A Hesistant Tale of Triumphant Pharmaceuticals

No treated condition is perfect, but at least it can be a lot better.

My eyes shoot open. I can hear the exclamation point at the end of the last sentence shouted in my dream,

“But we haven’t talked about Chappell Roan yet!”

I have been waking up easier. It doesn’t feel like I entirely fall asleep since I started back on Bupropion (brand name: Wellbutrin). It feels more like I am a ghost in a body, drifting between dimensions. And when I “wake,” I simply land squarely back in this one.

Regardless, I am much more well-rested and able to do the day–these days.

I am about two weeks into this particular leg of my medication journey. I’d been off medication for almost two years until now. Life has been darkening under a shadow of doom all the while, and frankly, I can’t go on this way.

To read about this recent decision: Click Here.

To read about how I was doing in December 2023: Click Here

To read how I was doing in February 2023, when I was at the last step of a six-month pilgrimage to get off of medication: Click Here.

To read a post written right before I started weaning off of my meds in August 2022: Click Here

Interesting, eh?

And, to read about my quest through a host of variable, failed medications that eventually lead me to what works… carry on.

Photo by Mimi Chakravorty, 2017

I started out on Lexapro 20 years ago, and it never suited me. Though, they never figured that out (they being my doctors in Hawai'i). I just went on and off on my own for a decade and struggled with all the add-ons they’d try to use to sort it out along the way.
Ritalin made me more suicidal.
Ambien was a walking nightmare.
Etc, etc.

The main cons for me and Lexapro were that it made me extremely fatigued, nauseous, and took away my ability to have full sexual experiences. So, taking it all through my teens and early adulthood really skewed my understanding of my lack of ability to connect with people intimately–in the way that I so wanted to. I was depressed in part because I was profoundly lonely, and I was taking a medication that only affirmed a lonely lived experience.

At some point in my twenties–after being off of it all for years–I went back to a clinic and demanded they try a different medication entirely. I was in Los Angeles at the time, and my Saturn return was coming in hot! I had to sort through the mess I was in with all hands on deck.

I was misdiagnosed with Bipolar. They gave Gabapentin and Lamictal. I quit the Gabapentin fast because it makes me dangerously drowsy. And Lamictal… well, it’s dangerous to just stop… and my Dr. was very insistent that it was the main schtick I needed. It was the core of my treatment, so she said.

Lamictal both escalated and numbed my emotions to the point of catastrophe. I was experiencing rage and apathy with the lethalness and suddenness of a freshly sharpened axe. However, I couldn’t feel compassion; I couldn’t cry; I wasn’t myself, and I was being an asshole to acquaintances I’d meet in the improv scene and fuck in bar bathrooms. Ah, Birds. IYKYK.
#Hollywood

The mid-2010s grunge lifestyle was running hot in my veins
as I tramped around Hollywood wearing different names.
Blue wig or blonde, I hid
under a giant jean jacket–
not wondering
if any of this
was wrong.

Photos by Jerrick Romero, 2017

Eventually, it was clear I needed to not be doing what I was doing.

I’m not sure exactly what inspired my readiness to move on; perhaps it was the colossal breakup I instigated with my boyfriend of 3-some years. Perhaps it was my birth father finding me on Facebook. Perhaps it was visiting him in New York and meeting my little brother. Perhaps it was moving across town for a temporary stint at a penthouse with Spanish yoga queen Mária.

Perhaps it was the ever-nearing of my jet-setting plans to leave town and explore Asia for a while…

Regardless, the meds weren’t working, and I hated my psychiatrist. What she prescribed was making me hate me. So, I requested a new approach. I begged. I’d been begging. We did not get along, and she seemed to find revelry in ignoring my pleas. But at last! I put my foot down. I was stopping the Lamictal with or without her consent. I forced her hand to help me. She complied. Well, she had to. We weaned me off and started anew!

And after 13 years of this mayhem, I finally met the most helpful prescription for my chemisty. Wellbutrin.

I was also prescribed some other two anti-anxiety drugs…
*rummages around old medicine cabinet*
Ah, Propanel and Buspirone.

I say “some other” because I am less familiar with them. I was not consistent with the additionals. As you can probably tell by now, I am not comfortable taking medication. Furthermore, I do not like the add-ons. Taking these other two multiple times a day only increased my anxiety because the act of taking anti-anxiety meds makes me anxious in and of itself! A catch-22. Alas. My feelings can only hold space for one prescription at a time.

I was finally feeling a lot better. I had hope, drive, clarity of thought. I boogied over to China and India and healed in more ways than one.

Photo by Jerrick Romero, 2017

When I got back, things were still going really well. With the psychologist I’d been seeing for two years and my newfound success in medicinals, I found the confidence to keep taking more control over my support system. I told my psychiatrist she wasn’t for me and worked with my psychologist to pair me with a new one.
Farewell Missees Doctor Bitch Lady.

Enter: Dr. B.

He says my old psychiatrist and I were clearly triggering each other.

He gave me a very different test and a very different diagnosis.
(Watch that story in the link above).

He showed me the doors to tools I continue to cultivate. I am forever grateful for DBT and Dr. B.

While I wasn’t able to sustain the experience of a meaningful life with just those tools (sans meds), I am extremely relieved that I stuck this arduous journey out. That I know what works and what doesn’t. That I didn’t choose pride and stubbornness, fear and resistance, over my own well-being.

This is all to say… I feel all at once both troubled and freed by my need for pharmaceuticals, their image of support flickering between shackles and wings. No resolution to these ailments will be perfect. But by goddess, thank the heavens there is resolution to be found.

Wavering or not, my solace in this solution is worth all the moments of doubt and the side effects that come with it.

My 20 years of suffering through various methods to quell my qualms about being alive is a story of resilience and hope. I am so glad I did–suffer through them. As turbulent as it has been. While I wish beyond wish that I could traipse through life untethered to these issues, that simply is not my truth.

I would love it if diet and lifestyle were enough for me to change this aspect of my story. To rid it of the thread in my yarn that binds me to a tale of disordered moods. And I am at peace knowing I gave that a real go.

I was profoundly reticent to enter the domain of a daily dose again.

Yet, I am already feeling so incredibly better. Hopeful. Energized. Activated to do all the things I want to do. Activated to want again.

And thank the North, South, East, West, Above Above and Below Below for that.

Photo by Mimi Chakravorty, 2017

A hui ho,

Julia