Breakthrough?

In a continuation of our assualt on the Other D, Dr. Two-Fifty graduated me to a Big Girl dosage of generic Zoloft 10 days ago. (It’s pale yellow, for anyone who shares my fascination with the antidepressant rainbow.)

A lot has changed:

1. What is this current of vitality flowing through my body? How come I keep thinking about going dancing at Culture Club, the cheesiest club in New York? Oh, right: energy. That thing that makes walking places enjoyable instead of a truncated death march.

2. Aha, I AM creative. Who knew? I, for one, had entirely forgotten.

3. Hello, intellectual curiosity. I remember you.

4. Greetings, sex drive. I remember you too. Vaguely.

5. Nonbloggable thoughts, don’t let the door smack you on the ass on your way out.

6. I can name my emotions and inhabit the painful ones without feeling instantly compelled to numb them via external means (TV, food, glass of wine, computer games).

7. I feel gentle toward myself.

Whoosh. This is a lot of change. Am I, for lack of a better term, hopped up on goofballs? I phone Dr. Two-Fifty to present my concerns.

“I think maybe we need to decrease the dosage,” I say. She asks why; I present the above.

“Are you behaving impulsively?” she inquires. “Spending a lot of money, or making sudden decisions, or placing yourself in dangerous situations?” She’s wondering if I might be having a manic episode, which is not part of my history but could be triggered by an excess of this type of medication.

“No,” I say. “Nothing like that. But I feel kind of buzzy.”

“Here’s what I think.” Dr. Two-Fifty sounds quite perky. “Maybe the dosage is too high. But all the things you describe are suggestive of recovery from depression.”

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

“The buzziness may go away in a few days. If it doesn’t, we can reduce the dosage—but I don’t want to reduce it unless we have to, because it sounds like it’s helping you. Call me on Monday and we’ll see how you’re doing.”

Sure enough, two days later I am feeling less buzzy.

I’m not giving the medication all the credit for these transformations. I’ve been working hard to help myself in other ways—therapy, writing, making huge and painful life-changing decisions, opening up to people more than before. Maybe it’s all beginning to come together.

I worried about the trampling of my personality, of some essential Violetness, via antidepressant medication. But I don’t feel less like myself. I feel more like myself. I feel connected to myself and to other people. I feel aware.

It’s pretty cool, to put it mildly.