Ask Blognigger: Lexapro

Easter egg 4: I'm addicted to legal drugs and that's how come I can write so much. Every night I tuck my wife in at around 10, take legal drugs, and write until very very late and then get up at 6am with my kids.

Astute Reader Dana Z writes:

Hi blognigger. Really love your blog and love what you do on streetcarnage. I have my own "ask blognigger" question that i'd like for you to consider answering. If you can't choose it as one to make a column of, I'd really appreciate just a quick opinion from you on this topic, as it's one that is actually coming to a head in my life right now. I'd really value your opinion if you can spare sometime.

I'm a 22 year old woman living in Kansas City, and I don't have a history of dating the best guys. According to my brother I usually date real assholes who treat me like shit. For the last six months, I've been dating pretty much a guy who is the best thing that ever happened to me. He treats me like a goddess, and is pretty much perfect.

Recently though things have been getting more serious, and I've only recently found out that he takes medication, lexipro, for depression. I told him it was alright, but I honestly have had concerns ever since learning this. I don't think I have an objection to people taking medication for being depressed, but I have to seriously admit that it is effecting how i feel about this guy who would otherwise be perfect.

He said he was really different before he was on it, and that really deeply scares me. like what if he stops taking it? how do i even know who he is?? I know that you take lexapro, so i'm sure you have experience with this issue. why do you take it? are you that different when you're not on it? So do you think I'm overreacting? you have to admit I have a point - what if he stops taking it and becomes a depressed person I don't even recognize. How can I pursue a long term relationship with someone under this circumstance.

Thanks blognigger. I appreciate the help, really. Please do shoot me back either way. thanks.
Dana Z

Dana,

Thanks for reaching out. Your question is truly badass – meaning they charge about 25 grand a semester to study this shit in philosophy of psych courses at any brand name university.

Here's my story with the sauce: In January 1993, I was a freshman at a very small, snowy, liberal university. Most students went home for winter break - I myself, being a total badass WRITER decided to stay at the empty university instead of returning home.

You see, I was a writer, and didn't need much to survive. I had my books, my computer with dialup PPP/Slip Internet access, and a stack of wheat bread and peanut butter and jelly which I kept in between my window and the bugscreen so that it would stay refrigerated. It was all about art, about writing, and I was excited to finally get time away from classes, distractions, and have all the time in the world to write the great american short story.

This pipe dream lasted literally less than 72 hours - after a gigantic snowstorm descended upon my college town, I was all alone in about 4 feet of immobilizing snow. I spent about 14 minutes trying to write, and the rest of the time getting high, reading the fabulous furry freak brothers, listening to Howard Stern, and eating peanut butter and jelly. I ran up and down the halls of my dorm, and because there were no other students there, I would jump and yell outloud so that I could hear a human voice. It was literally like The Shining but with no one to kill.

I decided that writing sucked, and that I sucked at writing. I was bored and scared, and suddenly started experiencing something I had never felt before. I realized that life was so boring that there was no point to living it. All there was to do was count down each minute of each hour - when I visualized all the minutes left in my natural life - 18 years old to 90 is roughly 80 godzillian minutes - I felt a visceral rush of panic. I started realizing that I would die alone, and that I'd be counting those minutes alone forever, panicking, vomiting, and then having some peanut butter and jelly.

Within one week, I called my parents crying and asking them to take me home. I paid a local psychotic townee 20$ to drive me to an airport because there were no cabs. I plopped my dad's gold card onto the flight ticket counter and said "one please." like Charlie Brown.

I went home, and felt free of the spell - I was excited to see my neighborhood and go get high with my friends and pretend to be a badass. It rocked. But then something weird happened - I would be going through a normal day, and my brain would start to remember what it was like back at school - I would try to shake it off, and sometimes I could, but ultimately my brain would return me to that week at school - and I would remember that I would die alone, and there were still all these minutes that someone would have to count. These minutes; they aren't going to count themselves you know.

I would start to choke up and my eyes would get watery. I would cry I guess. I would throw up a lot. I realized I had to go to a mental hospital, and then I realized that at the mental hospital I would be marked for life as a mental patient, and that would make the dying forever even worse.

Fortunately I had a constructive solution: I got into my parents bed, got into the fetal position, and decided I would never leave.

