Abilify wathdrawal

Nobody told me it would hurt this much.

Here's some friendly midnight advice from your crazy Uncle Jake:

If any doctor tries to prescribe a psychotropic drug for you, the FIRST thing you need to ask about are the withdrawal side effects you'll endure when you stop taking it, which—trust me—you eventually will. The ramp-up and day-to-day side effects of taking psychotropics definitely come with their challenges, most of which are a welcome trade-off for eliminating the mental-illness symptoms they were prescribed for. But eventually something in your head will change for the worse and your doctor will start to tinker (rather blindly) with the drug or cocktail of drugs you've been having success with. And the fallout can be unpredictable and devastating.

I ended a seven-year relationship with Abilify over a week ago because within the last year I'd developed a hefty case of tardive dyskinesia that made my legs shake involuntarily, uncontrollably and—most important—embarrassingly. And my current doctor was pretty maybe kinda sure Abilify was the culprit. And at first it seemed she was right. The leg shaking started disappearing almost from the moment I started tapering my dosage.

But.

The leg shaking seems to have been replaced with a three-ring circus of embarrassing side effects: involuntary eye rolling, power squinting, face rubbing, scalp swirling, nose pinching, beard rubbing, chomping, grunting, hyperventilating, spasms down the back of my neck, and an increasingly obvious sense of fogginess and confusion—all of which started manifesting themselves since I took my final tapered dose of Abilify. I'm so miserable I can hardly stand it. And my face is raw from the constant rubbing.

I have two choices: Go back on Abilify and (maybe) trade back my new side effects for my old ones, or stay the course and endure the withdrawal side effects until they (hopefully) go away. I have NO intention of reliving the withdrawal side effects I've survived to date so I'm going to stick with the plan and hope for the best. But I can honesty say that if the doctor who first prescribed Abilify for me could have impressed on me the degree of severity and misery I'd have to endure in my eventual withdrawal, there's no way I would have started taking it. There have been entire days over this last week where depression seemed exponentially easier to endure than withdrawal. Hands down.

You know that fogginess and confusion I mentioned two paragraphs ago? And you also know how in real life I'm a professional writer with (if I may indulge in some immodest immodesty) a quick wit and some mad typing skilz?

It took me almost two hours of intense concentration and multiple fits of intense face rubbing to write this, what should have been a 20-minute post. And I'm beyond the capability of proofing it.

How to keep your friendly neighborhood pharmacy solvent:

I mean seriously. And I take just as many meds in the mornings as well. Granted, about a fourth of my daily pill pile—which is a totally awesome band name—is OTC stuff with purported powers to control the side effects of all this pharmacology. But none of any of it seems to be working for shit. I'm still shaky and chompy and chubby-tummied and chronically, relentlessly exhausted. I'm still struggling to claw my way out of deepening pits of depression on an almost weekly basis. The unnerving and sometimes terrifying symptoms of my Cymbalta withdrawal seem to be escalating. And I'm weaning myself off of Abilify next. BECAUSE NONE OF IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING. Despite my many plans to the contrary, I pretty much slept my way through this entire weekend. I didn't go to a play I had tickets for. I didn't help my brother-in-law paint his house. I didn't do any half-marathon training. I didn't go to our neighborhood block party. I didn't even take a fucking shower.

But I have hope. And the greatest support network a bipolar person could ever ask for. And the ability to sit back objectively and make fun of the absurd and ridiculous stuff. And the delusion that I can stubbornly will myself to get better. But not, unfortunately, the ability to swallow two daily handfuls of pills without violently gagging. And clearly I don't have the self-control—or maybe just the self-sufficiency—to shut up about it all on social media. Which, on some levels, makes all of you part of my support network too. Which I suspect may be my subconscious goal with all this whining. So sorry to drag you all into my mental drama here. But thanks for playing along. I'm going to sleep now. Which I'm really good at; I practiced all weekend.

Today was day 10 of s l o w l y weaning me off Cymbalta ...

... the act of which gave me seizure-like blackout thingies when we did it rapidly last spring. I should be completely Cymbalta- (and seizure-like-blackout-thingie-) free by the beginning of October, at which time we start weaning me off of Abilify. Because I'm on five psychotropics right now, and while saying “psychotropics" is fun and all, five (plus my thyroid medication) is a bit much.

Every time we change my meds (I mean psychotropics!) I get my hopes up that THIS TIME will be the magic bullet and I'll finally stop sleeping through life/binge-buying shit I don't need/growing an enormous gut/hearing noises in the other room/deciding nobody likes me/shaking like a hoochie mama in a bathtub with a toaster. And every time, my symptoms seem to shift around a bit but never totally go away. So now instead of adjusting/introducing meds, we're taking them away entirely. And s l o w l y. But like everything related to psychotropics (there's that word again!), results (or complications) take time. And we have to map out when those results (or complications) might manifest themselves so they won't interfere with things like vacations, projects at work, family events, theater commitments and Disney half marathons. 

Speaking of which, the Disney half marathon I'm running is the first weekend in November, at which time who the heck knows where my meds (and my brain) will be. But once again, I choose to think that by then I'll be clear-headed and focused and energized and bedecked in my red running shorts with huge yellow buttons on the front and—aside from the aforementioned shorts—perfectly normal. Just like all of you magically wonderfully perfectly normal people. (You'd tell me if you weren't normal, right?)