that it had taken 18 months.

I also learned that there really is no scientific, verifiable test result that meets the diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Rather, MDD is a diagnosis given when a collection of symptoms and behaviours are exhibited. In October 2020, four months into withdrawal, I exhibited some of those symptoms to the letter. Ergo, the diagnosis. But I still needed to come off the drug I was on, so was simply switched to a different antidepressant, Effexor, to stop the downward spiral.

Of course, I didn’t know anything about MDD or its symptoms, other than the chronic weeping and sleeping/not sleeping I was experiencing. And it never occurred to me that my physician might not know anything about withdrawal symptoms, which, based on my withdrawal timeline, were pretty much expected to be chronic weeping, and sleeping/not sleeping.

My breakdown wasn’t the result of Major Depressive Disorder at all. My breakdown was the result of withdrawal from an antidepressant I had been on for something other than depression. The symptoms of withdrawal, however, were misdiagnosed as MDD by a doctor who knew I was going through withdrawal. By the time I was off the amitriptyline, to keep me alive, I was on double the original dose of Effexor I’d been put on, topped off with Trazodone, another serotonin anti-depressant, prescribed to deal with the side effects of the Effexor.

I am now on a managed withdrawal program, one that I worked out with my doctor and a compounding pharmacist. I provided the information and outlined the process, educating my physician to the best practices for antidepressant withdrawal as I learned them from my friend and those who shared their experiences online. It was a challenge, but I feel that I am now being well supported. The pharmacist mixes me specially portioned capsules, reducing my dosage every three weeks by ten percent of the dose I’ve just finished. It will be somewhere at the end of 2024 or early 2025 before I am completely off the medication if I do get completely off it. I’ll be happy when I’m no longer experiencing side effects and can get through several days in a row without complete exhaustion or teeth-grinding madness. Effexor is, apparently, a difficult drug to come off, so I’ll do what I can do and be happy with wherever that leaves me.

For the first time in over two years, I feel I am in control, know what is happening, and have the support I require find the way to me becoming fully and wildly me again. Thank you for being on this journey with me.

ANTIDEPRESSANT WITHDRAWAL

NOTE: It is very important to remember that I was never diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) before going through withdrawal. My use of an antidepressant was as a migraine prophylactic which eventually caused me harm. (See below for helpful information about migraine prevention.) My decision to come off the antidepressants I am now on has come as the result of an increased understanding of the similarities between antidepressant withdrawal – which I was experiencing - and MDD. If you have been diagnosed with MDD, do not assume that you can make a withdrawal simply by deciding you want to. We are not the same people, our reasons for being on antidepressants are not the same, and our challenges are very different. Always share your concerns with your physician, bringing any new and relevant information you feel helpful to share into the conversation. Please do not put yourself at risk by trying to come off antidepressants alone, as I did, and without proper medical support.

If you are considering antidepressant withdrawal, please use the following resources wisely, seeking support from physicians and pharmacists, educating gently when you need to, and caring for yourself in whatever healthy ways will support you.

Resources:

The Withdrawal Project

Surviving Antidepressants

MIGRAINES

If you suffer from migraines, the best prophylactic results I have had were prescribed by my neurologist at Sunnybrook Hospital and aren’t even classed as pharmaceuticals! I didn’t realize how good they were until I ran out for a few days and had three massive migraines that my therapeutic drugs could barely manage. On the fourth day, I had the pills back in my cupboard again and will make sure they are always there! I hope this works for you, too!

Every morning, take 400mg of Vitamin B2. You likely can’t get it in a drugstore, but you should be able to purchase it in a health food store. It is inexpensive, and as my neurologist said, “It ain’t just witchcraft.” Amazing. And that’s coming from someone who has many migraines a month and went undiagnosed for 35 years. Get the B2. And let me know how it goes! And although this is a vitamin, you should still share your use of it with your physician

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Photos: All the photos are my own. You can find me on Unsplash where I upload the originals if I have them. The horizon photo was already edited so do not qualify for Unsplash.

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