My parents must have been proud. Their son was a fruit. My dad was pissed and my mom was scared. My dad told me about Prozac, and made me start seeing a doctor. I didn't want to take it. I thought it would make me a whiny old woman, and I didn't want to be addicted to pills for my whole life. I also didn't want to die though. I was really torn into two different voices on the matter, a damn good pinpoint of the beginning of my schizophrenic behavior. I wrote out all the pros and cons in both voices in a notebook that I still have somewhere. Let me see if I can dig it up:


That shit smells amazing - Can't believe I wrote a book that smells like that already. It was written 15 years ago. Half my life almost - weird.

Dunno if you can read that "bad" column, but that's how you think about medication when you're depressed: well, I think I can probably survive without it, and I don't want to be addicted. You don't realize that surviving isn't the point of life - the point is to thrive and be happy.

I took my first pill, and convinced myself that I was having a bad reaction - my heart was racing, and I started acting like a guy who took "bad" acid and was tripping with fear and horror. Now I was REALLY fucked, as even the treatment had failed. Like that old Eye of the Beholder twilight zone - the operation was a FAILURE!! NO CHANGE!!!


I told my dad I didn't want to take it ever again. no more bad acid daddy. My dad told me that was ok, because the other option was the mental hospital.

I took it again the next day - bravest thing I ever did in my whole life. This time I felt nothing, which is of course what you should feel, seeing as the shit doesn't kick in for 3 weeks anyway.

Nothing happened. I went back to school, just barely surviving. I tried to make lots of plans for myself that didn't involve peanut butter or jelly, and made sure I was never alone.

Then one night...I was with my best girl friend, and walking to this crappy video store... I still remember it perfectly - I was looking at the gravel on the road when I was walking toward the video store... and I just felt something switch. I felt like I would be ok. Like everything was just ok, and cool. It was very calm and still, and I stopped... and everything felt like it might be alright. magic.

Since then, I've experimented with coming off of the stuff exactly once - the common "hey I'm doing GREAT - I don't even NEED this stuff!" It's like, hey dumbass, you're doing great BECAUSE of this stuff, you dumbcock.

Coming off of it didn't go too well. I've decided to never go off of it again. There's no point to going off of it - yep, there's a chance that due to lack of long term testing, I'll die of some horrible malignant brain tumor in 20 years or 1 year or something, but I don't think about it. I don't have to ruminate and obsess on things I don't want to ruminate and obsess on things I don't want to ruminate and obsess on, because I'm medicated.

I don't have to count any minutes.

I have normal problems, as you've seen. I get depressed and freaked out and scared and feel negative shit all the time - I don't feel that Lexapro has made me a zombie at all. Ha - now I'm getting this image that I sound like the cripple in the wheelchair who's at a highschool assembly trying to get the whole school to stop using the term "handicapped" by proving his equivalence, just all: "see, I can dance - just like you! I just push my joystick back and forth, and I'm dancing! Just like you! Look at me guys - I'M DANCING TOO I'M NORMAL."

Anyway, I'm not trying to sell my normality, cause I'm still a sick abnormal bitch, but I'm just saying that the Lexapro hasn't hypnotized me into some form of Brave New World Stepford Nigger. I still have problems, as you can plainly see.

Now, I've effectively grown up on Prozac - since I was 18. I'm 33 now. So, what does that say about my identity? Who am I really? When I was in my mid-twenties and feeling myself get more and more mature, I sometimes wondered - hm, am I getting older and wiser, or is this just the prozac? What part is me and what part is the drug?

At some point I realized though - who gives a fuck? I'm me. I got better things to worry about.

And that's the beginning of my advice for you Dana Zuul: This guy is HIM. You're in love with him. Don't start holding his brain chemistry against him, or fucking up a perfectly good relationship with some imagined shit. He'll find other ways of disappointing you if he's really that good. You don't need to manufacture them.

Is there a risk that he'll come off the drug and become Mr. Hyde? Yes. So talk to him about it - find out what his plans are - I bet he doesn't plan to come off it. If he does, sit with him through it, and see if you like the other guy.

Listen, you're lucky you have something to focus this angst on - any guy you meet, in the long term, is going to have multiple personalities. All of these guys will change and become a different person than you fell in love with - even after you're married! Shit, especially then.

You're young, but you're not that far away from being one of these very depressed 30 year old women who desperately want a baby and a guy and look around and realize that all the good ones are taken. Not trying to scare you - that's not going to happen to you, I'm just saying that you can't just throw shit away. If you've got a good guy, and you create a problem like this and decide to get rid of him, it's really possible that you'll be kicking yourself in the ass for the rest of your life. I've seen it happen.

If you're in love, you've got to go for it - that's one of the only things I know.

Take care,
Blognigger