Shit is hard this fall. Last year when I moved overseas with nary a backward glance, I seemed to arrive in this prime moment in which everything just kind of bowed and bent before me: I had found a job within a week of my arrival, I found another job shortly thereafter, and before I knew it, I was feeling ‘settled’. Everything I touched turned to gold.
This year, everything I touch seems to disintegrate in my hands. I found a job before coming over here, looking after some kids. I thought I had struck a great arrangement with the family, the kids were great, the pay wasn’t bad – it looked like it might supply me with a partial livelihood and that I would still have time to pursue other things. But when I got back from my three-week hiatus in Italy, I had been replaced and the family had discovered that they really didn’t need me as often as planned. Disappointing, but I still had some faith in the way things work out, and pressed forward.
In June, I had started to take a low dose of antidepressants to manage the chronic daily headaches I’d been having for months. When I came back to Paris in October after my time in Italy, I discovered that my prescription still hadn’t arrived from the States and was likely being held at Customs. People should really warn you about taking these kinds of medications: I was tired, I was pissed, I just wanted to sleep and cry and wallow in some mysterious black hole I didn’t even know I was capable of accessing. I was miserable. My boyfriend took me to an ER that was specifically geared to headache sufferers, I got my refill, and thought that things would just shoot upward from there. Unfortunately, the fact that I had stopped treatment so suddenly and then went back on the medication after a few days seemed to pose more problems than anticipated; the medicine had to be reintroduced to my system, and my system hated it.
So I went on a silent warpath, stopped communicating with important people in my life, and just generally felt worse than I ever have in my life for weeks straight. Now that I’ve regained a rational perspective, I see how important it is for me to get off of these meds, whether or not that means entering back into the world of the Daily Headache. And so a few days ago, I began the slow process of weaning myself off of amitriptyline.
So couple the difficulties of living and working in a foreign country with the challenges of being on a totally bizarre medication…
and you’ve got me, now.
Tags: antidepressants, chronic daily headache, medication withdrawal symptoms
