vituperation

“Some people say Paxil makes them feel…flat,” Dr. Judy told me last week when I went to see her. At the time, I wasn’t sure what she meant by flat. Now I know.

Paxil has turned me stupid. I know it’s the Paxil, because I stopped taking the Xanax a couple of days ago, believing it to be the culprit.

Each morning when I brush my teeth at approximately 6:21, I pop the little white pill. By 7:00, my IQ has dropped to roughly half its normal level. I stumble around in a fog of idiocy, struggling to find the right words in conversation, frustrated because it seems like I can’t perform the simplest tasks. This morning, for example, when I decided to get fast food for breakfast.

I stopped at Chik-fil-A because a biscuit sounded appealing. Except when I got up to the place where you order at the drive through, I couldn’t make sense of the menu. Everything seemed to be combos, weird things like mini-biscuits and whatnot. So I drove off, frustrated — but not angry, because the pill does seem to have nipped that.

There’s a Burger King near my office and I pulled in there, intent on getting a biscuit. I drove up to the menu board, but I couldn’t find breakfast stuff on the menu so I went inside. The menu there had the items listed, nice and big, and I decided I wanted a “biscuit sandwich”. The picture showed a biscuit with sausage, egg, and cheese, and text below it told me I could have my choice of sausage, ham, or bacon.

“I’d like a sausage biscuit sandwich,” I said slowly, for that is how I seem to do everything now.

“One sausage biscuit, anything else?” the girl asked.

But that wasn’t right. I wanted the sandwich, the one with the other stuff.

“Not a sausage biscuit,” I said. “The one with…”

I faded out, unable to think of the word “egg”. I looked stupidly at the girl, at the sign, back at the girl.

“…egg and cheese?” she asked.

“Yes, that. The sandwich.”

While I waited for my order I realized that all the biscuits there are called “biscuit sandwiches,” so I can understand why she misunderstood me. That makes it no less frustrating.

Earlier this week, I had to go to a restaurant to pick up a gift certificate that’s to be a Christmas present. As I stood at the counter waiting for the hostess to write out the certificate, some old woman sitting nearby slid her arm around my waist and launched into a long story about crab bisque, and cooking it for German people. When she reached the end of the tale, she cackled at her own wit.

I laughed with her, but inside I was in a panic because I’d been unable to follow what she was telling me. I have no idea what the story was about, save the crab bisque and German people, or why it was funny.

As the day progresses, I get a little of my smarts back, but never back up to 100%.

And dear God, the way this thing makes me feel. I don’t know if I can describe it properly, but I’ll try. I feel disconnected from myself, a stranger looking in from the outside. My head feels like it’s padded with about a foot of cotton, and in moments of quiet solitude there’s a distinct sensation of something crawling around on my scalp. I am reminded of some of the diet pills I tried 20 years ago. It’s like being on uppers and downers at the same time.

I yawn constantly, but I can’t get to sleep if I try a nap. Laying down for a while in the afternoon does help the stupid, though. It clears up the cobwebs, I guess. I make a lot more typing mistakes, and have a hard time composing sentences. I had to rewrite the beginning of this entry because I had such a hard time with the word “chemicals.” I had to postpone completing it for several hours until I could get my thoughts together in a semi-cohesive stream.

Except for the first couple of hours after I take the pill, I don’t have much trouble with my concentration. I can focus on things and get things accomplished, but if it’s quiet I also very easily unfocus, sitting and staring at nothing with my mouth hanging open. Like a zombie. Like Jack Nicholson at the end of Cuckoo’s Nest.

I feel like I spend a lot of time doing that, just sitting there staring at the wall, mouth agape. I’m surprised I don’t drool on myself. Nothing’s really going through my head at those times, and I suspect a radio dial tuned to station KFRD would yield the hiss of white noise. It’s off-putting, because I’m used to my brain being ramped up and running at gangbusters, and now it’s been muffled.

Though it comes in handy when I’m waiting for something, like a red light or in a line, because I don’t get annoyed while I’m sitting there catching flies.

Robyn tells me she there’s nothing noticeably different in me, except that I’m more level, less prone to get easily annoyed. Co-workers tell me there’s been no change in the way I act, that I’m just as funny and smart-assy as I’ve always been. Hell, they’re all starting to make me think it’s all in my head.

Which, given the nature of the problem, I guess it is. The times I feel the most effect from the drug are when I’m alone in my head.

People tell me that these things go away once the drug gets up to “therapeutic levels” in my system. I hope so. I put a call in to Dr. Judy’s office this morning to talk to them about it. Maybe there’s something better; maybe taking it at night would help with some of the effects (I can only imagine what sort of dreams it would give me). There’s only one thing I know for sure.

I don’t like the way this drug makes me feel at all.